What you missed at the Interactive Marketing Research Conference

“Up to now, the only thing we have in common was reality” Ger Baron, CTO, City of Amsterdam

Last week,  Amsterdam saw the inaugural IMRC conference shine (https://www.marketingedge.org/academics/interactive-marketing-research-conference/program-at-a-glance) Presentations from Google, Heineken and Smart City Amsterdam interacted beautifully with thoughtful keynotes by profs Dina Mayzlin, Venky Shankar and John Deighton. The panel was fun, and the innovative high density session gave us the highest Return on Time Investment (ROTI).

For you, my top dozen insights from the conference:

• Google sees the ‘Age of Assistance’ upon us: curious, demanding and impatient consumers will want assistance with ‘ideas’ (search up 55% since 2015) and finding the ‘best’ (search up 80% on mobile) – Ilona van Wegen
• Brands can prevent firestorms by apologizing, focusing on the positive and taking it offline – Dennis Herhausen and Stephan Ludwig
• Brand communities that are more connected to other brands and industries are more beneficial to the brand – Pankhuri Malhotra
• Across the US, China and the Netherlands, advertising effectiveness of online videos is stronger than social media, which works best way before purchase, and negative synergy occurs when both are viewed at high levels of attention – Yakov Bart
• Ads are skipped MORE by users who searched for a relevant keyword – they click through straight to what they are looking for, baby! – Carlos Flavian
• Amsterdam audits apps and algorithms for inclusivity and truth and helps you to prevent losing your home (which costs society 50K euros per homeless person) – Ger Baron
• Social robots encouraging seniors to exercise are considered less warm and competent than human, but are seen as ‘gentle’ and ‘intelligent’ and ‘feels like a human’ – MartinaČaić
• Social media practices add 10% explanation of consumer engagement and 1% of movie box office sales, with exclusive content driving consumer engagement, and dramatic content driving box office most – Alegra Kaczinski and Thorsten Hennig-Thurau
• Predicting movie preferences after just 5 observations awesome with an attribute-based preferences for 2/3 of consumers, the other third is better served by collaborative filtering – Paul Marx
• Direct mail does not only directly increase sales, it also lifts generic search and clicks – Lisan Lesscher
• Heineken has the HUB model for digital transformation, calculates the ROI for bars and connects directly with its consumer via biertegoed, cheers! – Valerie Heeremans
• Play or be Played: our teachings are from the time where brands were big because they had to be, but when markets are approached with a playful mindset, attention is freely given and almost free – John Deighton

And we took John’s advice to heart right away, as this video with colleagues Thorsten Hennig-Thurau and Raoul Kubler shows