I have had two days of conferences - speaking at the Future Marketing Summit yesterday on a panel hosted by the brilliantly didactic Richard Huntingdon, along with a former Ogilvy buddy/mentor Rory Sutherland (who has a lovely blog worth checking out, especially for his most recent Sorrell posting), the celebrated Steve Henry and P&G bright light David Grebert. We were discussing the impact that technology has for brands. You can see Richard's presentation here. Not sure that I totally agreed with Steve's point of view that the ad agencies need to be much braver and experiment much more with new digital technologies. While I'd agree that many ad agencies are not always risk-taking imagination leapers, I happen to believe that we at agencies should be proposing new technology experiments when we can clearly articulate to ourselves and to the client, what exactly the value to the consumer would be of us doing it and how it is on brand. Not just new technology for the sake of being first to do something, unless of course that it what your brand is all about but most of them aren't.
Then today I was an attendee at the Guardian Changing Media Conference.
So what did I learn at the conferences and what can I share?
In a nutshell, JFK got it almost much right... 
In a digitalized/digitalizing world, Brands need to "Ask not what your country consumer can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country consumer."
Seriously though, I got some great food for thought on both days.
The Changing Media Summit in particular was excellent, this is Roy Greenslade's blog from the day. There were people blogging and Twittering all over the place! The discussions that these sessions generated were interesting in part because I think that the audience was so diverse (NGOs, media owners, directors, journalists and only myself from VCCP and two old friends from Mother representing ad agencies)
Thoughts that sound deceptively simple, but aren't:
1. Just because you have an audience doesn't mean you have a community (Kevin Anderson, Guardian Unlimited - this was my sound-bite of the day and will be using it in a client meeting tomorrow!)
2. Can YouTube be used more as a testing ground for TV show pilots/TV ads? (Stefen Lechere, Google)
3. While we talk about digital engagement, we also have to be pragmatic and think about scalable engagement (Sue Elms, Millward Brown)
4. Has the democratisation of content meant that a thousand flowers have bloomed, or that we have created a thousand monkeys with keypads? (Edwin Aoki, AOL)
5. Alan Rusbridger talks a good game, but does terrible powerpoint slides. Only 3 people out of the entire day choose to do anything in powerpoint at all - the rest just spoke. And spoke brilliantly. Why did he and why do I still feel the need for powerpoint, even if it is mainly visual and not just bullet point after bullet point of text?
Oh and I met someone else who has also has a Blog Card to give out to people instead of an official Work Card. His cards were cool Flickr ones though. Good to meet you Dan and your blog is brilliant, Fabric of Folly.
Spot on, Amelia - I'm with you there. I even said something similar on my Brand Republic blog: "Marketers need to stop asking what the social web, this mass of people online, can do for them, and start asking what they can do for it." But I didn't have the good grace to hat-tip JFK :-)
Posted by: Antony Mayfield | Friday, 23 March 2007 at 06:20 PM
That's a hell of a panel Amelia. Did Rory wear his regulation bow tie?
To your point #2, I think we as grown ups don't fully appreciate how important YouTube is to kids.
For them it's not a website. It's not a video site. It is in fact a TV channel. One where they get to watch what they want when they want.
I imagine that many of the people who will be hosting MTV shows and youth programs five years from now will have cut their teeth TV wise on sites like YouTube.
Best...Stan
Posted by: Stan Lee | Saturday, 24 March 2007 at 12:46 AM
Sounds like it was a shame I missed day 1 as day 2 was very pedestrian. There were almost more speakers than audience and most just ran through creds! I left feeling that at all of these confrences everyone was saying the same thing and that it was probably time to move on and say something different. Imagination was good in summary.
Anyway I ramble. I was having a chat with Caroline S and she mentioned that you had moved on from Naked to VCCP, congratulations. I would be very interested in your opinion of Naked as a place to work and their place in the current marketing dynamic and how they are changing their offering. I also met up with the anomaly guys and one of them is speaking at wildfire. You free for a coffee/call/email?
Posted by: Giles Rhys Jones | Wednesday, 28 March 2007 at 09:36 AM
In reply to your comment... here... http://www.simon-law.com/archives/184
Sorry for the slow response, Amelia!
Love it - made me think that I must do two things - go to more conferences myself and make sure that I read about more of them online!
Most of all, though, I think the JFK quote is a gem - have you seen any of the stuff that Hashem at Barin Sells has posted on Brand Utility? It's not his invention, but I love the way he talks about it. Particularly noticeable in this post: http://brainsells.blogspot.com/2007/02/vw-creates-rabbit-widget.html
Unfortunately, he's slowed down his posting of late - maybe working on those billion dollar pitches takes its toll! But email him - you two would get on well, I think.
Oh, and another random thought - have you tried Keynote on Mac? It's still a Powerpoint substitute, but it makes everything look better and makes you think more visual...
Sorry - too much rambling, even by my standards!
Posted by: Simon Law | Monday, 02 April 2007 at 03:43 PM