SOCIAL MEDIA - The IPA step up

Back in January I wrote a post about a rather dire event that the IPA put on. This was what they said it would be: "There’s a revolution in the air that’s transforming society. It’s social networking and it’s empowering the consumer. Agencies must get to grips with this changing marketplace over the next decade or they could face growth of only 1.2% per year by 2016. This is according to the second future of advertising report to be published by the IPA and the Future Foundation. To find out more come along to the next 44 Club where all will be revealed."

Trouble was, it wasn't like that at all.

It was confused. It was old-fashioned in its approach and most bizarrely given that Social Media is a conversation, there was no conversation. The Social Media report cost a lot of money, nothing was shared online and there was no platform or space for dialogue and discussion.

Others in Adland felt the same way as I did. Then the influential Neville Hobson wrote about the situation. And we all sort of sat back waiting to see what the IPA would do. 

To their enormous credit, the IPA contacted each and every person who had blogged or tweeted about the IPA Social Media event and asked them to help them move the conversation on and make it more useful and relevant.  So that's what's been happening over the last few months. It stared out as a big group, which people rapidly discovered meant a lot of talking but not a lot of practical action and useful deliverables. Then it turned into a smaller group: myself; Mark; Neil; Le'Nise; Katy; Jamie; Asi; John, Graeme and a long-distance late addition Faris ( if I was starting an agency tomorrow these guys would be the very first people that I would call!) - all brilliantly chaired by Nigel from the IPA. 

The IPA moved from their traditional role of Expert Authority to a new role of Intelligent (Intelligence?) Facilitator. And they have been brilliant, given this small group the freedom to create and develop what we hope will be useful and provocative thinking in the area of Social Media.

We've defined 10 Social Principles which we are launching online on 23rd September and there's a remarkably cheap seminar (20 for IPA members, 40 for non-members) on Tuesday 6th October. Click here for info and tickets. The site and the seminar have been created to be social experiences, not conferences. So come along expecting to talk, ask questions and answer questions yourself. There are no Social Media experts, there are just people getting their hands dirty and experimenting in this space. There are learnings, there are approaches and there are intelligent questions. 

The Twitter hashtag is #IPAsocial for you to see the discussions to date.

I'll post when the IPAsocial site goes live and hope to see some of you at the 6th.

Comments

[carlos]

can i some how attend from "long-distance"