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Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the second Media140 event in London. This event was focused on brands and their use of social media platforms (particular focus on Twitter) and whilst it was a good event overall, like many events of this nature, it often drifted from insightful to insufferable (and back again).

The most notable thing missing from the conference was the number of brands in attendance – both in speaker slots and the audience. Whilst the likes of BA, Virgin Trains and Red Bull made a valued and insightful contribution, the event would have benefited from more case studies and brand perspective rather than theoretical hyperbole which was, at times, all that was coming from the stage.

That said, I would still recommend attending Media140 to colleagues and fellow social media enthusiasts as between the sales pitches and agency showcasing it did spark some lively debate and offered valuable face time with an inner circle of marketing bods who are influencing the way brands use the social media space.

The highlights for me included the excellent David McCandless who received the biggest cheer of the day simply by demonstrating the power that creative imagery can have on data. An example of his work is below but I urge you to read more via his Flickr channel (and buy his book in February 2010).

Also Ciaran Norris provided some excellent case studies of brands harnessing the 2.0 world, some more successfully than others. Richard Baker, General Manager at Virgin Train made us all reflect a little and appreciate that brands can be great at Twitter if they take a down to earth attitude towards it and simply try to help people.  And finally, Ted Hunt from Innocent Drinks who not only found a suitor within the audience but managed to keep his composure throughout a particularly raucous TwitterFall to demonstrate how personality is key to social media success.

Ande, who organises the events (whilst juggling a full time job I should add), kept his cool between major wi-fi outages which frustrated those in attendance and is looking to host further Media 140 events across the globe over the coming months. I would encourage everyone, if they get the chance, to attend and find out more about how brands, marketers and the media are harnessing the connected web.

As one panel member put it quite brilliantly (and honestly) yesterday, “…at the end of the day we’re all just making it up as we go along”. We are, but with events like Media140 we can at least pretend we know what we’re doing

This is a guest post by Alex, part of Hill & Knowlton’s Digital team in the UK.

In Revolution Magazine this month Nike’s marketing director Simone Pestridge claims that “being prepared to take risks is the only way to create truly successful digital campaigns”. I couldn’t agree more. With every new business brief coming in asking for “digital” the online space is becoming more and more saturated with campaigns therefore to create cut through risks need to be taken which unfortunately for the client might not always be the cheapest.

Nike have frequently taken huge risks in their campaigns but can be said to be one of the pioneers of digital marketing campaigns; from Nike id customising shoes online to the Joga Bonito campaign (consumers were asked to submit videos of them receiving the ball from one side of the screen and passing on to the other). A recent Facebook poll has shown that Nike are associated with football then either adidas or Umbro despite their very high profile sponsorship campaigns.

I also think it’s fair to say that traditional PR campaigns need to take larger risks as well. By pushing the brand outside of their comfort zone they can gain huge results, take the latest Castrol UEFA EURO 2008 campaign. Not traditionally associated with football they took ownership of the statistics side of football (which let’s face it we all love) to great success.

I’ll leave you with the words of Simon Pestridge “Consumers are much more interested in brands that put themselves on the line”.

Brand Republic is today reporting on the latest Bellwether report revealing that digital growth is at its lowest since 2002. This comes as marketing budgets continue to fall across traditional media, PR and events.

At least the sun’s out today!