Presentation for OMD's Think Fresh Festival

Social Media: The Future is Now

View more presentations from Kate Kendall.

Last week I gave a presentation at OMD's Think Fresh Festival 2009 on social media with the designated theme of 'The Future is Now'. I find it always hard to pitch a social media talk at the right level due to the drastic variations in knowledge of marketers at the moment, so I hope I got close to catering to the majority of the audience. I would appreciate any comments any of you have on the slides – especially areas for improvement. I thought I would share them now, as like anything in this space, they will be out of date by next month. Oh, and to give you an idea of timing, the presentation's duration was around the 20-minute mark. Thanks. :-)

Consumer Psychology in a Recession - Harvard Business

This video is worth the watch. It highlights how marketers can segment and market to their consumers in the economic downturn. The interview is with John Quelch. Check out his blog here.

One of the really interesting points (around the 10-minute mark) from Quelch was that during a recession consumers may train themselves into new behaviours that might not be reversed when the good times roll back in. For instance, if someone had a broken washing machine, instead of going out and buying a new one right away, they would call a repairer and try and another couple of years out of it. If this turns out to be the general case, the recession could actually curb the consumerist nature of society.

The exchange is now the bonus

I had to come up with some quick sentiments yesterday at a marketing breakfast here in Melbourne. After hearing the first three speakers (financial services, FMCG and info/search backgrounds), talk about value, value and value, it became increasingly clear to me that marketing is no longer about an exchange in value, rather, it's about providing value. We obviously would like it to be the former, but to remain competitive in this age of transparency, dialogue and choice we need to constantly think about giving our users, our consumers, value in all aspects of our offering. I think the web is a great indication of this, with many solely web-based companies naturalising into global giants completely through caring about the user and adding value to their experience. The bottom line for them is their users, as this is where the power lies. If an exchange takes place, perfect - it is now the bonus. If not, a timely awakening might be on the cards.

This progression in marketing has shifted to an almost political-like model - we have leaders, but really these are nothing without the people. They are followers to their people - dictated to on a daily basis. The power has shifted. This is democracy in its purest form. People are being collectively given what they want, and if not they'll move onto someone else who will. The same goes for brands.

The only products or services where this is redundant are luxury brands, since they have always done the dictating. People want to be told what to want. On the downside, with disposable incomes on the decline, it will interesting to see if this will be the case in a couple of years.

Thoughts?