It’s all too easy to get caught up in so much ‘doing’ that we have no time to think. Stuck on the hamster wheel of work, we’re unable to carve out time to form new ideas.
That’s where The Marketing Society’s Digital Day comes to the rescue. As CEO Sophie Devonshire⚡️ made clear in her very warm welcome, last Thursday in Glasgow was a chance to pause, giving us time to think in a world that feels particularly relentless right now.
Throughout the day, Sophie made sure that we connected with the other humans around us. Given that we all probably see a mention of AI before we’ve even finished our morning cuppa, it was heartening to remember that humanity is still at the heart of what we do.
The day kicked off with a rousing talk from TikTok’s Dave Morrissey outlining the opportunity TikTok Shop offers for brands – not before some quick-fire questions, with chocolate being expertly hurled at the winners!
When it comes to TikTok, the proof of its place in our lives is right there in our screen time – an average of 90 mins per day. That’s the equivalent of the length of a feature film every day to get your brand shown to users. Not only are traditional retailers and even supermarkets getting in on the action, but there’s now a move towards designing products specifically for TikTok. With the entertainment-first platform chomping through content, Dave also walked us through the built-in AI-driven creative that can significantly reduce the cost and time of producing the c. 40 assets required per month in order to scale.
We moved straight into a conversation between Sophie Devonshire and Naomi Walkland , the CMO of Motorway. Naomi has quickly built a culture within her team that fosters a psychologically safe environment to allow her team to ‘fail fast and learn fast’ – a way of working that is crucial to allow creative ideas and innovation to flourish, but one that is often stymied by budget constraints and workload.
Naomi also offered a fascinating insight into how Motorway leverages automation – using a weather API to remind customers to take photos of their car when the weather is nice? Genius!
It might seem that moving from Bumble to a low-frequency, low-interest brand like Motorway wouldn’t offer much audience crossover, but Naomi pointed out that both are ultimately about connecting two parties, and there is a real humanity behind that.
We joined Emily Ashby and Emma Hillary from Verity RI in conversation with Stu Lunn from Kinesso/IPG for ‘The Ugly Truth About Digital Transformation’ – with only 35% of digital transformation efforts succeeding, it was great to hear how best to achieve this, with most of it coming down to human relationships and conversations – more humanity at the heart of our digital efforts!
We then went our separate ways for an hour with three fantastic breakout sessions to choose from – I opted to join Kelly Ling for some insight into how to find space to breathe in our digital world. With some new grounding techniques under my belt and plans for a Team Charter to support our wellness, it was a great chance to reflect on our habits and the elements of our busy days that we do have within our own control.
It was back to the auditorium to join Ailsa Graham , Andy Sneddon and Anneli Ritari-Stewart for a panel on AI, Compliance, and Creativity: The New Rules of Marketing in Regulated Industries. It was interesting to see how Anneli balances being a self-proclaimed AI evangelist (her team have dubbed her ‘AI Anneli’) with working in such a heavily regulated industry. With no ‘rulebook’ available for AI (and no experts to lean on), it was clear that brands should immediately look to lock in a clear set of guidelines and ethics for AI use within the business – a living, breathing document that is reshaped and reviewed constantly in light of the unprecedented rate of change in the space.
With customer trust being of the utmost importance for these businesses, the stakes are high, and it is crucial that credibility isn’t left by the wayside as we strive to make the most of the technology at our fingertips. As Ailsa said of TikTok Shop – you might purchase a lipstick, but would you buy your life insurance? Maybe in the not-too-distant future, if we are able to navigate our way safely through these choppy waters!
It was soon time for us to learn ‘How to build your brand at the speed of social’ with Mobbie Nazir and Toby Southgate from We Are Social. Their message was clear – ‘brands are won and lost on socials’. Although it’s dropped since 2023, we are still spending 70 hours a month on socials, across an average of 6.8 platforms. Sixty-seven percent of the world’s population are on socials – if it was still in doubt, we know that this is no longer just a ‘nice to have’.
The duo had three big lessons for us, which mapped neatly onto our learnings from the day so far: ‘Entertain or Die’, ‘Adopt a chronically online mindset’, and focus on ‘fan service as standard’.
We’re not just competing with other brands for attention – we’re competing with every single user’s content. A viral trend will be over quicker than ever – a mere 2–4 days. So how do brands make the most of trending topics, memes and viral moments – and more importantly, should they? How does one of the regulated businesses we spoke about previously adopt the lingo of its customers without losing trust?
The biggest takeaway? Whatever we are doing, we need to be adding to online culture, not just taking. That means producing content that people want to see (up to forty assets a month, remember!).
Finally, we need to take advantage of the power of fan armies and find our own deep niches in the corners of the web. We design campaigns, but our fans make them a success – it will be a long time before Brat Summer stops being mentioned in marketing spaces, and for good reason. It was a masterclass in speaking your fans’ language, adding to their culture, and taking advantage of the ‘built-in hype machine’ fandoms provide. There are pockets of fans for every single brand and service – we just need to be seeking them out and giving them the respect they are due.
Barry Fearn was joined by three Future Leaders (Elektra Vais, Ashleigh Chalmers , and Samuel Porter ) for a live podcast recording covering the learnings from the day so far. As a fellow Future Leader, it was great to hear their takeaways from the other breakout sessions.
I’m sure we all saw the fabulous Daisy on our feeds a while back – an AI granny whose mission in life is to stop scammers in their tracks with a chat about her scones. Ben Hopkins and Morten Legarth from faith – VCCP base everything they do on a motto – ‘AI is nothing without creativity’. As someone who sits on the ‘slightly scared of it all’ side of the AI scale, it was refreshing to hear that this AI-first organisation is focused on ways to responsibly use this tech to accelerate their creativity. And what better way to showcase how AI can be used for human good than by using it to stop scammers from harming some of society’s most vulnerable? It’s clear from the conversations across the day that trust and confidence in brands can be diminished just as easily as bolstered by these new tools, and with debates around IP showing no sign of abating, it’s definitely going to be a hot topic for many Digital Days to come!
We rounded off the day with an exhilarating talk on Innovation, AI and strategy in F1 from Ruth Buscombe . As a huge motorsports fan, it was my turn to show my fandom credentials as we learned about the ways in which AI has helped to transform one of the fastest-growing sports in the world – with a jaw-dropping 30–50 MB of data being lifted from each car every second, and around 1 million data points, the effect AI has had on using this data to improve racing is nothing short of transformational.
