Inspiration: The Digital Day England 2024 | Review

Our The Digital Day England 2024, Coffeehouse takeover host Sarah Dear from Social Element shares her key takeaways from the event.

As AI developments rapidly become the new norm, human prosperity remains at the heart of every story.

Although our communication and connectedness is undoubtedly enhanced through the convenience of technology, nothing quite beats being in the room where it happens. Which is why it’s such a buzz to enjoy the advantages of mixing with industry thought-leaders, networking with our peers face-to-face, and feeling energised by Sophie Devonshire’s inventive icebreakers. 

And who knew that a Digital Day primarily focussed on AI would leave us feeling more human?

When Michael Sani,Play Verto, kicks off with a quote reminding us that, “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation”, you know you’re in for a fun day. The power of gamification in unlocking authentic participation with communities speaks for itself,  by far exceeding industry standards with 80% survey completion rates and engaging users aged 7 to 83! Let’s keep learning more about each other through play.

Sara Holt, Merlin Entertainments interviewed by Nishma Robb took us for a ride through listening to your audience and Internet subcultures to create relevant viral marketing wins. AI is indeed a great service for advertising, assets, and production at scale, but let’s not forget the importance of craft. Only the nuance of human absurdity could have come up with Pedro the dancing raccoon (trust me, look it up on TikTok).

Rupen Shah, Thinkbox showed us there's increasingly smart marketing opportunities through Advanced TV from geo-tagging to customer data matching, using our connectedness to help enhance business growth. But it all hinges on how our viewing habits continue to change and develop. Always tap into the power of human behaviour!

Which is echoed by Danny Blackburn, KINESSO UK&I, who told us that  "search is not a channel, it’s a behaviour." The future of search will be where AI precision meets audience behaviour and will provide a golden opportunity for brands to convert someone through a moment of intent.

We revved through Ford’s digital marketing transformation, with Jen Meyers,  Ford Europe, who was challenged with modernising a heritage brand and making it digital first. Remember to act natively in social spaces, bring in new thinkers, and keep the CFO happy with metrics that matter.

As talk titles go, ‘Don’t Be A Mannequin’ by David Norris, Snap Inc, already had me hooked! By looking at Gen Z shopping behaviours it’s no surprise to hear that their attention is captured through emotional connections, influence, and the “power of friendship in decision making”.

And if you’re wanting to create hyper-personalised content at scale, Helen Wallace, Adobe Creative Cloud and Jamie Brighton, Adobe EMEA, showed us how to harness the power of AI through integrated workflows, on-brand scalable content creation, safe AI image generation, and intent based experiences. A real game changer in getting our departments working together in harmony.

We were highly influenced by Caspar Lee and Olly Gosling at Influencer, who showed us just how far influencer marketing has come and how a mix of creative impact, authenticity, and AI content creation at scale is the future.

But let’s not race ahead with AI developments without being ethical. Hannah Hattie Matthews, Uncharted, emphasised the importance of DEI when designing inclusive AI for diverse audiences which includes correcting biases and using inclusive language.

With 25 years in the AI game, Daniel Hulme, Satalia has identified six main applications of AI that can address frictions across any supply chain including task automation, content generation, and complex decision making. Ultimately defining AI’s purpose as “goal-directed adaptive behaviour”.

We continued our AI exploration with Ian Chapman-Banks, SQREEM Technologies, Elizabeth Blacklock,  JLR, and Mark Thompson, Saracens Group discussing how AI can fill the marketing gap, with Sqreem’s ability to create a whopping 2.6 billion consumer avatars and predict behaviour.

Alasdair Lloyd-Jones, Codec AI, and Ana Isabel De La Guardia, Diageo showed us how Cultural AI is the Superpower with Codec AI helping culturally relevant brands grow 6x faster!

Sophie Neary, Google asked us ‘Are You Ready For it?’, covering AI’s impact on the future of search which will help retailers accelerate sales, reach audiences at scale, and identify trends. Plus we got to view Google’s ‘future of search’ video, with their search behaviour productions always getting us in the feels.

It was a truly uplifting end to the day thanks to Jeremy Connell-Waite, IBM Consulting, sharing a very personal story about how AI helped save his twin daughters’ lives. A side of AI that we don’t see very often, but a signifier that technological breakthroughs can bring us even closer to being human.