Much later than I wanted, but here's my roundup of Day II of the Marketing Summit. Ben's done a very strong one, which kind of makes this redundant. But I drew another picture and wanted to unleash it, so here goes. Briefly. Highlights, like.
First up we had the US footage. Someone asked a panel an interesting question about fear of technology, and someone (I think from the Barbarians) claimed it's not technology itself we're afraid of. It's being behind, or not knowing how to use it. Or being seen to not know. Which was interesting. On the same subject another panelist made the very good point that you can't just talk about this new stuff. Do it. Blog for a month. Goddammit maybe even Twitter. Then you can pontificate (if you have to.)
The Digit talk I enjoyed. Mike Bennet spoke about how online design is all about Moments, in contrast to ads, which he thinks are stories and concepts - a more passive kind of experience. At Digit they put 10% of their time into R&D, to develop their tech knowledge offering.
In the Entertainment discussion, Michael Wall of Fallon made a similar comment - in reply to Alex West's comment that whilst McKinsey spend $12k a year on training each employee, the average ad agency spends $100 - about the important investment being people's time. He'd rather buy employees' time so they can spend a significant proportion of it doing whatever they like, exploring, than loads on training. I'm inclined to like this idea. But can't help thinking there'd always be a 'So what you got?' at the end of it.
The Viral Factory talk was strong too. Made me realise how prejudiced I am against the whole bandwagon concept (or at least the formalisation of it). A good half of it was spent dispelling myths (and this must be what Ed Robinson has to do with almost every new client) which convinced me they were as cynical about the unthinking enthusiasm virals have attracted as I am. (We all know banners don't engage anyone; UGC is rude, it tramples all over your copyright; consumers don't care as much as you think - and if they do it's in a negative way usually; don't be hysterical about negative stuff; negative engagement is as valid as positive; the editorial dilemma; YouTube is not a channel; viral is not a bankable element of a campaign; give people the liberty to do anything and they're less likely to abuse it; become part of their world instead of pretending to.) So that's good.
Ed had these UGC images running independently of his speaking.
The Google BA talk was fascinating, to me. Mostly because I'm so far behind with the whole Google cult thing.
Obi from Google did all the right things to make me even more intrigued. She was strange and nice and interesting and...quite powerful in an odd way. She said things like 'we eat our own dogfood (which meant doing their own marketing I think), and 'big ideas move us', and 'we are lucky that people want to engage with us' in a way that made you want to be part of a club. It seems on the face of it that their philosophy is very simple, almost ascetic - 'the brand is the product and the product is the brand. We let others speak for us, and word of mouth is still our strongest endorsement.'
Google see partnerships like the BA one as an extension of this word of mouth endorsement. Which is a nice way of saying they didn't pay a penny ('We don't have a big marketing budget'). The control Google had over the entire campaign was palpable. One AOL overlay developed by BBH was seen as too intrusive when Obi presented it to her colleagues so they insisted the BA branding was upped and the Google Earth branding all but removed. At no point did Google want to be seen as advertising. Which of course was fine with everyone.
All in all you got the sense the BBH had a tough balancing act here - something Obi made very explicit when she contrasted the lightning quick decisions made by Google throughout with the weighty process at BA. Before Ben Malbon cut in. Which is not the same as inferring that Google were rash - the caution was clear ('Google is about using not buying. This is the most retail thing we've done.')
And funnily enough, some of the best education I got was probably from Famous Rob and Ben about Google after the talk. It's all stuff you'll know of course, being far less behind on this than me. But I'm glad I know.
So my conclusions. Hm. I still think lots of these events (especially when they're expensive and they're about The Future) feed on fear. And that there's a (sorry can't think of a better word) disconnect, between the kind of people people pay to 'network' with (i.e. big powerful older people) and the kind of people who are leading the charge into The Future (i.e. the small, unknown, younger people). It felt the speakers were mostly of the first variety. Of course were exceptions. And of course it's possible to have informative ideas about the future even if you don't have a diagonal haircut. But a bit of a mixture might have been good.
And one of the big themes - that brands need to contrribute to their environment rather than just spam it up - set the sponsors in stark relief. Of all of them, barely any contributed to the summit environment - with the exception of the very nice man from I Have An Idea - or even turned up. You'd think if something like that was worth sponsoring, it's also worth being there. Just a thought.
So that's it. I had lots of fun thanks to FR and NDG. And I learnt some.
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