This week I attended two days of events hosted by You Are The Media, featuring visiting marketing author from the US, Mark Schaefer Mark has written nine books and is currently working on his tenth, which we were given an extensive preview of during each of his talks.
But this wasn’t just a guest lecture. This was more of a festival, billed as ‘Schaef By The Seaside’, or as I heavily campaigned for ‘Schaeftember’.
Instead of the usual weekly article, today’s edition is more of a journal entry, recapping a memorable occasion spent with many friends from the YATM community and LinkedIn in general, including more than few who receive this newsletter each week (HELLO!).
Tuesday morning: The NICI Hotel, Bournemouth
As a last minute prelude to the week’s adventures I registered to attend Dorset Growth Hub‘s Web 3.0 breakfast event. This wasn’t part of the official Schaeftember programme, although the subject matter of Web 3.0 did have some crossover with what Mark is exploring currently as part of his RISE coin and community (more on that in a bit).
The event was based around a panel discussion on the topic featuring YATM regulars Steen Stones and Josh Williams, as well as Kim Range, who it was lovely to meet and she eventually forgave me for not bringing her a can of the same NFT beer I bought for Steen and Josh. The session was expertly hosted by another YATM stalwart Rich Burn (I think I’ve made my case for including it?).
It’s also important to the rest of the story because it saw the first of four POAPs created Steen for this week of events.
“Wait, what’s a POAP?”
POAP stands for ‘Proof of Attendance Protocol’. Steen created QR codes for each table place which could be scanned to claim the POAP file. Although this was set up as a demonstration, the same technology could be used to display your attendance at other events such as gigs or shows. Think of it like a digital ticket stub.
After the success of my Schaeftember pun I tried my luck with another by suggesting these be known as ‘POAPémon cards’. It’s not proven quite as popular so far.
To learn more about POAP check out the latest edition of Steen’s newsletter.
Wednesday evening: Talbot Campus, Bournemouth University
The last time I was on a Bournemouth University campus was in the final days before the first lockdown in March 2020. Through my years as a student, member of staff and part time lecturer this has been the longest time I’ve not stepped foot on BU soil since early 2007.
It was great to be back but I didn’t have a lot of time to reflect on this before being greeted by old friends and new at the centre of the Fusion Building, where the first (official) Schaeftember session was taking place.
After a presentation celebrating this year’s intake of Bournemouth and Poole College students for Mark Masters’ YATM Creator Lab, our headline act, Mark Schaefer took to the stage. I missed The Schaef when he spoke in Bournemouth previously so this was my first time getting to see a talk from him in full.
There’s a small irony that I was a few feet away from lectures I sat in while studying for my degree in Advertising and Marketing Communications and feeling alienated by the prospect of working in a overtly corporate industry, even one that was creative leaning.
To hear Mark talk about the very imminent prospect of a post-advertising, post-SEO world and his belief that “the most human wins” was a cathartic sort of resolution to the feeling that something didn’t quite sit right in a sector that veered toward automation and algorithm based decision making.
Mark paints a picture of a profession that feels more familiar with the corner I’ve managed to carve out for myself in the past decade or so of my working life, and more akin to the punk rock spirit I grew up with.
Wow, that was pretty deep. I need a beer.
Wednesday night: Urban Garden, Bournemouth
Fortunately there was decent beer to be had (three taps of Barefaced Brewing to be exact) at the Secret Cocktail Party for members of Mark Schaefer’s RISE community.
Now I’ll admit to not having delved that far into what Mark is developing with RISE, but I do own some of the RISE crypto currency, which I believe grants me membership. I’ll also admit that this is the first and only crypto currency I’ve ever owned and certainly the first time I’ve ever registered to attend an event with that form of payment (one more admission, it was a bit of a faff, these new technologies all still seem very primitive).
I mentioned to Jason Miller in passing that I liked his story about The Clash that he told during a recent YATM online event (I won’t spoil it here), this spiralled into an expansive conversation about all things music, with some interesting coincidences, such as Jason working on the same Imogen Heap album in the US that we released on vinyl via Saint November Records 8 years later. It’s a small world after all..
From Urban Garden, the remaining few head a couple of doors up to Brewdog for one or two more. It was a fun evening all in all, even with the distinct lack of karaoke, much to the disappointment of Dionne Buckingham-Brown and I, who were hoping for an Earth, Wind and Fire style rendition of Schaeftember (to the tune of September, ofc). Maybe next time.
Thursday afternoon: Hotel du Vin, Poole
Fighting back the fatigue from a late night, I made it to the Hotel du Vin (formerly The Mansion House) in Poole. Either I was still half asleep or acting on autopilot because I took my water bottle into the venue with me and immediately felt out of sorts.
This inspired the above photo, taken by the wonderful Frank Prendergast who it was great to meet for the first time at these events, along with his partner Marci Cornett. Frank had joked on a recent YATM Good Bad that the ‘bad’ people were sharing from their week weren’t all that bad at all. Lumbering myself with a tatty water bottle in a fancy restaurant fell firmly in that camp. In the background of the photo you can see the hotel’s wine cellar. Ooo-errr!
The second of Mark Schaefer’s talks was accompanied by a three course lunch. The antipasto starter didn’t do much for me, but the sausage and bean cassoulet main was a hearty dish and gave me life as I began to flag on my third day of being out and about in the real world. The HDV had let me to believe on their menu that there was a vegan crème brûlée to be experienced, which seemed a wild prospect. It was too good to be true though and I had a salted chocolate tart for dessert instead.
Back to business, Mark shared more from his upcoming book Belonging to the Brand and debated the results of a poll (with special guest Eric Fulwiler), taken across the group of attendees on where they would rank the importance of various aspects of marketing for the next two years. I thought I’d gone rogue placing ‘customer experience’ in first place, well above trends such as AI. It seemed most had similar thoughts though as it took the top spot in our collated chart.
Of course, some of the options presented to us either feed into or service one another and this crossover was acknowledged. Perhaps AI will prove itself to enhance the customer experience. For my money (or limited crypto currency balance), one of the most pertinent pieces of advice offered by Mark in terms of ensuring we acknowledge the importance of the customer experience was this..
“If you haven’t carried out any customer research for a while, particularly since before the pandemic, now would be a really good time.”
It would be easy to only focus on the new technologies available to us right now and lose our focus experimenting with those. The real answers to the business issues we’re faced with are probably in good old fashioned qualitative research. Mark revealed that all of his books are informed by this.
Thank you to The Two Markies for a fantastic couple of days of thinking, talking, eating, drinking, socialising and celebrating.
Liam Toms 