8 things I learned from Digital Media Strategies 2014

  1. Lists are ok. "Readers like lists and rankings, and we can learn from that", said Financial Times Group CEO John Ridding, referring to the likes of BuzzFeed and adding that FT lists, naturally, would most certainly look different. So, no pictures of over-reacting cats then but CEOs losing it maybe? Which brings me to

  2. and BuzzFeed's presentation where Will Hayward, VP Advertising Europe, made good use of above mentioned over-reacting cats. Any kind of mishaps, be they of animal or human nature, will always get the most laughs. Nice try with your custom-made Times cartoons, Mr Darcey, but apparently still not quite engaging enough.

  3. Social is mobile. Mobile is social. And "Native Advertising the essential social/mobile format." (Julie Hansen, President & CEO, Business Insider)

  4. If you're German (full discloure: I am), don't expect to use the word efficient, respectively inefficient, in a UK environment without being taken up on it later on. As Ulrich Schmitz, CTO Axel Springer Media, learned. Shock, horror, the German guy said inefficiency is good!

  5. Stereotypes, damn it, are true: There was the search query from Spain "Scarlett Johansson erotic" (cue: snicker. Of course, the Spanish). The BuzzFeed guy sporting a full Victorian hipster beard at the top and sneakers at the bottom. And there's the fact and not a stereotype that the stage at events such as Digital Media Strategies 2014 is always an almost all male place.

  6. Content, content, content. Still, always, forever: king, queen and continuously evolving.

  7. That there's no one-fits-all solution in this wonderful content industry that we're all in. But there are opportunities, chances, options, experiments, challenges, ideas, failures, creativity and amazing technology enabling the industry to keep on crossing boundaries. And that as long as

  8. you don't get stuck in the middle (thanks, Mr Darcey, good point for life in general), you'll, essentially, be fine.