#Get Social was the second of three events in Dublin City University, a series of conferences organized by the DCU business school to introduce students to the world of social media. “#Get Social” focused on what students should be doing to get active on social media. Six guest speakers with various backgrounds offered over 400 business school students and others invaluable advice on getting online in today’s business world.
The six speakers where Brian Higgins (pieta house), Paul Berney (mCordis), Steven Conlon (LinkedIn), Kathy Scott (Trailblazery) and Luis Franco (survey monkey), Aideen burke (LK shields) and Ian Campell (Havas media).
The event offered so much more than I had expected, and I was surprised at the some of the ways business students could get active and interact with business leaders thought websites such as LinkedIn. Listening to these guest speakers made me reflect on how active I was online and how much more I could do to help my career by getting social.
Brian Higgins (Pieta House)
Brian Higgins is part of Pieta House which is a non-profit charity providing professional free services in the prevention of suicide. Brian won the marketer of the year award for his work with darkness into light which is a charity 5km run or walk event.
Brian started talking to us about Pieta House and the big fundraiser they do every year which is darkness into light. Pieta house marketing objective is to reduce the need for their services dramatically. Their goal is to put themselves out of business which makes no sense till you realise when they complete this there will no longer be suicide which will be an incredible thing in my opinion. Their most significant marketing challenge was that nobody wants to talk about suicide as it was illegal up until the 1930 and it is a mortal sin in the eyes of the Catholic church which there is no redemption, so you shall burn in hell. This point made me think about how hard it must have been to start talking and getting this organisation up, and running must have been a real inspiration in my opinion.
The vision of pieta house is a world where “suicide and self-harm and stigma have been replaced by hope self-care and acceptance.” This is a powerful vision of the world as in 2015 54,000 people were directly affected by suicide which is a vast number of people.
Brian started talking about the big event for pieta house which is the darkness into light. This event is held in May every year, and the event began ten years ago. The event has gone from 400 people at its first event to 180,000 people on four continents in 12 countries. That is an incredible increase in the number of people each year. Brian went on to say that pieta house is moving forward into peer to peer fundraising as people do not support causes as people support people.
Brian went on to talk about the amount of following pieta house has on social media from Facebook with 190,000 to twitter with 30,000, and this allowed them to do much marketing without needing to pay for ads as they already had followers. Brian also said that they contacted famous people directly through these social media sites to get them to support the event an example of these people is Sonia O’Sullivan who completed the event on Bondi beach. This to me showed how pieta house was able to use the resources they had to generate more fundraising by having the event in more places and therefore being able to supply the excellent services that they provide.
I enjoyed listening to Brian’s talk I never knew the amount of work pieta house does in suicide prevention or the amount of work that they put into raising money each year to keep their free services free.
Paul Berney (mCordis)
Paul Berney was the second speaker of the #Get social even
t held in the helix in DCU; he talked about connected marketing as he has done almost 500 events around the world on this topic. Pauls presentation was about change and how company’s marketing strategies have changed over the recent years from traditional marketing to more connected and online marketing.
Paul gave a quote that summarised his talk “The more connected devices that you have in your life, the more that you are constantly connected.” It is an obvious and easy to understood quote and makes sense when you think about it. What made this quote stand out for me was when he gave a real-life example of what this quote means.
How when we came into the helix in DCU the first thing everybody did was log on to, the free WIFI that is available, so they would still be connected. He also gave the example of how the announcement at the start of the event informed people to turn off their phones and how no one does this anymore as to turn off their phone they lose the connection to his or her online selves. Connected individuals want to connect with connected brands. Therefore marketers must become connected marketers as too do this will give them the opportunity to connect with many more protentional consumers. Paul believes that as time goes on, people will have more and more connected devices he backed this up by saying that you can be connected using your fridge, your watch and even your toothbrush. I agree with Pauls belief as the number of electronic devices that are in use today is on the rise.
Paul went on to say that mobile has been the cause and the enabler of massive behavioural change, as we now live in a state of connectedness and that people’s digital self is living with them as well as their regular self. When I thought about this, I never realised that no matter where you go your digital self-stays will be with you in some shape or form it is something I would never have considered till now. Paul went on to say how talking with your friends digitally through social media is becoming the same as chatting with your friends in person as they are starting to blur due to how often you communicate online and the ways that you can communicate online. A lot of what Paul said was hitting home with me as I would have never thought about how similar talking in person and online has become. Paul started talking about being a connected marketer to be a connected marketer you understand the change in the way people shop. How you could only be a connected shopper for about 30 seconds, then you put your phone away, and you are no longer one until you take your phone out again.
An excellent connected marketer combines physical, digital, emotional and censorial brand to attract consumers. The first thing an excellent connected marketer must do is remove friction from people lives so they may live a more comfortable life. The second thing they must do is enable the consumer to do what they want. The third thing they must do is remove the barrier from enabling consumers from being connected and if a connected marketer does and understands all of this they could be a very successful connected marketer.
I enjoyed Paul talk as it made me think about how the way marketing has changed and how people now spend a lot of their time being connected.
Aideen Burke (LK Shields)
Aideen Burke was the second last speaker of the event, and she was one of the most interesting in my opinion as she talked about intellectual property and the law around social media and who owns the right to that picture. Aideen works for LK Shields, and her job is to give information to companies on I.P and commercial issues.
Aideen started talking about intellectual property being used by businesses as part of their marketing campaigns. Intellectual property was an exciting topic for me as it is a common marketing strategy used by company’s such coca cola who in 2011 ran an ad campaign where they put people’s names on the bottles and encourage people to post pictures of them and their bottle to coca colas social media sites. Aideen talked about how important it is for the company in this form of marketing strategies to get the appropriate copyright before they use the pictures in their ad campaign. Aideen gave valuable advice for companies that are going to use the user-generated style of marketing which is to get written consent of the people whose picture they are going to use.
Aideen went on to say that company’s need to be very careful when it comes to taking photographs of celebrities with their brands. I did not realise that companies are not allowed use pictures of celebrities without seeking their permission. Aideen told us about a case about Duane Reade who made a tweet about Katherine Heigle claiming that she loved their brand as she was carrying one of their bags as she came out of there drugstore. Katherine subsequently sued Duane Reade for the tweet and the picture as they did not have the right to use the image she received 6 million dollars in compensation. This case proved how necessary consent is in the world of marketing.
Aideen went on to talk about defamation and how many people do not realise how they are liable to be sued if they post defamatory comments online as a negative tweet can be as damaging or more damaging then a verbal comment being spoken. It amazed me to see that if you post a comment online, you are liable for the repercussion if it is a defaming comment and that you are liable to be sued. Aideen gave an interesting example this happening in the Sally Bercow in the Lord McAlpine case. Which saw Sally Bercow sued by Lord McAlpine over a defaming tweet she made. Which amazed me is that you can get in trouble for retweeting a comment or tweet which is what happened to Alan Davies. I did not realise that what you do on social media can have a very costly effect if sued for a comment or tweet you make.
I truly enjoyed Aideen talk as she talked about critical issues about I.P and she also backed them up with real cases which made it that more interesting.
Ian Campbell (Havas media)
Ian Campbell was the last speaker of the night, and he was also fascinating in my opinion. Ian Campbell was a past student of DCU, and he talked about what it is like to work in a media agency and explained how it works.
There were three areas he talked about which were Irish media landscape, attribution and campaign planning.
Ian started talking about the Irish media landscape and how it used to be easy, but now it has changed from traditional advertising to online advertising and all the diverse ways people purchases things and how they purchase stuff across many devices and though many paths. Due to this change, there are many new challenges and opportunities available for marketing agencies such as Havas. Ian went on to say the audience is now the media and that 2.5 billion people are connected online, and there are 1 billion smartphones in use. This statement was interesting as I did not realise that less than half of the world’s population are connected online, and there is room to grow.
Ian went on to say how its very important to have your website or app optimised before you go and spend money on multimedia campaigns. He started talking about how there is a shift in media consumption from people consuming more mobile than television in the younger demographic.
Ian started talking about attribution this was an interesting topic as people no longer just go online and buy something from the first website, they shop around, and they can go back to a website up to 20 times a day before they buy something. He went on to give us an example of how attribution works he started off by saying that knowing your audience is vital as well as understanding their media habits and choosing the right mediums such as mobile for young people and tv for older. Ian then went on to tell us about a case study he was involved in which was DCU CAO hub 2018.
This case study was very interesting to hear about as it gave a real sense of how attribution worked. Ian started by explaining the details of the DCU add campaign which lasted five weeks his target market was people aged 16 to 19. This statement was interesting to see how important it is to know your market and to know whom you are trying to influence. Ian then should us the research that was done such as when are people most likely to apply to the CAO. I found this enjoyable as it showed how essential it is to know the right time to put the ads out to get the most reward. He went on to explain the different plate forms that were used to advertise to the target market. I was amazed to see how nearly all the social media apps I consume can be used to market or promote a product to me.
I enjoyed listening to Ian Campbell from Havas media as he was an exciting person to listen too as he has a vast knowledge of the topics.
references slideshow
Brian Higgins: http://donegalnews.com/2016/02/timely-move-by-suicide-and-self-harm-charity/
Paul Berney: https://www.fipp.com/news/features/media-and-marketing-connected-world
Ian Campbell: http://www.havasmedia.ie/what-we-do/ppc-agency/
Aideen Burke: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aideen-burke-345b19105/
Cillian Ó Feinneadha Markey 