Kelly McFarland
Over the weekend Fuzzable got the chance to attend the first BorderlessLive festival at Tabacco Docks in London. A festival curated, especially for content creators and influencers.
For two days Tobacco Docks was brimming with influencers and content creators at all stages of their career. All looking to network and learn more about their industry and BorderlessLive did not disappoint. The schedule for both days was jam-packed with talks, seminars, meeting brands, speed networking and the occasional Yoga class.
There were exhibition stands from the world of travel, hotels, destinations where attendees could find out more information, and look at the potential for feature collaborations.
Tobacco Docks is an ideal event space for a festival like this, BorderlessLive was essentially spread over four stages, The Festival Stage, The Live Stage, The Networking Stage and The Creator Stage.
Panels ranged from How to successfully pitch to brands Hosted by Traverse; Martinique Lewis; Kirsty Leanne, Casey Mead, Barry Johnston to Pitching to Blogosphere Magazine with Albertine Brandon, The changing landscape of marketing Hosted by Natalie Lefevre; Tinggly and Komodo, and Using social media for positive social change hosted by Martinique Lewis with Matthew O’Shea, Hannah Witton, Jamie Windust and Becki Enright and Personal Branding: acting like a business with Chiara Machedavvero. There was something of interest for every attendee no matter how experienced or how large a following. It was a safe space for everyone to learn, connect and grow within their fields.
One of our favourite panels happened on day 1 on the live stage, How to get a big-time book deal with Alice Judge-Talbot, Toni Hargis and BritMums. What we loved about this panel that each of the panellists had a different journey to getting published and we found it inspiring to hear their stories and their hints and tips on getting published.
- Research the agents and publishers that publish the type of book you want to publish and don’t pitch to ones who don’t deal with the type of book you are writing.
- Read, read read. Read anything and everything you can.
- Believe in your self, the only thing stopping you is you. Doesn’t matter if you get 10 rejection laters or 110, stick at it. There is a place for every story, you just have to find the right, time and place to tell it.
Another really insightful panel was Working with influencers: both sides of the screen hosted by Gordon Glenister, Megan Bickerstaff, Rosalind Schimmen, Anthea Biggs, Jo Burford and Chiara Machedavvero. From this panel, we learnt from both agencies and influencers and content creators just what influencers are hired to promote. One anecdote really made us think- “We worked on a campaign for a big music company, a record label who wanted to use influencers and content creators to promote their “A-List” artists songs. The song was used by various influencers we worked with on their social media posts, and sometimes on Insta stories as background music etc, to really get into peoples subconscious.”– about how influencers and content creators are used to promote things, and we are so used to it happening we don’t even realise it.
We also really enjoyed the panel Working with Catalonia with Shu Shi Lin and Christianne Risman, both who had done press trips to Catalonia and had such a wonderful time as it was like, unlike any other press trip they’d been on. They were as passionate about Catalonia as the host and the rest of the Catalonia team were, and we think everyone came away from the talk adding Catalonia on the list of places they wanted to do content on in the future.
We also had a chat with Matthew O’Shea founder of the amazing Ticket Aid, a philanthropic alternative to the secondary ticket market that since it’s launch in March 2018, has raised a staggering 150k for various charities.
There was also lots of free food and drink available including beer tasting with Budvar, white wine cocktails from Brno (promoting visiting The Czech Republic ) which were all delightful and well-received while getting to know fellow attendees and more about the country they were promoting.
BorderlessLive was a fantastic and unique event, and one we are excited to see grow bigger and bigger each year. We’d like to thank the amazing teams at Traverse and Brandnation for the invite to such an informative and fun event. We can’t wait to do it all again next year!
You can find out all the info about BorderlessLive here.
Let us know at @Fuzzable if you attended!
