The CEO of award-winning social agency Social Chain is something of a unique persona.
Cutting an impressive figure on stage, the 24-year-old sports a rakish hat and a pretty social-savvy attitude; it’s not hard to see how a company led by Steve Bartlett can make nearly anything go viral in a short space of time.
Social Chain has grown from its inception in Manchester with just a handful of staff, to doubling its office size with the launch of New York base this year. So it’s no surprise that Bartlett was speaking at the recent Digital Marketing World Forum (DMWF) in the Big Apple this week.
His talk, Deeper than Engagement centered on how to make people ‘feel’ something as a driving force for engagement. MarketingTech spoke to Bartlett about the company and plans for the future, as well as what social channels are the hottest for the upcoming year.
What’s new for Social Chain?
According to Bartlett “Everything, in typical Social Chain fashion, everything has been multiplied by ten this year and every element of the business has gone through significant change.”
The agency has started to develop its own products, build new media companies, double its offices and launch a New York base. If that wasn’t enough, there’s plenty of new announcements to make over the next year, Bartlett added.
It would seem social media is a marketing ‘fad’ that’s definitely here to stay – and is showing results for some big brands working with Social Chain, including Apple and P&G.
What’s ahead in the social space for 2017?
Social communities are being lauded by Social Chain as a big area for brands. Indeed, it works with viral communities such as Sporf, Student Problems and Love Food – which all get masses of engagement on channels such as Instagram and Facebook.
“Understanding these massive communities and being able to gauge what people online are talking about is absolutely essential and invaluable to brands,” Bartlett tells MarketingTech.
I actually saw a man on the train using a VR headset on the way down to London a few weeks back
Social content creators are in themselves also a big area marketers need to pay attention to in 2016, he added.
“They have the ability to produce content and with this comes an ability to have a real impact on people’s lives. This will take social media deeper than just engagement and it’s a really exciting prospect.”
Of course – as we have all heard by now – virtual reality is also going to be a very hot topic for marketers and those involved in social media in 2017.
And it would be wise to listen to Bartlett, who after all has his finger on the pulse as to what the younger generation are talking about. “I think Mark Zuckerberg really set the agenda when it comes to VR in February at Samsung’s Galaxy S7 event when he announced that Facebook was investing in VR in a big way and was partnering with Occulus Rift.
“I actually saw a man on the train using a VR headset on the way down to London a few weeks back, so the VR craze has already begun, in 2017 we will really see it build momentum though,” he tells MarketingTech.
Any final advice for marketers?
The lifeblood for many marketers working on campaigns and projects may sometimes be their various strategies.
But perhaps that’s where some have been going wrong when they’re trying to get brands noticed online – as Bartlett explains “the single most important thing when they’re trying to get noticed online isn’t a strategy”.
“The understanding is that your potential customer’s default position is that they do not care about you as much as you care about you. So your job is to desperately fight for their attention and then once you have it, convince them that you’re valuable enough to solve a problem they probably didn’t know they had,” Bartlett explains.
Wise words indeed; if you assume that you have to fight for consumers’ already very vied-for attention, then your marketing will presumably take a very different – and effecive – tack.
Were you at #DMWF New York? If not, check out the upcoming #DMWF destinations around the world – our next stop is Dubai!
