Hail. Floods. Fire. Brandwatch NYK had it all.

Earlier this week at Brandwatch Now You Know conference in Denver, CO., delegates were on the receiving end of a firehose of data, enjoyed floods of great insight, all ultimately rounded off by a torrential thunderstorm mixed with golf-ball-sized hail that reportedly cracked a few car windshields.

Luckily, we were all tucked safely inside the lovely Curtis Hotel with a lineup packed with impressive speakers, panel discussions, roundtables, master class sessions, and happy hours for networking. We’ve captured a few of the highlights from the event below.  

The Schedule, Stream, and Social Truth
The event kicked off with two informative discussions. First up was Matt Locke of Storythings, who shared the history, impact, and future of social channels’ infamous “Schedule and Stream” and the importance of both. He pointed out that President Trump is the first politician in the “Stream Era” who understands his influence (good and bad) and the power of the audience listening.

Next was our very own Misia Tramp, VP of CX Strategy and Insights, discussing “Social Truth” and revealing what truly matters to customers. She talked about the importance of the 3 C’s—customer, content, and context—and illustrated her points through the Joshua Bell story. She also had the audience fascinated about how to rethink the data to determine what really matters to both the customer and the brand. Specifically, customers aren’t looking for “surprise and delight” tactics; they want you to make their experience effortless.

Brands tell all
Well, perhaps not all, but a very informative and open discussion was had by representatives of many top global brands including Dell, Verizon, 3M, Bank of America, Toys “R” Us, Twitter, and Walmart. They shared the challenges of incorporating new technology and how they believe social listening is changing their worlds—quickly and effectively. Many have used traditional research methods but are now finding that AI and machine learning help them to do it faster and cheaper. John Trenholm, Director of Consumer Insights at Toys “R” Us, said, “It’s becoming clear our customers are more comfortable with images, pictures, and emojis, so we know the importance of turning that into data.”

Content challenges
Another hot topic was the concept of content and policing the sheer volume and production of content. Many corporate leaders are having internal battles about collecting and leveraging content from the bottom up and continuity from the top down in order to meet in the middle. Lisa Grimes, Chief Listening Officer at Dell, says her company is working toward creating a self-service content creation model and she talked about how utilizing social listening is helping them in that effort.

Product roadmap
Wrapping up the conference, Brandwatch made several big announcements and we’ve recapped a majority of them here:

• A partnership with Twitter, including complete access to data streams and exclusive social intelligence products
• Image recognition capability that it claims can analyze better than Google Graph Search
• Massive investments on Instagram channels and queries
• An industry first of turning on the Reddit firehose
• Building a foundation for insights through diversification of data, regional data, social network data, and differentiation through data.
• And a teaser of more additions to come soon.

 If you couldn't make it to the event, watch this Brandwatch webinar now featuring Misia speaking again on the intriguing topic of visual language.