Last month we had the chance to attend the very first Beat The Buzz event, organized by WeRSM.
A whole batch of insights and thought-provocative sessions occurred during the day. Here are the few takeaways of the RE-UP team!
Laurent – Exec. Creative Strategist
The different speakers have demonstrated a very European approach to social media; whereas social marketing sometimes seems a bit “old-fashioned” compared to the flavors of the month (IoT, AI etc.), the event proved that there is still a massive opportunity for brands to properly tap into social relevancy.
The power of creative thinking
The Buzzman team gave a very strong lesson in creativity regarding their client Burger King; by playing with urban myths, hoaxes, and by exploiting the diverse formats of social channels, the most ballsy agency on Earth gave a good insight of what a creative and strategic team should look like: extremely aware of cultural habits on channels while passionate about what the brand has to say. Some might say that this kind of approach cannot work for all sorts of clients but at least Burger King proves that simple bread and meat products can be meaningful for millions of French gourmands. It was also pretty interesting to state that a good channel specialist can more or less survive any sort of brief regarding social, as mechanics and “social engineering” are 50% of the creative job.
I also kept an eye on the new generation of social media professionals; there is no myth, the right gangs are most of the time people who love other people, who love to create a certain “pulse” within groups of individuals. If the last 5 years have been focusing way too much on tools, analytics and “infrastructures”, it is a good sign to bring back common sense…and fun.
***********
Efrem – Operations Director
Beat The Buzz was also interesting from an entrepreneurial perspective. Some of the speakers built solid creative operations throughout the years – a good example of which is Georges Mohammed-Chérif from Buzzman. Some entrepreneurs set up businesses around the industry: from Audiense (a platform to gain intelligence over online audiences) to Gamee (a social network based on gaming).
I always get fascinated though by people who create businesses to sell goods from scratch.
While brick-and-mortar commercial businesses can measure conversions of foot traffic to sales because they have a physical structure (the store) – that can be found by anyone walking down the street – finding an online shop is harder as one has to search for it in the infinite virtual space and/or the limited environment of search engines.
Lara Eastburn is the founder of Superhooper and she managed to sell over USD 1Million in homemade hula hoops.
Social media played the main role in her efforts to sell more hoops. Initially she pushed the benefits of her products but didn’t go very far. The big change happened when she posted a picture of her cat and sales went up by 50% from one month to the next.
By a certain degree of fate, she tapped into one of the main online cultural interests from our time: cats. From there, she started a chain of features around her family: her cat, the funny husband and her cute baby.
From a product centric communication, Lara turned her brand (and herself) into a publisher of her own lifestyle. By mixing pictures, stories and videos of her own family and the hoops, she matched her persona with her personality, bringing a real sense of authenticity for the business, easing the connection with her audience and prospect consumers.
Authenticity may explain the success of platforms such as Snapchat, or publishers as Player’s Tribune. It may also be behind the launches of Periscope or Facebook Live as more people demand a more transparent relationship with celebrities and brands.
From her LinkedIn page, Lara is a Social Media Mixologist | Champion of Organic Growth for Small Business | Facebook Ads Specialist | Social Media Speaker.
She is all that.
***********
Pierre – Brand Engineer
Beat The Buzz, really hit the nail on the head.
All hail to the creative idea!
The Beat The Buzz conference, was another brilliant demonstration that Social Media is a fabulous canal, but merely a canal, a smart one indeed but it will never replace the dire need for a good idea first.
From Buzzman to media agencies, from hula hoops sellers to mobile game companies, the people who came on stage demonstrated that the strength of a good creative idea and a brilliant delivery are the prerequisites and the necessary start for a successful social media campaign.
Social media is a fantastic accelerator of a good campaign, an exciting sound board for smart agencies who understand its rules and how to harness them. The place where all good ideas come to thrive and all bad ones come to die.
It is the place where brands perform with no safety net, a place for the brave and not for the faint-hearted.
You can’t beat that, television, print and radio!
****
Lucile – Account Manager
“If you crash at the party, bring some champagne”
– Georges Mohammed-Chérif, “Head of Bullshit”@ Buzzman (10am)
That’s probably the quote that best summarizes the 10 hours decathlon we had last April while assisting to Beat The Buzz.
From fighting for attention with Buzzman and their excellent Burger King campaign,
… to daydreaming with Holly Clarke (EMEA Marketing Manager @ Airbnb) and her unexpected places to stay (eg. Air France KLM aircrafts),
…. Visiting Athens with Eric Parks (Director of Digital Platforms & Innovations @ Tempo OMD) with some unusual Dark Vador street marketing,
… Playing digital benchmarking game cards with Jon Burkhart,
… Learning better ways to monitor profiles on social media with Javier Buron (Co-founder of Audiense)
… and understanding how the App Gaming world can sometime go hand in hand with brands, thanks to with Bozena Rezab (CEO @ Gamee),
The programme was dense, and the speakers definitely inspiring.
Starting from the very discussed view that social media can sometime crash into personal lives, the Beat The Buzz conference gathered a group of inspiring, motivated speakers, here to share their tricks & dreams, and to actually let you reflect on why so many people get amazed by this world: for the sparkles.
****
Tina – Community Builder
My favourite talk was from Airbnb’s EMEA Social Manager, Holly Clarke.
She talked us through the brand’s current campaign, A Night At. For those who don’t know; this campaign gives the fans a chance to win an overnight stay in some of the craziest places on Earth – from a floating house to a shark tank and planes.
One thing I will take with me from her talk is to pay attention to what’s going on, to what people are saying and act on it. Indeed Airbnb’s campaign all started with a tweet of someone blocked in a Waterstone branch. Airbnb was following this viral conversation. Seeing the fact that people were quite interested in spending a night in a bookshop, Airbnb decided to offer an overnight in one them… and that’s how a successful campaign was launched.
So the next big idea might be just around the corner – you just have to pay attention!
Finally, congratulations to the We Are Social Media Team who started from scratch and succeeded in creating a trending hashtag (#BeatTheBuzz) in a few hours on Twitter!
Join our free weekly newsletter to dive deeper into the world of RE-UP, discovering the stories, trends and topics that get our brains buzzing