Now You Know, Now We Know

It’s nice to spend some time out of the office to learn something new.

And what better way than to attend a conference filled with some of the brightest minds in the social intelligence community.

Brandwatch’s Annual NYK (Now You Know) conference gets bigger every year. It now spans five countries, bringing together other Brandwatch users to share stories, use cases and plans for the future.

If you suffered from FOMO on the day and missed out on all the key insights from the London 2018 event, don't fear! Social Media and Digital Marketing Trainer Sarah Kerrigan and I have highlighted them here.

Lots of lovely product updates

It wouldn’t be an NYK without the release of some product updates. You could feel the excitement in the room as each product was announced. Here’s a quick run-down of the products launched by the team:

• Conversations - a feature in its Audience product
• Iris - your very own Brandwatch assistant
• Partnership with LexisNexis and Mumsnet
• and my personal favourite, the topic wheel

We can look forward to more external datasets being added to give a new depth for intelligent analysis - including survey and panel data in 2019.

The best from the keynotes

We’ve all come across ads that are ill-judged, be it bad creative, messaging or the wrong targeting. As we, the advertisers, strive to make our ads more personal, when does it step over the line into creepy? Web psychologist Nathalie Nahai weighs up the arguments for personalisation and privacy. Many of us like the convenience of personalisation but want to have more control over our data. Lack of trust from consumers to brands is an impediment to success, so in order for our personalised advertising to be a success, we need to put the consumer in control. Behavioural advertising can increase conversions, you just need to have the right balance of ethical and creative.

Andrzej Moyseowicz from Freemavens wanted to get the crowd collaborating creatively. He’s keen that we bring the human element back into a world filling up with the latest technology. What types of people do you need to have when making a decision? Each person plays an important part in ensuring that the best ideas are generated. What part do you play in the decision-making process?

Brandwatch’s own data guru Paul Siegel shared this wonderful cartoon depicting the online conversations we have with friends, colleagues and clients. How do you know what channel is the most appropriate to contact someone on, and where it the etiquette?

TED Speaker Joshua Klein started and ended his talk with the same phrase. ‘The only control you have is over the culture you sustain and the values that you cultivate.’ His talk around ethics and technology revealed how brands are using RFID technology and app behaviour to analyse our lives. Technology and its intelligence isn’t amoral, it's especially moral. Here’s a link to Joshua’s TED talk on the intelligence of crows.

The best of the breakout sessions

We sat in for two of the workshops in the afternoon - both sessions were in a similar training style to our own training sessions. Did you know the upside-down face emoji is the emoji most commonly used with sarcasm?

Social Optimiser Lead at Sage, Chris Thomas, spoke about Sage’s social stack and how key it has been to build a consolidation of social technology that feeds into their core marketing platforms. He mentioned Sage’s use of Salesforce, Hootsuite, LinkedIn, Click, Brandwatch, Buzzsumo and GlobalWebIndex. The key feature of tech for Chris is integration capabilities. This is so key as it’s vital to be able to move social data out of silos to see how it impacts brand, demand and revenue and to get a single view of the customer.

Head of Social Analytics at The BBC, Tara Clark, shared entertaining insights around how the BBC using social listening to gauge sentiment around announcements and TV Shows. She shared an example of using this sentiment to adjust and adapt their communications so they align with the emotions of the audience. For example, adopting more of a sympathetic tone instead of defensive with the announcement of the The Great British Bake Off’s move to Channel 4 when they understood people were reacting the way they were because they were so upset.

Are you looking to get out of the office and learn something new? Book yourself onto one of our training courses at the Shard or in Manchester.

When can we book our tickets for next year?