The first ever Sweden Search Summit was launched in Stockholm this morning (Thursday 14 November), in partnership between Microsoft Advertising and IAB Sweden. The event drew large crowds from across the Swedish search advertising industry, all of whom came to learn from international search experts about how they can grow their local search market. Tailored to those who work on search marketing campaigns on a daily basis, the summit kicked off with a special introduction from IAB Sweden’s CEO, Charlotte Thür, and with hosting duties from Microsoft Search Advertising’s Adrian Cutler (Director, Global Agency).
Here are the four main messages we got from the search experts, including Stefan Bardega (President EMEA, iProspect), Jason Miller (Head of Brand Marketing, Microsoft Advertising), Arianne Donoghue (Associate Director of Digital Strategy, Edit UK) and MJ DePalma (Head of Multicultural & Inclusive Marketing, Microsoft).
Search will become more visual
Stefan Bardega shared findings from iProspect which predicted that search would become much more visual in the near future. “We live in a visual world. 90% of all information sent to our brains is visual. Our brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text. If you think about it, it does seem odd that when we’re trying to discover what something is, or where to buy it, that we look at it, process what it is, type it in and read a text response. It seems obvious that search will become a more visual channel.” Stefan used the example of the new iPhone’s three cameras to point out how such changes are helping to massively drive the visual search space. “It’s transforming a phone from text input into an increasingly visual recognition machine. The end result will be a radical new dimension for the search experience which seamlessly connects images of the real world to associated digital information. The camera becomes the input for a visual query, whether it’s furniture, clothing, books, albums, flowers or pets.”
Search and creativity go hand-in-hand
“We reveal things to search engines that we don’t reveal to our friends–there has to be room for creativity there,” stated Jason Miller, recalling how he was once told that search is the most genuine expression of people’s thoughts that we can ever find. “We have a weird intimate personal moment with search. There has to be room for creativity here, but where is the intersection? As things become more automated and machines start to take on these more mundane tasks, there is one cognitive ability that we all have that we can enhance. That’s the ability to be creative. And creativity is growing in importance.” Jason warned all those in attendance that “Any sort of edge you think you might have over knowledge recall or general industry-specific knowledge–it’s becoming less important because the machines can pull it up in an instant. Creativity is the highest form of intelligence because it goes beyond knowledge recall and extends into knowledge creation.
Remember the human behind the message
Arianne Donoghue discussed the fact that, while ads today are becoming increasingly more personalised, they’re also becoming impersonal at the same time. And that’s because we’ve forgotten about the human behind the message. “We’ve become so reliable on data in this industry now that we have an entire ecosystem that doesn’t function without data in advertising. In English we have a saying, ‘when you have a hammer, every problem is a nail’. We’re now in a situation where we have ‘data hammers’ as marketers. We tackle every problem with our data hammer, whether or not it’s the right solution. Ads are becoming increasingly more personalised but impersonal at the same time. Our colleagues who work in traditional marketing, or offline, or brands, they have to think about this all the time. In digital marketing, you’ve never really had that kind of training–so we have to ask ourselves, how do we get back to thinking about the human that’s behind the message?”
Inclusivity benefits everyone
MJ DePalma stated that we’ve barely scratched the surface of what diversity can do for us as marketers and business strategists. “Proximity drives empathy and empathy gives you insight. The most important insight is how somebody is excluded from a service or experience. When you can figure that out, you can innovate.” MJ pointed out that, when thinking about who marketers are reaching out to, it helps to think about who they may also be accidentally excluding. “70% of disability is invisible, you may not see it, but it’s there. There are seven billion people in the world, 1.2 billion are born with a disability and only one in 10 have access to products and services they need.” Additionally, Millennials and Gen Zs are more concerned about brand values than ever before. “70% will choose one brand over another if it demonstrates diversity in its promotions and 91% Millennials say they’d switch to a brand that is associated with a good cause.