Being a copywriter, albeit a strategically-aware one, I’m a bit of a fish out of water here at the 4A’s Account Planning Conference. So I won’t analyze everything I’ve heard today, but I do have a few random observations I’d like to make:
If there’s one theme I heard constantly today, it’s that our industry, the media, and our world is in a permanent state of change now. Get used to it.
Apple and Starbucks are worshipped here. I’ve heard at least 3 separate presentations in which they’ve both been used as examples of great focused brands. Virgin and Target are highly thought of as well. I don’t disagree, but is there just a little bit of preaching to the choir here? I mean, I’m in a roomful of Starbucks-drinking Mac users, for the most part. If this were a convention of insurance sales reps, Apple would be a non-entity for most of them.
Al Gore and “An Inconvenient Truth” have been referenced a few times as well as an example of passionate, world-changing ideas. No mention of our current president and his single-minded messianic desire to remake the Middle East.
Gareth Kay of Modernista! and Mark Lewis of DDB San Francisco gave a great presentation of the “Seven Deadly Sins,” i.e., myths and misconceptions agencies and marketers have. But at one point, Gareth referenced Twitter and asked how many people in the room use it. Out of a room of 200 or so, maybe 3 or 4 raised their hands. No deep analysis of that, I just thought it was noteworthy.
More to come…
