One of the panelists is apparently from VH1, because he just explained to us how “The Surreal Life” saved VH1 from irrelevance. They just showed us a clip of MC Hammer convincing Vince Neil to come back to the fold and pray to God, despite Vince’s contention that the loss of his daughter demonstrated the vacuity of prayer. The smart guy says it was a moment that transcends irony, which is a device that he says has matured and needs to be pushed past.

I’m starting to discern the panel’s goal. They are pushing narrative in the context of marketing and using examples from longer format entertainment to support this notion. VH1 guy showed the “Diet Coke Break” ad as an example of good use of narrative in an ad. “I’m not saying customize ads for VH1. I’m just saying think about narrative in your commercials.”

One of the panelists is apparently involved in American Idol, (for which I won’t bother finding a link,) and guess what; he’s bald.

I just asked American Idol guy about the spoiler community and the enmity that developed between that community and the producers of the show. They put it back on me to ask what, if any, impact the community may have had on the sponsors of the show. All I could think of was to suggest that the kerfuffle surrounding the ostensible vote fraud probably had a fairly negative impact upon general perception of AT&T, a sponsor and the assumptive stewards of the phone system used for voting.

It turned out to be a really rather good panel. Probably the best so far. Their discussion revolved around narrative and entertainment as it intersects with marketing and advertising. A recapitulation of the Madison + Vine theme that popped up occasionally yesterday.

Battery died on the laptop and the condescending sound engineer at the back of the room went apoplectic when I tried to plug into his circuit. Given the paucity of power outlets, I have to offer a little criticism of the organizers for not foreseeing the need. People would want to blog such an event, yes? Why not have a power bank available for those bloggers? As a result I couldn’t liveblog the technology session. But right after I eat, I will endeavor to make something up that sounds similar to what they said.

So the technology panel was decent. More of the same self-serving use of the stage to show the panelists’ firms’ work. The only takeaway from it is just, know what the hell you’re doing with technology. Don’t just do it because everyone else is doing it. Don’t just jump in without consulting the experts.

Richard Notarianni, Executive Creative Director of Media at Euro RSCG Worldwide is now speaking about “delivery.” He’s pushing the notion that brands should be more human. He’s delineating the difference between people and brands. I’ve heard that somewhere else.

This guy has been the best speaker by far. He spoke off the cuff. His message is powerful. Too bad the audience is so small; they were clearly underwhelmed by yesterday.

This guy, Eduardo Braniff, CEO of Imagination is doing the “Round-Up.” I’d describe his presentation, but you can click that link and look at the picture and get everything you need to know. No, really.

In a moment of unselfconsciousness, Eduardo suggests we may be in a new Renaissance. His ego creeping back in, but not without some perspicacity, he said, “The agencies need to be the new Medicis.”

“We cannot pick and choose our battles. Great champions never say, ‘I’m going to sit this one out.'”

“Maybe the word, ‘marketing’ will go away.” In spite of his monotonic delivery, Eduardo said some stuff that seems to me to be right on the money.

Some awards are being given. The recipients have been invited to describe the work that won them the award. First up is Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. They’ve started with a video containing bits from various of their interactive pieces.

Now they’re showing a video of some installation work they did for Saturn. Enormous holographic people. An enormous interactive video wall. Video projections mapped to an enormous skydome and onto the surface of cars. Really great stuff. I think this is the video we just watched, but I’m not sure because the bandwidth seems to be throttled and I couldn’t continue to wait for it.

Then they showed the collaboration between Saturn and Google that they architected. Check it out here. And followed it up with their collaboration between Saturn and Jon Bon Jovi; Have a Nice Gig.

Now an award to goes to Droga5 for their work with Mark Ecko. Surprise, surprise, it’s for the Air Force One stunt. The video is the first result in a Google search for “ecko stunt,” if that tells you anything. Ecko actually suggests in the little documentary we’re watching that it is a political act because AF1 is a symbol of our freedoms; “…it belongs to the American people.” That strikes me as a facile and disingenuous cover for a piece of marketing. One YouTube commenter sums his thoughts on the piece; “Marc Ecko is a douche.”

Satchi LA (I think they said LA) is getting an award for a campaign for the Toyota Yaris. The presenter from Satchi said they were trying to be, “both laser focused and dropping H-bombs.” They did some stuff for E3, some Street Fighter tournament, some TV (only Lost and Prison Break), video on mobile phones, a video-game-in-a-banner, and a comic book. It’s clever.

That’s all she wrote. For my part, I think I’m gonna get outta here and go see ground zero.

Good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow.

Scott is telling us that a cultural focus on ideas is part and parcel of the new agency. “We’ve all heard about value pricing, but ad agencies are largely executioners.” Of course, he’s also using his keynote as an opportunity to show us some of the work his firm has done lately. We’re watching an ad for Heineken now. How unexpected.

He just pointed to The Department of Doing, an NZ firm that is similar to bigwidesky in many ways. They’re an idea shop that partners with agencies to develop the marketing ideas. Oh, and he just used the word, “impactful.” Ugh.

Scott’s thesis is basically this: Ideas, Value, Talent.

Now he’s talking about UGC (user-generated content for those of you lucky enough to have avoided all the marketing blogs.) His prediction is user generated products. He points to this initiative for Microsoft, which I presume his firm created. Where I might like to hear some theoretical support of his user-generated products conjecture, he is instead giving examples. He’s now pointing to CrowdSpirit.

Here’s his grand finale: Ideas will change the world. He’s pointed to Al Gore, Bono’s Red Products, and The World Council For New Thinking. It’s a very democratic utopian vision. Everyone is included. Everyone offers their ideas. He suggests this will solve many of the world’s ills; cure AIDS and cancer, end war, etc.

Session 1: Reality Check – a panel of industry peeps are about to discuss the question of integration. The program notes point out that integration is the unrealized holy grail. Alex Wipperfurth is on the panel. I’m most interested in his thoughts. He wrote Brand Hijack, one of the books we’ve added to Ex Libris.

So the upshot of that session seems to be the following:

So, as you can see, there was great consensus and clarity.

Now it’s a session on “Design.” Ostensibly some interesting cats on the panel, although they haven’t said a word yet. Waiting for the long-winded moderator to finish lionizing the panel.

So it’s “design” as a proxy for the discussion of integration apparently. Although more than anything it seems to be an opportunity for the panel to show off the design work their various firms have done. I wish there was something more profound I could say about it, but it’s just a slide after slide of admittedly some beautiful design.

“I don’t think anyone cares about design. They just care about using things simply.”, “No one should know the designer’s name.”, “When the water bottle is easy to hold and use, that’s design.” Don’t know the panelist’s name. Now the panel is debating utility/usability vs. aesthetics. Finally some action!

One bloke is suggesting that he wants an iPhone even though he doesn’t even really know what the usability/utility/rational value is because the phone hasn’t even been released. He says it’s because he has an emotional connection to the brand.

Probably 20% of the males in attendance have shaved heads and/or intimidating specs.

The “one bloke” who was covetting the iPhone is Nicholas Utton, CMO of E*TRADE. They’re circling the question as to whether design is a function of engineering or aesthetics.

Audience questions. They’re attacking the dude from The Apartment. He’s the guy that suggested that the peeps don’t care about design. His name is Stefan Boublil. He’s being challenged by the audience as to whether people really care about design. One person says, “My wife just texted me from Sax. She’s asking me about some nuance in the design of a pair of jeans. You telling me she doesn’t really care about the design?” His response is pretty slippery – he’s now conflating delight and utility. “If I’m delighted by the design of a product, isn’t that a utility?” Which is actually a conflation I suppose I welcome. If utility and aesthetics are conflated, maybe we can move beyond the mere dichotomous description thereof.

Some students from the VCU Adcenter are schooling the assembled ad wonks about consumer generated marketing. While they’re not saying anything that isn’t present in the marketing blogosphere, they have been taking it to the adsters. They had a quote from an Ad Age guy about how great the super bowl ads were this year followed by quotes from some of the blogs, one of which was, “If this is the pinnacle of conventional advertising, the reckoning is at hand.”

Just spoke with Alex Wipperfurth of Plan B. He’s the author of Brand Hijack that was in the Integration panel. He proved to be a very congenial gent. I told him about Ex Libris and he was very positive. He even made some suggestions about books to add. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a book on me that he hasn’t read.

Panel on “Madison & Vine,” which is the wholly unpretentious nomenclature industry peeps use to refer to the intersection of advertising and entertainment. Mike Fischer, General Manager, USA Marketing, Xbox USA, is one of the panelists. So there’s been plenty of mention of the CGC games on Xbox live and the set of Xbox games from Burger King.

They’re talking YouTube. It’s a redux of the Citizen Marketing Hater discussion on Brand Autopsy. The one where David Jones, global CEO of Euro RSCG, said that most of the stuff on YouTube is rubbish. That sentiment is being advanced by the panel. One panelist said, “YouTube was cool, like, last year. But now you can’t even find what you’re looking for.” Another commented that there are 40,000 pieces of content uploaded to YouTube per day and therefore no one of them is particularly relevant. The only one who spoke well of YouTube was the Xbox guy, who was alluding to Machinima and other UGC that Xboxers upload to YouTube. He said they’re trying to work the ability to make Machinima and the like into the games.

Session 4 – Luanne Calvert, Creative Director at Google, and Hashim Bajwa, Digital Planning Director at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners present, “Integrating Technology and Freeing Creativity”

They’re talking about this “Why Use Gmail?” video on YouTube. Each “act” in this video is used as a video and elsewhere on the web. Given that the discussion is about “freeing creativity,” I can’t say that this piece necessarily redounds to that notion. But hey, they said it worked, so who am I to criticize.

The upshot seems to be that the depth of knowledge, tracking, metrics type stuff that the internet introduces is a powerful way to improve the quality of creative. They mentioned an online video campaign they did for Saturn. They noticed that a large number of people stopped watching the video right before it got to the actual sell. Voile! Make the video better by responding to this data.

Some VCU Adcenter students are prefacing the next panel on “Technology.” Pretty good stuff. They’re calling attention to the fact that marketers can’t seem to break themselves of the desire to insert ads into every medium they can find. Mobile phone services, to which users are attracted by merit of their speed and lack of ads are being targeted now. As these students suggest, marketers are trying to corrupt new mediums before users have a chance to appreciate their uncorrupted form.

So far, this panel seems to be about how much fear and loathing exists in the industry regarding technology.

The panel disputes the fear and loathing thing. One panelist said, “Who is afraid of their toaster?”

Well, the laptop battery died and all the power outlets were taken, so I couldn’t blog the last session. Suffice to say the last session was somewhat lackluster. Paul Woolmington of Naked said some good stuff about the changing landscapes, but I don’t remember exactly what. More tomorrow.

“The ad is consistent with what’s acceptable in the Japanese marketplace,” a spokesperson from MLB International said in the report. “We did approve it with him drinking the beer outside of his uniform. It’s a type of commercial that is really commonplace in Japan. It is not really that farfetched.”
Though the ad may adhere to the law, the Red Sox are concerned with how it will look to have shots of their hot acquisition drinking beer juxtaposed with images of him in uniform.
“It is a perception,” Blake said in the report, “and we certainly want our players to be perceived in the right light.”

Oh, really? The “right light?” This is transparent bullshit. What an exquisitely sensitive bunch of milquetoast slack wits we’ve become. Here’s my proof that Sox management is demonstrating their unprincipled perfidy.

As may be obvious, I take no issue with Daisuke’s ad or the uptick in beer sales at Fenway. I only wish we collectively had the stomach to tell the handwringing, Calvinistic, moral scolds where to stick it.

Imagine the sum total of human knowledge as something of an inkblot.

Lest the above figure be allowed to imply otherwise, the “stuff we don’t know” is potentially infinitely large. I created the figure with a focus on “stuff we know.” I did this because, in the context of the Jobs/Woz symbiosis, I’m most interested in the boundaries between the known and the unknown.

The stuff we know is comforting. Routine, convention, repeatability; this is the character of that which provides comfort to the greatest number of people. The stuff we don’t know is scary to the greatest number of people. But this is not universal. There is a small minority of people who find comfort in the unknown; people who seek it out. Actually, this distinction falls along a continuum that looks something like this:

Individuals aren’t monolithic either. Even those who cling fiercely to tradition and dogma find an occasional hunger for novelty and vice-versa. Because I am essentially one big digression-in-action, I’d like to mention that I’ve noticed, with some irony, that many who fancy themselves “mavericks” are really little more than caricatures thereof. Like the majority of, say, the baby-boomers. With their Harleys and leather jackets, the whole Dennis Hopper-wannabe lot of them spend considerable effort and energy to evince what amounts to a hollow iconoclasm. Marvy. Fab. Far out.

My point is that the greatest majority of people live closest to the center of the inkblot. The further to the edge you travel, the fewer the occupants. This distribution is owed not only to the reptile-brain comfort of the known and fear of the unknown. It is also a reflection of the degree of erudition and refinement of knowledge necessary to travel to the edges of the blot. To wit; if we limit the blot to “stuff we know about mathematics,” the center of the blot will comprise basic arithmetic and as you travel toward the edge you encounter propositional calculus, number theory and so on. To posit completely new mathematical knowledge, one must have first traversed a considerable path of increasing mathematical sophistication. Thus, the paucity of inhabitants at the edge of the blot is not only a function of discomfort but also of erudition.

These edge-dwellers live in the thin air of the mountain-top. The austere panorama with which they grow to find resonance is not the tableau encountered by those in the thick of the inkblot. They are the Wozes—the pioneers—and they are most commonly nerds of the highest order. They will corner you at a party for an uncomfortably long stretch, invade your personal space, and wax passionate about quantum computing. Herein lies the rub. How can new ideas—and more importantly, their everyday implications—become known and useful to the widest audience?

This is where Jobs comes in. David Hume wrote of the divide between the “Learned” and the “Conversible.” This is a somewhat imperfect analog to the continuum I’m describing. Steve Jobs is not squarely within either of these camps. He rather stands astride both. His prefrontal cortex is big enough to assimilate the requisite nerd knowledge, and his ego is big enough to comprise the necessary charisma to sell said knowledge.

This is a tenuous and necessary thread that ties novelty to orthodoxy. Left to their own devices, the orthodox would happily maintain existing structures even in the face of changing circumstances. Only novel solutions can solve novel problems. As Einstein famously said;

We need Wozes that obtain that next level and we need Jobses to imbue new solutions with charm and make them digestible.

“Clients think of the firm as a way to make long-shot bets without having to use their own research and development resources. “Samsung is a lean organization. We can’t afford to have people coming up with ideas that don’t work,” says Chief Marketing Officer Gregory Lee. “The people at Fahrenheit are very helpful because they are working on ideas that can fail–it allows you to experiment a bit.” What’s more, Fahrenheit ties much of its compensation to the success of the product, making it an even safer bet.”

I think the focus on innovation that the marketplace has been entertaining for the last several years presages more and more of these kinds of enterprises. Back when we were starting bigwidesky, my partner Mike told me of a survey of the clients of ad agencies he’d read in which the single biggest gripe was that the agencies weren’t bringing any powerful ideas. I, for one, am happy to sidle up and fill that hole with the most amazing ideas we can concoct. Clearly, we’re not the only ones with this ambition.

A very accomplished, well-known and respected ad guy spoke in St. Louis on Friday. I was in the audience. He was singing the praises of the Mark Ecko/Air Force One stunt. I asked him if the inauthenticity of the stunt (ie. that wasn’t really Air Force One) might make peeps feel like they’d been had.

He responded to the effect that it wasn’t inauthentic because it fit the brand.

Photo source: cedricklohou.wordpress.com