Web Summit 2018 Day 2

Here we are, covering the second incredible day of conference at Web Summit. I attended many talks, but I stumble upon these two – that weren’t on my schedule actually –  but I can definitely say that I found my two “super talks” of the day!

The first talk at binate.io stage was held by Emil Eifrem, the Co-founder and CEO of Neo4j. Emil had an amazing ability to explain complex subjects in a simple and direct way, using real world use cases. The topic of the speech was Graph Databases, that is how connected data and a relationship-first approach are able to add context and are also the key for learning first and take then successful predictive decisions. The first use case was about investigative journalism: Panama Papers. The journalists involved won a Pulitzer Prize in 2016. They analyzed 11.5 millions documents, email, scanned file and bank accounts, globally 2.6 TB of data. They succeed because they take into account not only trillions of nodes (the documents or the single piece of information) but also the way in which they were connected and the patterns to follow, allowing to discover new connections too.

There are plenty of examples when graph databases are used: real-time recommendations, fraud detections, network operations, knowledge graph or identity & access management. Graph Databased are the most popular and growing source of data at the moment, being the key innovation for the development of companies such as Google, LinkedIn or Paypal. But consider that graphs provide context for AI and Machine Learning too. The real world is connected and training an AI through ML using connections you will be able to learn much more of it. Graphs help to predict more by using connected feature extractions opposite to extractions in isolation. For example they help to link context to a person. If you want to know more about someone you can look at his friends and to the friends’ friends…so mind whom you are connected with!

But let’s move to PandaConf stage to listen about beer and big data and to the second “super talk” of the day. An amazing Ian Wilson, Heineken’s marketing leader, introduced us to a beginners guide on how the worldwide brewing company and big legacy brand is using data to drive digital transformation in a mobile first world. Ian started on purpose with a provocative slide. Mobile is so pervasive in everyday life that “38% of people would rather give up sex for a year than their mobile phone”. In the last couple of year Heineken is focusing its marketing efforts on mobile using a model  defined as Individualised Data Driven Marketing (I-DDM). The goals are to reach >50% of beer and cider drinkers with personalised massaging, based on building owned people data capabilities, and link brand communication with sales activation. The first key capability of I-DDM is is to collect and manage people data and define a customer data strategy. The second is to take advantage of data insights coming from analytics and build segments/audencies. The third is to master the martech staks with smart creatives, localising contents and visuals (versioning). The last – the KPI’s measurement – should be focused on ROI and on building an in-house modeling and measurement protocol.

In order to implement such a marketing strategy the implication is to own the data. Following that path Heineken is bringing in-house the most part of marketing activities to achieve a full control on data, budget and performance. Media agency are a support for the execution of the activities that are strongly data driven planned.

The expected outcomes of the whole project are the following:

• increase sales
• increase the savings through media efficiency (up to 30%) and effectiveness (50% uplift)
• embedding the digital media planning and buying capability in-house.

Such outcomes cannot be obtained surely without the full integration of marketing, sales, communication, media, e-commerce (B2C and B2B), trade marketing, into Commercial Digital Acceleration Units. It is too soon to reap the results of a deep transformation in the mindset and in the different company’s areas. Ian gave us an appointment for next here to discuss the next achievements! and will not miss it.

Elaine Rodrigo, Chief Strategy and Insight Officer at Danone, explained that the answer to stay ahead of a disruptive environment is in the data. Danone uses data to power a customer centric model, involving tribes and using messages that inspire and speak to the personal side of people. Culture is the key to making meaningful human connections and in particular food culture is the dominant culture today. The idea is humanizing data and shift from segment to tribes. Social media sites are the world’s largest focus group  as 2.8 billion users are creating 211 million pieces of content every minute.

At the end of the day we assisted to something spectacular and particularly powerful. Stephen Attenborough, CCO at Virgin Galactic, the commercial space company that works for providing outer space travels. Through an engaging video Stephen showed how traveling to space is a life-changing experience that could be available to anyone. Space travel helped to solve problems on the earth and change the world for good. The latest test flight of the VVS Unity happened on 26 July 2018. Would you join Stephen to see the earth from above?