Today was unconventional but very much enjoyed.
It started out with a meeting with a woman from Interscope Records. Her job is to put artists with brands that they want t represent. She does this with a very small team of people and she tried to match the artists with brands that they can really get behind and not just any old brand. She said that in her industry social media is a huge plus because right after an event, they can see what people thought of it. She was genuine and very technology oriented.
I went to catch the tail end of the seminar led by Piers Morgan and containing our next group speaker, David Simon. I missed the beginning but when I arrived they were talking about how Twitter could be used to attract viewers if used in the correct manner. David thinks that the internet isn’t helping because getting everything you want when you want it is great, but the quality is going downhill. He said that life and stories are more complicated than Twitter can handle and I would have to agree with that statement. One good is that you can have longer stories online because there aren’t space constrictions. Newspapers also messed up when they didn’t start out charging for their content. People don’t want to pay for it now but the newspaper needs to protect its copyright and pay its journalists and staff. TV started out free and now charges because of the content… I don’t really understand how this is different from the paper charging for online news… TV is different though because most people can watch it on a portable device anywhere. I’m sure this seminar had more of a message that I missed in the beginning but it was entertaining.
We then took a nice short stroll to the Majestic Hotel so meet with David Simon in person. He is quite cynical but it was refreshing to have someone tell you how they really feel, not how they think you want them to feel. He tends to write darker shows that do not attract a lot of advertising. He’s lucky to have an organization like HBO supporting him so that he can actually write the way he wants to write. HBO writing can be different than regular TV writing because success doesn’t depend on the number of eyeballs watching the show. He tends to write how events and society are actually going, not the happy, sunny, everything is perfect television that most people like to watch. When he worked for regular TV, he used to get asked to make the scenes “happier.” He went on to talk about how New Orleans was destroyed because of the government and saved by its own culture. New Orleans culture is the only real product of America in Simons view because it is the one thing that could not have been created anywhere else. He gave us life advice in eleven words: fuck the money, leave the world better than you found it. I love that he said this and I wish that he had said this on the panel to a room full of agencies trying to out party each other this week.
After this experience, we made our way back to wait for the Leo Burnett seminar. This one was about brands keeping up with the language. Two types of language were mentioned: brand that speak consumer and brands that speak human. Brands that speak consumer speak stock holder speech and won’t fair well in the future whereas brand that speak human are humorous, interesting and they have to really know their humans to make the connection. First, the company needs to focus on the human purpose of the brand – what do people want from it? How can it improve their lives? They used the Eos example from Canon where they created a sharing website for photographers of all levels complete with online gallery space, tips, advice from professionals, etc. Another example was New York Rewrites Itself. In this campaign, Leo Burnett has people go around NY and take in events witnessed and heard. They compile this and encourage people to view it and be inspired. One of my favorite things that had been over heard was “don’t white knuckle the ideas.” I could be completely wrong, but to me that means don’t be so afraid of the ideas that you don’t let them take shape. This seems to be a common principle throughout the festival so the fact that it appeared in a current campaign really stuck with me. They also emphasized that the brand has to live its purpose and in can only do so through acts. The example used for this was the fronts made from Gandhi’s glasses to try to continue to unite all of the Indian cultures.
This was the last seminar of the day and we’re heading to the Google Beach and then the Microsoft Party… more to follow tomorrow J
xoxo
Kitty
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