Day One

Attended: Adobe: Creativity vs. Data, Arianna Huffington and the Zeitgeist, Droga5, Visa & TBWA and a bit of K-POP to round off the day 

The days are very full here and its hard to find time to sit between seminars to write, so before my next seminar starts I'm going to try and sum up a few take out points from each of the sessions I attended yesterday- I Hope I do them justice! 

After a quick registration and a rummage through our goodie bags we all headed to the first session of the day. Adobe hosted a panel-based (Ann Lewnes, Jim Stengel, Jon Vein, Linus Karisson) seminar on data and creativity working together. One of the take out points for me on this was a reminder of the myriad of ways we can use media to manifest creative ideas and this is where data and creativity can complement each other. This session helped to maintain the (sometimes) Entente cordiale between creativity and data and re-enforced the importance of applying good judgement to data. Something that I’ll be applying the next time I’m running a routine task is to “look for anomalies in your data an investigate the abnormalities as that’s where the story lies”.

Still in the Debussy theatre and on to Arianna Huffington identifying three emerging trends- reminding us to “reconnect, recharge and resonate”. Part of her presentation focused on the trend of disconnecting from the world in order to recharge offline and then reconnect. Ironically, she then identified the selection of  apps available in the market to help us do just that and unveiled The Huffington Posts own addition to this sector- GPS for the soul.

Here’s Arianna in action

After a spot of recharging of my own in the Mobile Marketing tent I headed back for what was probably my most inspiring session of the day – The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation who last year put a challenge out to the world to re-design the toilet to help impoverished communities improve their access to basic sanitation. They presented their two best proposals – one, the Lego Toilet made loos out of biodegradable bricks- the speaker and designer Antonio Avila, spoke about being inspired to make the bricks look like Lego so that they can be easily assembled when he was playing with his nieces and made the point that when we look around us we are more likely to find inspiration from unlikely sauces. #knowmore!

Onto Visa and TBWA – A great example of a global campaign that also manages to be local and through some smart media planning also manages to appear reactionary and local – mirroring the two pillars of the brand. They shared new spots for the Go World campaign, which, with 38 days to go until London 2012, I’m sure will be a hit for them once again.  The spot I’ve link to was played in the break following Michael Phelps Gold Medal win – timely!

More creativity followed in the form of a master class by Droga5 Executive creative director Ted Royer who gave his 10 rules and advise for working in advertising and also ran a really interesting Q&A session afterwards (credit to him for running it all while still being candid in front of his client!) My favourite piece of work he shared with us pieces of work shared us was the creation of copywriter Graham Douglas who had the idea of enclosing a bone marrow test kit (which only needs a drop of blood) into a plaster (or band aid) pack. Such a simple idea which has done some real good in the world, which I guess is the aim!

I finished off the day with a foray into the frankly baffling and slightly troubling world of K-POP which also had a wider message about the growing and conquering Korean Market and the indomitable Korean spirit (Tu Hon!)

  

The Palais des Festivals was nearly over run with fans trying to see this girl group 2ne1

Something I may need a little bit of to get me through the Young Lions party tonight!