Posted by Marc Engelsman
Part of the benefit of being a speaker at Digital Summits is I get to listen to other presentations and talk with other attendees to get a more grounded sense of what’s on the minds of digital marketers. Here are a few themes that emerged from my time at Digital Summit Philadelphia this week:
Think “stories” vs. “statistics” – This was first referenced by Jon Youshaei (formerly of Google YouTube and now with InstagramTV) in his opening keynote and was repeated in varying ways throughout the conference. And it wasn’t just about content; the concept was a key focus of Lea Pica’s presentation on how to present data results to executive leadership.
Be decisive and don’t fear the fail – Jim DeLash from GlaxoSmithKline positioned “decision as bets” in the part of this presentation featuring insights from the poker player Annie Duke. Of course, you always want to try to evaluate and minimize the risk in your decisions but you can’t let the risk stop you from making them. Then be sure to evaluate the decision, regardless of the result. Seth Godin echoed this sentiment is his wide-ranging Q&A session when talking about overcoming writer’s block (which he translated to fear of writing something bad) by just getting started (just do it) until you get it right.
Empathy and ethics – Seth Godin also touched on these ideas in a couple of ways during his session. For example, he mentioned needing “practical empathy” to understand what motivates others different from ourselves in order change the way you talk with/about them. He and other presenters also noted the rise in ethical decision-making and the power of doing something for the right reasons vs. the marketing reasons.
As always, I posted these tidbits and others on Twitter and LinkedIn throughout the conference so be sure to follow my future posts when I head to Digital Summit Washington September 4-5 and Digital Summit Boston October 21-22. See you online…
