The Crea Digital Day took place yesterday at the Fondation des Entreprises de Suisse Romande in Geneva (Switzerland.) Co-organized and brought to digital professionals for free by Crea school, eMakina and Bilan magazine, this one-day conference featured speakers from Instagram, Tesla, The Audience and Terre des Hommes. If a few speeches turned out having very little to bring to the conversation about digital, or even one or two being plain advertising for a product or a service, we had the chance to attend a few passionating sessions, with charismatic speakers.

My personal top moment was The Audience‘s Mark Adams session, about community management for celebrities. Even if none of the conferences were precisely UX, they all gave a different point of view on trends and new ideas. Inspiring. As Instagram’s Tracy Yaverbaum highlighted: « it’s about capturing and sharing world’s moment », please allow me to try and share with you my favourite moments at the Crea Digital Day 2015 #cdd2015.

Brands have to participate in the popular culture: stop forcing it and start giving

If there is one thing I’ll remember from this event, it’s that: « The biggest mistake with social media is trying to push marketing down its throat. Social media is the documentation of popular culture. A brand has to participate in the conversations in a a way that makes a contribution. » (Mark Adams, The Audience) As on Instagram, brands contents have to be of high quality, authentic and transportative: users expect a real point of view, have to « feel the story behind the picture » (Tracy Yaverbaum, Instagram.)

Instagram seems very careful about not polluting the content with too much marketing: the ads are only showed to users getting more than 25 contents per day, and the same ad is never displayed to a same user twice in a day. According to Mark Adams, marketing excess is why people have abandoned My Space: « It became so pollued that people left! » As said differently by Toto Ellis at Droga5, brands’ content has to feel like a piece of culture, and should meet a « cultural resonance. »

Presently in the UK, 89% ads are forgotten; 7% is remembered negatively, and only 4% is remembered positively…

In conclusion, brands should stop being self-focused, and start thinking about how to meet people on the conversations they really care about. Which is easier to do when you listen to what they say on the social networks. According to Toto Ellis, a brand should express a purpose: a promise highlighting what each person will get from it, do more than say, and be generous. I share one of the videos highlighted by Droga 5 during the conference: how to make an ad… about not making one!

Word of the day: Growth Hacking

Did you know Instagram was luanched at the same time as the iPhone 4? All of the sudden, people had a device to capture high quality images of world’s moments, and an interface to share them. « Most of the time, you launch your startup with a great idea, you put a lot of work in it. And when you finally release your project… nothing happens » (Cédric Rainotte, 6six*be). That’s when you need Growth Hackers. In-between Data analysts, marketers and developers, they can help you grow at each step of your conversion: acquisition, activation, retention and revenue. A new career opportunity?

Always connected, and mobile-first

Instagram is a mobile-first application, and aims to stay that way: « Mobile is where people are. Even when you sleep, your phone’s on arm’s reach » (Instagram.) What if the Web 3.0 was all about mobility, bringing digital to even our more common objects? Mickael Totta, eMakina, identified 3 trends:

Internet of things, virtual and augmented reality and multi-touch controllers.

And how about OnAir, bringing an Internet connection to users even in places, during their flight? For sure, 2015 will be more connected than ever, with the digital taking a bigger and bigger place in our everyday lives both as individuals and as a community. Did you know most of the people who interact on Instagram have never seen each other? A more digitally connected time is to come, in which brands have their place too, at the condition that they genuinely take part in the conversation instead of trying to take the most of it.