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Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Gigantic Optimistic Bravery

I attended a great conference today. The APG's Battle of Big Thinking. Good format in that every speaker was given only 15 minutes, which meant the good ones threw out lots of great ideas and the boring ones didn't go on too long.




I took a lot away about the brand-marketing-communications-creative-media-advertising'sdead industrial complex. But mainly I took away some inspiration and some refreshing perspectives. I guess I might revisit some of them in the coming weeks, but for what it's worth, here are a few I thought would be of interest;

1) The marketing industry can be a bit of a dinosaur. And the point is that the old way of engaging with customers at a mass level is under serious threat. So what should you do? There's no put in trying to evolve the best dinosaur you can if a new ice age is just around the corner. Far better to be little agile warm-blooded mammal.

I guess mammal-like things at the moment for me are harnessing the power of the web in a bid for brands to facilitate conversations, and recognising that by giving up control, brands can actually gain influence. (I'm pretty sure there's a judo reference in there somewhere).

2) I loved the idea of future planners as Ronin, hired hands adapting themselves to whatever mission they're undertaking. The idea that planners, like great online businesses, should always put their work out there in a Beta version was cool. The point is you've got to have a go. If you wait for the grand unified theory of marketing, youy'll never get anything done. This I think ties in nicely to the web aesthetic of hand-made, that I'm really interested in at the moment.

3) Actually it's not about 'big ideas', which are impossible to ground in reality, too precious to be messed about with and generally a block to doing good stuff. No, its actually about the little ideas, the little things we can do to make a difference. As Trevor Beattie put it, 'Every Little Helps but Every Big Hinders'.

PS. Russell Davies was really inspiring, Jim Carrol (BBH) was very plannerly and Ivan Pollard was very slick.

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