In 2019, a question popped up again and again, “Your event sounds great but I’m unable to attend, can I tune in and watch live, or a replay?”. The team and I began working on a plan that meant we could deliver this in a way that could both engage and educate our community. Our aim was to have a CMA Learning platform live by June 2020, then Covid-19 hit the world, meaning we had to adapt and accelerate our plan. We’re now at the end of May, and already delivered over 100 webinars, with over 2,000 unique registrants. It’s been a superb effort, and I’d like to thank our amazing speakers who stepped forward, and also those that have joined as spectators. Just like our usual CMA events, there’s been great discussion, strong insights, as well as the usual friendly chat.
We’re not done yet…
With more webinars scheduled throughout June, we’ll be continuing to run the CMA Learning platform, and will continuously add to the schedule. As always, if you have a suggestion for a topic, or would like to present a CMA Learning webinar, then please get in touch, we’d love to hear from you.
CMA Learning Webinar: Week Three
How to overcome imposter syndrome and unlock your creativity
Mat O’Brien, Senior Creative Director, SevenC3
I’m sure this isn’t the first time you’ve seen Mat’s name pop-up when looking at our CMA webinars, and after running some great sessions on how to stay creative during lockdown. Mat’s latest session looked at imposter syndrome, what it is, why we have it, and more importantly how to deal with it.
Mat says, “If you feel like you’re getting a fresh dose of imposter syndrome, there’s a good chance you’re progressing and testing yourself”. We should look at ways of celebrating this rather than fearing it. Mat then shared a quote from David Lynch, “Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper. Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They’re huge and abstract, and also very beautiful.”
Mat was asked questions on brainstorms, and what he thought of them. Lots of people have a negative view on them, but by changing the approach and removing the ‘we need an award winning idea to come from this meeting, and only this meeting’ is a good way to start. Think of brainstorms as a starting point, then go away and think about it in the car, the shower, or the supermarket. Good ideas can come at any moment, and shouldn’t feel forced or come from a place of pressure.
If you’re freelance, and don’t have a team of people to brainstorm with, then I suggest getting feedback from, well, pretty much anyone. In most cases, just being able to speak with someone and run an idea by them will be all the help you need. As we all know, there’s no such thing as a bad idea … apart from the time I tried to make a berry-spritzer using lemonade and berries in my food processor, that was actually a terrible idea!
You can watch the replay of Mat’s webinar here
Growing Creative with Data
Tim Bax, Creative Director, Three Whiskey
During this session, Tim looked back at the history of marketing, and gave some great insights and examples. One of the things that came out of this session was how the playing field is levelling for everyone. Of course the large multinational companies still have the budget, but we’re now able to access data and insight like never before.
Tim stated that Facebook apparently has over 52,000 data points which help shape their delivery. Love it or hate it, the internet is collecting data from every single second of the day, and as a marketer in 2020, we’re able to use the like never before. Whether you’re a sole trader in Oxford, or run a fish and chip shop in Brighton, you’ll be able to gather insight into your local market and potential audience like never before.
You can watch the replay of Tim’s webinar here
Accessible Content 101
Amy Wheaton, Director of Marketing, VERB Interactive
In this session, Amy looked at accessibility for online content, and why it’s important for us to follow these steps. Can the content be easily searched, consumed, and understood. Once we’ve ticked these boxes, we’re then able to move on and see if this strong piece of content encourages interaction.
We’re all familiar with ALT tags, fonts that are easy to read, and video captions. Whilst these are all useful, we also need to continuously adapt when creating content, and with more of us now consuming content whilst second-screening, we need to think about how we can make our content knowing that our audience may not be totally 100% engaged.
Amy then ran us through the POUR principle; Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust. We can really improve the content we create by using this principle. When creating content, ask yourself if it can be seen or heard clearly, is the functionality intuitive, is it easy to understand, and can it be accessed by a number of devices i.e phone, web, or tablet?
