On Monday I mentioned I'd attended the Microsoft Digital Conference - Imagine 07 - in Paris last week.
The purpose of these occasions is to entertain 600 odd key clients and press, show our wares and give an update on where we are with certain products and services, but we also need to give the delegates some takeways to think about on their way home.
So drafting in some independent speakers from the industry to talk abot their perspectives on digital advertising, and what they think the the future looks like is always a good idea.
And what an impressive bunch they were...
I won’t go through all of them, you can see who was there from the agenda, but a few people stood out...
You know you’re in for an interesting ride when a speakers biog screams: “He began his career in media in 1987 at BMP DDB Needham eventually becoming Head of Media Planning by sleeping with his boss.” How to get an audience to sit up and listen before you’ve even opened your mouth is a great skill, and Ivan Pollard from Naked Communications did just that.
A great quote from his speech which was about the new world of digital advertising where brands are being built and audiences want to participate rather than be targeted or hit:
“So at the Rugby World Cup this weekend there will be somebody there who is seeing the sponsorship of the event, experiencing a brand part put on by Adidas, watching on their mobile device programming from the Rugby World Cup and looking at advertising that we happened to have placed in that programme, and they’re all in the same place. And that’s leading to a set of new rules.”
Allez Les Blancs!
Quote of the day for me came from Stephan Hunt, Head of Media at Paramount, who again gave an engaging, typically British presentation about the work they’d done on the Transformers launch.
“Digital just simply had to be at the heart of Transformers. What did it look like? Interaction! All platforms were cross-promoted in all formats, online, mobile, digital radio, interactive TV are included in that as well, and across outdoor and our press. We deployed the largest ever Paramount Digital budget ever some £300,000 as much at 10% of our media budget, and in the wider context, that’s just for the online and the mobile, in the wider context of digital it was £500,000, $1 million plus.”
He talked about the great results and left us with one last thought:
“If I've left you the impression that digital did everything for us, it didn’t. All the other more, if you like, traditional communications were in there as well and we had a huge budget close to over £3 million. But if I could leave you with this, digital marketing is moving so, so fast as you’ve seen. So please, for me, have the confidence to say ‘I don’t understand’. You can bet your life that most of the other people in the room don’t either.”
Last on the list of those who made an impression was Martin Lindstrom – The Leading Online Brand Strategist and Best-Selling Author.
Now Martin is almost a brand in himself & he was kind of my boss back in the days when I worked at BTLookSmart. I remember being astonished when introduced to him that he was COO, as he could only have been 30 but obviously uses Oil of Olay because he looks a lot younger. At the age of 10, according to Wikipedia, he set up Legoland in his back garden in Denmark and by the time he was 12 was employed in their design department before moving into advertising.
I’d heard he was an enigmatic speaker and he didn’t disappoint. Martin likes to engage with the audience by walking down off the stage with a roving mike, getting in amongst us. I felt a little uncomfortable with the musical interludes and random images on the screen – it felt sometimes like Paul McKenna and David Copperfield had joined forces for “one night only” in parts.
That said the content was engaging too – stats like adults can handle 1.7 channels but the kids of our age are bombarded with so much media that they can now handle 5.4 channels AT THE SAME TIME!
“That means they can watch television, they can surf on the internet, they can play a computer game at the same time as listen to the radio, they can chat with their best friend, and then they have 0.4 left for homework.”
He went on to talk about that consumers are now helping building brands through networking:
“What is Google’s marketing budget? I don’t have the recent number, but I have the number from 2005, and that number is supposedly, supposedly $2.4 million. What am I saying now? I'm not saying that advertising, forget about it, it’s all word of mouth, but I am saying one thing that is word of mouth and rumours if you support that with a convincing way of building brands, it is incredibly powerful. Why? Because suddenly you secure an ownership of this, rather than someone is telling you what to do. I call it ‘rumour based communication’. “
Finishing up:
“I think the best way to summarise everything now is to go back to good old Benjamin Franklin, and Benjamin Franklin once said ‘tell me and I’ll forget. Show me and I might remember. Involve me and I will understand’ . And do you know what? The more you involve the consumer, the more ownership they have of your message in spreading it and creating rumours which are powerful, the more they will understand why your brand is in the centre all the time.”
I really enjoyed the day – It’s great to hear great minds from the industry give great examples and demonstrate some blue sky thinking in such a visual and engaging way.
Well done Katy & Aex & Co!
