Feminism comes in many wonderful forms: in all races, all genders, and all walks of life.
This year’s TEDxUCLWomen at The Great Hall in East London was no different: it was filled with a multicultural group of feminist leaders – female and male – and the event was packed with insightful, passionate talks from design innovation strategists, magazine publishers, and textile designers to YouTube vloggers, radical therapists, theatre makers, and museum directors. Hosted by Nicole Crentsil, the independently organised University College of London event, gathered hundreds to talk about the theme of home and what the word means in today’s social and economical landscape. To many of the speakers and attendees home meant different things.
As brands and marketers look at how consumer purchasing might change, as a result of evolving technology in the home, it’s worth looking at how we think about it as a concept and content theme overall. We’ve seen many companies try to predict what the future of the home might look like for us. For example, Unruly created a Home of the Future to help give brands and creative teams a peek at what the home might look in the near and distant future.
At OMD EMEA and especially at Create, OMD’s digital creative and content specialist, we utilise social listening tools to help us tap into the needs and desires of consumers. Home has a different meaning to all women across the world, and as multi-national specialists we take this into consideration to create authentic, compelling content. Our aim is to make speed-of-culture conclusions on what consumers want their lives – and home – to be filled with, whether it’s a product that can help make their lives easier or more enjoyable or tapping into a need that we didn’t know they had. For Disney, we identify what parent consumers want and what they and their children aspire to be. This could include promoting a new kind of confidence and empowerment through characters, to help inspire audiences to believe in the magic of Disney in a new way. We identify themes that authentically resonate through monthly content audits and trend reports that help us find out more about how they consume content – all of which usually happens in and around the home.
This year’s TEDx theme of home helped inspire a lot of notions about this very personal space and its many definitions. The talks covered a wide net of women’s issues and kicked off with Dr. Olesya Myakonkaya, founder of Mars Nation, discussing how a space mission might affect the way we think about and develop future interior and exterior design. For Myakonkaya, it’s not just how the rooms we live in will or should change in functionality and overall aesthetics – whether on earth or on Mars. It’s what home will mean to future generations and what today’s generation will instill in society to help define and redefine the meaning of home – how our innate humanity and what makes humans truly special will continue to permeate everyday life via functional design.
We also heard from social sculptor and anthropologist Shelley Sacks who reflected on how her childhood experiences of apartheid shaped her reality and notions of how people should behave in the home. The class division she saw as a white South African, and which was normalised for her, created certain etiquette and behavioral rules that are archaic today. She works with communities-in-need to help them redefine their local spaces and reflect on the past to build on future projects. As marketers try to tap into today’s post-apartheid generation in the ZA market, it’s important to remember that this group of young people make up a generation that hasn’t experienced apartheid personally. For example, their views on the world are inspired by their past but vary quite differently from their parents’ generation.
Fashion brands also continue to approach product strategies to not only make their offerings stand out but make a genuine positive impact on their consumers and the world. The environment and eco-friendly products are popular. Fashion designer, “textile alchemist,” and founder of The Unseen, Lauren Bowker talked about her experience growing up in her small town home of Reed, experimenting with her town’s history of magic, being connected to nature, and at the same time dreaming of being a fashion designer. She channeled these passions and turned it into amazing reactive tech: fashion inventions including heat and pollution textiles that blend science along with how this tech will help tell us more about the environment around us – our home.
It’s clear from hearing from these various speakers that the role of the home is different to women in each country. For marketers, ensuring that each market is approached authentically – as mentioned prior – can help connect brands with women around the world and provide connections and help them build on their own definition of home in a meaningful way.
Glynnis Mapp is the content director at OMD EMEA’s Create group in London. Follow her @glynnismapp
Feminism comes in many wonderful forms: in all races, all genders, and all walks of life.
This year’s TEDxUCLWomen at The Great Hall in East London was no different: it was filled with a multicultural group of feminist leaders – female and male – and the event was packed with insightful, passionate talks from design innovation strategists, magazine publishers, and textile designers to YouTube vloggers, radical therapists, theatre makers, and museum directors. Hosted by Nicole Crentsil, the independently organised University College of London event, gathered hundreds to talk about the theme of home and what the word means in today’s social and economical landscape. To many of the speakers and attendees home meant different things.
As brands and marketers look at how consumer purchasing might change, as a result of evolving technology in the home, it’s worth looking at how we think about it as a concept and content theme overall. We’ve seen many companies try to predict what the future of the home might look like for us. For example, Unruly created a Home of the Future to help give brands and creative teams a peek at what the home might look in the near and distant future.
At OMD EMEA and especially at Create, OMD’s digital creative and content specialist, we utilise social listening tools to help us tap into the needs and desires of consumers. Home has a different meaning to all women across the world, and as multi-national specialists we take this into consideration to create authentic, compelling content. Our aim is to make speed-of-culture conclusions on what consumers want their lives – and home – to be filled with, whether it’s a product that can help make their lives easier or more enjoyable or tapping into a need that we didn’t know they had. For Disney, we identify what parent consumers want and what they and their children aspire to be. This could include promoting a new kind of confidence and empowerment through characters, to help inspire audiences to believe in the magic of Disney in a new way. We identify themes that authentically resonate through monthly content audits and trend reports that help us find out more about how they consume content – all of which usually happens in and around the home.
This year’s TEDx theme of home helped inspire a lot of notions about this very personal space and its many definitions. The talks covered a wide net of women’s issues and kicked off with Dr. Olesya Myakonkaya, founder of Mars Nation, discussing how a space mission might affect the way we think about and develop future interior and exterior design. For Myakonkaya, it’s not just how the rooms we live in will or should change in functionality and overall aesthetics – whether on earth or on Mars. It’s what home will mean to future generations and what today’s generation will instill in society to help define and redefine the meaning of home – how our innate humanity and what makes humans truly special will continue to permeate everyday life via functional design.
We also heard from social sculptor and anthropologist Shelley Sacks who reflected on how her childhood experiences of apartheid shaped her reality and notions of how people should behave in the home. The class division she saw as a white South African, and which was normalised for her, created certain etiquette and behavioral rules that are archaic today. She works with communities-in-need to help them redefine their local spaces and reflect on the past to build on future projects. As marketers try to tap into today’s post-apartheid generation in the ZA market, it’s important to remember that this group of young people make up a generation that hasn’t experienced apartheid personally. For example, their views on the world are inspired by their past but vary quite differently from their parents’ generation.
Fashion brands also continue to approach product strategies to not only make their offerings stand out but make a genuine positive impact on their consumers and the world. The environment and eco-friendly products are popular. Fashion designer, “textile alchemist,” and founder of The Unseen, Lauren Bowker talked about her experience growing up in her small town home of Reed, experimenting with her town’s history of magic, being connected to nature, and at the same time dreaming of being a fashion designer. She channeled these passions and turned it into amazing reactive tech: fashion inventions including heat and pollution textiles that blend science along with how this tech will help tell us more about the environment around us – our home.
It’s clear from hearing from these various speakers that the role of the home is different to women in each country. For marketers, ensuring that each market is approached authentically – as mentioned prior – can help connect brands with women around the world and provide connections and help them build on their own definition of home in a meaningful way.
Glynnis Mapp is the content director at OMD EMEA’s Create group in London. Follow her @glynnismapp
Hello and welcome to the latest edition of OMD FWD. As Twitter numbers soar, Google spares your blushes by helping you find your parked car, whilst Amazon Echo tells you what it really thinks of your outfit. You can even chew the fat with Albert Einstein on Messenger and once you’re done, learn how to give your brain a much-needed digital detox.
HEADLINES
INSIGHTS
COOL
DEEP READS
If anything piques your interest, please share at #OMDFWD.
Hello and welcome to the latest edition of OMD FWD. As Twitter numbers soar, Google spares your blushes by helping you find your parked car, whilst Amazon Echo tells you what it really thinks of your outfit. You can even chew the fat with Albert Einstein on Messenger and once you’re done, learn how to give your brain a much-needed digital detox.
HEADLINES
INSIGHTS
COOL
DEEP READS
If anything piques your interest, please share at #OMDFWD.
CES 2016 is now in full swing, the parties have kicked off in style and the sheer scale of gadgetry on offer leaves you slack jawed. And, in amongst all this insanity, there are some rather excellent TED-style tech talks on a multitude of topics including the impact of technology on culture, virtual reality and millennials. But the one that really caught my attention was the session on the Internet of Things – the connected consumer, smarter homes & cities. It featured a stellar cast of speakers from a diverse array of disciplines – Spotify, CNET, CBS Interactive and Under Armour etc.
One of the key themes in the OMD Oasis was, as I (now smugly) pointed out in my CES preview, that the term IoT is rapidly becoming obsolete and is being replaced with the Internet of Everything (IoE). I guess now that we have connected bras and pet fitness trackers, what else is left to be digitised?
‘Personalisation’ was a common topic amongst all the speakers and (in my humble opinion) most eloquently portrayed by the PTA acronym which stands for ‘Premature Technology Arousal’. Explanation? The way that consumers (often selfishly) decide how they want technology to work for them beyond its current capabilities. And yet, in a strangely prophetic way, that is precisely what spurs on the developers to improve their products. An example? Spotify talked about how their users want a seamless music experience from waking up in the morning to their chosen playlist and having it synced across their day whether its pumping it at the gym, listening during their working day, during their commute in the car or simply going to bed. Across devices, on demand, no lag. Imagine a personal playlist which follows you wherever you go? Even to the extent that, by working with partners like Uber, your chosen music follows you into the Uber vehicle that you have just taken and plays your tunes on that cars sound system. Cool huh?
Data and privacy were also high up on the agenda with the guys from Under Armour boldly stating that they were actually a “big data company”. They discussed the importance of the “value exchange” with their users. If a consumer gives permission to use their data what is the benefit for them? People are (generally) smart and will inevitably become more comfortable with the use of their data as long as there is a fair trade off for them providing it in the first place.
An example? If you utilise the ‘Map my Run’ app and go on a trail instead of the road then Under Armour will detect the difference and recommend that you invest in a pair of running shoes that are more suited to that terrain (and most likely at a discount for a valued repeat customer). That said, it’s vital to give consumers the choice if they decide that they don’t want their data to be used and have a more generic experience.
And tomorrow? It’s time to finally walk the floor. Stay tuned.