With curiosity combined with eager anticipation, I arrived at 195 Picadilly for the start of Adweek Europe. I've only been able to attend a smattering of events, but overall the quality of the sessions has been very high. I overheard folks asking one another about other sessions they had been too and overall the responses I heard ranged from "good" to "very good".
The attendance was significant and all sessions were overcrowded (except surprisingly the one with Sebastian Coe). The central location was obviously chosen over a more distant and larger venue which has its plusses and minuses. It allowed for folks to nip back to the office between sessions, kept everyone in one central venue (rather than spread out all over the city) and was central to transportation lines. The downside was I felt the "vibe" was missing with very little display area for companies and jam-packed stairwells preceding sessions (plus disappointment at not being allowed in sessions). Tweeting and blogging while standing is challenging indeed!
The first session was the ThinkBox Content Innovation roundtable attended by Mark Read (WPP), Mark Howe (Google), Fru Hazlitt (ITV) and Trevor Beattie (BMB) moderated by Tess Alps (Thinkbox). This entertaining session was infused with lots of video and attendees defending their ground i.e. Fru Hazlitt emphasised that the "Fenton" viral dog clip on YouTube only achieved success from broadcast coverage. Mark Read received a subtle Google dig from Mark Howe who mentioned that Google and ITV are friends not frenemies which he acknowledged by referring back to the ITV and Google "love up". Fru was also exceptionally entertaining when she forgot the "f***ing" last line of her shpiel. Hilarious. Lots of videos were shown to support each stance.
At a time when I just finished the final episode on Netflix of House of Cards and Amazon have just announced to run pilots via Lovefilm which viewers can then vote on, the content space has never been more exciting and disruptive at the same time.
Tess:
- £5 billion pounds invested in content in the UK - more so than anywhere else in the world.
- New models without advertising like Netflix and Lovefilm
- Red bull applauded for support for Felix Baumgartner space jump with online and tv views (chance that someone may die!)
- Also fab tv ads like dancing ponies and lovelorn ponies
- How will people find content or will it find u?
Mark Howe:
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How do u navigate content with 70,000 channels on YouTube?
- Talked about new a Youtube shows (see previous Blog Post on Google Think Branding event)
Fru:
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Technology makes us this we can be good at singing, photography etc. but we are boring! Creating content requires great skill, as is required in getting people to watch it
- There are great examples of a mixture of advertising and content. For example Compare the Market TV ad with Coronation Street
- Let's get rid of ad funded programming but rather look for innovative partnerships e.g. The Big Reunion final show jointly funded by Live Nation as it then went on tour
Mark Read:
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Combine content with commerce e.g. Net-a-Porter hiring Harper's Bazaar editor and therefore has the edge over Vogue
- Examples: Vice (Canadian magazine company acquired) for Intel "the Creators Project" run for 3 years already with events
- Nike: AKQA with women's training app "training club" 80 customised workouts 5.7 m downloads 100 M minutes, daily relationship with brand
- Old gatekeeper: ITV and new gatekeeper: Apple and Google
Trevor (who reminds me of Brian May):
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Declared the death of the 30 second spot (didn't this happen several years ago?) and the replacement by the new 5 second spot. He showed some great examples of storytelling in 5 seconds e.g. Persil and a Attenborough clip of a baby turtle being snatched probably on it's first walk to the water.
- There are lots of opportunities e.g. you could divide a commercial into 5 second chunks
- I think this is a natural consequence of short attention spans as the opening introductions of so many tv shows are also shorter
Final comments….
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Great content has changed but the discovery is still the large TV broadcasters (shop windows) e.g. Fenton on YouTube
- ITV is good at content, Google good at technology, both invest billions (Fru)
- The current disruption is a threat if you don't adapt, otherwise its an opportunity (mark read)
The next session I attended was an interview of Lord Sebastian Coe by Linda Grant (Managing Editor, Metro UK). I took less notes as it was just a great session to sit and listen to the story behind the Olympic bid and consequent planning.
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The key was to put the athlete at the centre & give them the best possible experience. Figure out what "good" looks like.
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The first 2 years spent building an org coming out of a bid & doubling in numbers every year
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Lloyds TSB, EDF & BA good examples of partnership not sponsorship. Partnership is 5 years with no advertising in stadium!
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IOC more interested in the Why & not the How i.e. what legacy will left behind.
I then coerced myself into an overly full RadiumOne sponsored session on Turning Social Engagement into Purchase Intent with Abeed Janmohamed (RadiumOne) and Martyn Jobber (Tagman).
- 69% parents are friends with their children on social media
- There is an abundance of content and social media but how do we leverage it?
- Twitter knows my interests, FB my likes, iTunes my music, Amazon my purchases and Google my searches (Scary!!)
- Virgin have 20 M consumers accessible via touch points but how do u harness and engage with them?
- There are 385 social sharing widgets but email most used sharing tool : copy and paste makes up 60% of sharing
- 14% of people trust ads and 80% trust peer recommendation
- Brands must have a strategy around link shorteners e.g Mr Porter with mr-p.o vanity shorteners
- You should also have a hashtag strategy
- Coke has 51 million fans
Next us was Tagman talkig about sequence and attribution (a topic we were talking about more than 5 years ago when MSFT acquired aQuantive)
- Attribution looks at 3 stages: introductions, assists, conversions
- There are different channels e.g. urls, SEO that contribute at each phase
- Social media should not be measured on last click
- When a TV commercial goes out with hash tag you can immediately monitor effect and attribution
- Takeaways: control and harness earned and owned, link and leverage in paid media - join the dots, attribute and measure correctly
- Last click analysis is the bad guy: look at the best click
After that I scuttled to the jam-packed Microsoft Advertising session moderated by Andy Hart on Redefining Multiplatform. Andy kicked off by commenting on the unrepresentative panel (full of white males) of which I noted that 5 out of the 8 wore socks with stripes. Apologies for my attention to detail.
- Julian Lloyd-Evans (Dennis Publishing) explained how we don't have any downtime now - different platforms suit different times of day and screen size is also important (2 critical things). Tom Roberts (TribalDDB) added that the third one is context
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Steve Hatch (MEC) half-joked that digital was all so overwhelming for clients that they put budgets to TV 9
- Coke were first to adopt 70-20-10 budget rule – 70% (what u know will work), 20% (ramping up previous experiments) and 10% gamble
- We have to make gamble about what next big things will be.
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Tom Roberts (MD Tribalddb)
- We should create a central hub for content that can be distributed out to different channels without having to replicate different platforms
- Having some success convincing clients that digital, e.g. smaller screen, can add to the whole experience by drilling down deeper or giving deeper content particularly as multiple screens used at same time
- Now noticed that habits are changing (bigger screen?) and consumers are using it more for browsing and not just task-oriented activities (so already need to change sites)
- We need to understand when we get it wrong and make amends quickly with clients
- There doesn't seem to be a big correlation between time and output as we don't really get great creative ideas back (from publishers)
- Jonathan Allen (Channel4) commented how they are now in the same area as MSFT and Facebook
- Chris Pelekanou (Clear Channel) explained how we never thought content would be consumed on mobile but now teens can happily watch an entire movie online
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Examples from the panel:
- Guardian campaign with ford for cougar launch - 50 people worked on one project and multi-platform really all about delivering across different platforms
- ClearChannel: Samsung, apple or MSFT take simple idea which translates
- MEC: Stoptober for stopping smoking
- Metro: Expedia with special tablet editions x 4 with 600k views and 300k downloads
- Channel 4: BT and Parolympics with short films
- Tribal: Chrome (don't mention that browser in a MSFT session, please!)
Finally, before I left for the day, I bolted to the next session to be one of the last allowed in for an interview by Sir Martin Sorrell (my mentor) of Sir David Brailsford on Winning. What a fascinating session gaining insight into the parallels between sport and business and the importance of psychology and understanding how the brain processes emotion to achieve winning performance.
- Sir David talked about his childhood in Wales, feeling very alone and the isolation of being a middle child (I'm also a middle child, so I eagerly listened to this)
- Cycling was a special bonding experience with his father from age of 16 (Sir David)
- Sir Martin mentioned the parallel between sport and advertising. Both are art and science: mad men and maths men
- Lots of parallels between sports psychology & business regarding "chimp" brain (governing emotions) & intellectual frontal lobe
- You can calm your chimp down by focussing on achieving your personal best & generally doing the best you can
- Truly successful sportsmen (& women!) learn how to switch both these off when they need to perform & win! e.g. taking penalties
- You have to understand what drives someone intrinsically - his goal is to understand what motivates them
- Behaviours is all about avoiding something bad or chasing something good - triangle of change somewhere between suffering and reward
- Everyone is driven by something but if reward good they will do something (money, satisfaction, recognition)
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If you want to win, you must have a vision and clarity, en need 3-4 key priorities to achieve your vision
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Provide clarity over role and responsibility and give positive feedback. Be ambassadors of clarity! Ask t give vision and 3-4 things that will achieve that.
- To get the best out of other people always use a carrot & not a stick. Don't undermine. Useful for everyone managing people
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Tips for success:
- Incentivise with a carrot and not a stick. Don't threaten when you use the stick.
- Feedback: Give feedback by not threatening security and undermining as you agitate the chimp. Feedback meant to help and not scare
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