By Amy Kean, head of the IAB social media council. .
Last week, I was lucky enough to be a part of a fantastic IAB event, entitled ‘Is Digital the Future of Brand-Building? ‘ With one of the best line-ups I think I’ve seen at one of these shindigs, we had Bird’s Eye, Diesel, the Mail Online, O2, the University of Bournemouth and our event partners, Skive, all proclaiming their undying love for online and mobile.
At the IAB we refuse to believe that digital will ever actually replace other media as the ‘ultimate brand-builder’ - it has its strengths and weaknesses like any other channel, but the overwhelming conclusion was that hype aside, the medium will definitely sit at the heart of brand communications. And in reality, this is something about which marketers have little choice.
But what about social? The future of social media is a slightly less straightforward debate – arguably it’s so young, and evolving at such a pace, that it’s hard to predict what consumers (and brands) will be responding to in 6 months, let alone 2, 5 or even 10 years.
Skive’s provided a fascinating and valid perspective on this at our event last week: will we even need to refer to ’social media’ in the future? (It’s already being described as an unhelpful term…) In fact, it’s likely that most marketing will, in time, become inherently social, and we can stop talking about the discipline like it’s a separate, magical, dark and mysterious art that only a precious few practitioners can understand…
The below is Tom’s fantastic set of slides, with some great, unique examples – well worth a look.
