GroupM's third annual mLab event took place in late September/early October 2015 where media owners presented directly to GroupM clients, staff and key industry people.

A curated range of media owners and start-ups were positioned through a 'circuit' placed around Sydney's UTS Campus.  Groups of 10 were escorted around the circuit receiving presentations and interactive demonstrations from each media owner.

Here we offer a comprehensive overview of mLab with a summary of the presenting media owners by GroupM's Chief Digital Officer, John Miskelly- as well as media coverage, event photos, and daily AdNewsTV Videos.  

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GroupM’s annual mLab event was back for a third year last week, with many of Australia’s top marketers invited to experience first-hand the technology of the future, from data visualisation on a mass scale to personalised out-of-home messaging and integrated content across every conceivable device.

The beauty of mLab is that attendees get to hear from established players such as Fairfax, with a heritage that stretches back to 1841, alongside newer yet already culturally ingrained companies such as Instagram as well as the homegrown start-ups that are shaking up the tech world.

Here is a snapshot of this year’s offerings...

Fairfax 2030: We may still think of Fairfax as a newspaper publisher, but print was nowhere to be seen in its mLab presentation. Hosted at a lunch party set in 2030, Fairfax demonstrated how its content will be seamlessly integrated into consumers’ lives, delivered in relevant environments on different devices – from Good Food cooking demonstrations on kitchen benchtops to Domain property listings shared on a TV screen, content will be more integrated and more connected than ever before. The takeout for marketers was a future of expanding ecommerce platforms with seamless push notifications, delivering contextually relevant content and targeting.

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Adshel Street³: There’s more to outdoor than the traditional bus shelter, was the message from Adshel. Indeed, Adshel demonstrated how out-of-home is moving into the convergence space with Street³ – an innovation that enables advertisers to use personal data to adapt their advertising messages to what is happening in a particular location, right there and then, at scale. Truly targeted advertising is now possible, with the focus once again on personalisation and relevance at scale.

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UTS Data Arena: Aside from hosting the event in the university’s newly opened billion-dollar campus, UTS blew the minds of attendees with two separate presentations. ‘The Merging of Machines & Humans’ gave us an insight into the university’s work in the area of robotics, including the robot that monitors and repairs the Sydney Harbour Bridge 24 hours around the clock. For marketers, the relevance lay in a new perspective on fitness application monitoring – again mobile and personalised – with sensors for health and for emotion. 

In the second presentation, the UTS Data Arena showed what is possible with the increasing amount of data marketers are collecting. With data projected across six 3D video projectors and sensory augmenting capabilities, the 360-degree interactive data visualisation facility enables better analysis and exploration of data. The UTS presenters demonstrated how you can isolate data points for detailed analysis and therefore observe interrelationships, patterns and anomalies not normally seen in data portrayed in a 2D format. Being able to view data visualisations on the facility’s four-metre high and 10-metre diameter cylindrical screen is guaranteed to revolutionise marketing meetings.

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Instagram: The increasingly popular photo-sharing network shared a simple message in an age of complexity: brands should dazzle consumers instead of demanding their attention. Instagram reminded advertisers that the three principles that work for great advertising are essential on its platform: being on brand, being concept driven and being well crafted, while demonstrating how brands can use the relatively new carousel ad format to tell deeper stories and share     more images with people interested in their posts.

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Start-up Village - Always an mLab highlight, the Start-up Village showcased three up-and-coming companies helping marketers tap into the power of social media and measure its effectiveness. For clients, this new breed of start-ups is bringing accessibility and accountability to social media...

Start Up 1 – Fanfuel: With Telstra and other big advertisers already on board, Fanfuel connects brands with athletes on social media by using a match-making algorithm that analyses an athlete’s social media reach, engagement and audience demographics to create the perfect match for a campaign’s target audience. Brands can also measure the results of their campaign in real time using Fanfuel’s social media analytics and optimise for future campaigns.

Start Up 2 – Tribe: Marketers have been working with influencers to reach new audiences for some time now, but as the pool of social media mavens with more that 5000 followers on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook grows – at last count, there were 250,000 Australian ‘citizen’ influencers – brands need a little help keeping up. Tribe, founded by TV and radio personality Jules Lund, is a marketplace where brands can brief influencers to activate targeted campaigns “with the ease of buying display advertising”, according to Lund. And it’s certainly a compelling offering: influencers can respond to a brand’s call-out and if happy, the brand can instantly approve a campaign that is then uploaded onto the influencer’s social media channels. 

Start Up 3 – Social Status: Positioning itself as the ‘Google Analytics for social media’, the third start-up Social Status enables marketers to analyse the performance of their social media content and benchmark it against competitors. They can also see what works best – what type of content, images, time of day – and measure the revenue generated by each post.

 

In addition to the presentations, mLab attendees were able to view installations by Twitter, where they were able to take a photo or GIF using Twitter’s custom-designed mirrors, and Kantar, which installed a speed-reader screen delivering messaging around how Kantar transforms data into insights to inspire clients.

Conclusion - The message was loud and clear: the future is all about greater insights, relevance and personalisation at scale, with contextually relevant content delivered in a seamlessly integrated way. Marketers and agencies must use all the new tools at their disposal to dazzle consumers and connect with them on a deeper level.

Trade Media Coverage

AdNews -

• How Marketers Want to Apply the Future of Media Today?
• Is Future Gazing Worth It?
• How Can Big Business Learn from Start-Ups?
• What Do Marketers Think of the Future of Media?
• Where Art & Science Collide: mLab
• Personalisation and Targeting: Creepy or Relevant?
• GroupM Tools Up Clients for the Future of Media

SMH - 

• Don't rush to digital too fast, GroupM warns advertisers
• Marketers exploring the world outside ads

• mLabEvent2015 Twitter# - follow Tweets directly from mLab

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Event Photos

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AdNewsTV:  

Day 1 - Each day throughout the week of mLab AdNews editor Rosie Baker spoke to brand marketers about their mLab highlights. Watch the Day 1 video here...

Day 2 - Marketers to comment on the vision of the future shown by media throughout mLab. Watch the Day 2 video here...

Day 3 - Marketers share their views on the comments on the robotics and data visualisation shown by UTS during MLab. Watch the Day 3 video here...

Day 4 - Marketers speak about the Start-Ups featured at mLab. Watch the Day 4 video here...

Day 5 - Final thoughts of the week at mLab. Watch the Day 5 Video here... 

• mLabEvent2015 Twitter# - follow comments directly from mLab

• Subscribe to MediaScope's weekly newsletter - join media's influentials
• See the 2014 mLab Wrap

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Further Resources...

• MediaScapes - well-known guides mapping the entire Australian commercial media landscape - including digital media, television, outdoor and mobile billboard media, media agencies & more.  MediaScapes appear on office walls throughout the industry!

• Q&A Profiles - tap directly into opinions and market views from over 300 of the most experienced and successful professionals in Australia's advertising and media market.

• Newsletter - stay up to date on media industry news and opinion by joining over 2,200 media trading 'influentials' who receive MediaScope's newsletter each Friday.

• MediaScope's Resource Hub - A growing and evolving central destination for marketers, advertising and media to easily access useful information and resources on each media channel. 

 

• What's On - we keep track of the most worthwhile media industry events, surveys, training courses and awards