Not only did I get to see some old friends [as well as some even older enemies] I got to listen to a bunch of bloody brilliant, interesting and inspiring speakers. What I particularly liked was that there was a lot of contrasting views, which meant the audience got breadth, as well as depth, and I always think that is hugely valuable because then you are forced to make your own mind up, not just rely on what you’re repeatedly hearing.
I have to say I especially loved Jess from Contagious, Chaz from BBH, Jeffery Cole and Agnello from Taproot.
In Agnello’s case, he is the humble father of the wonderful ‘Times Of India’ campaign – an idea that is genuinely impacting the culture of an entire country. He also told us why the client ran it, despite knowing it would never sell them another paper.
“News is competitive. By doing this work, they knew it would give them the credibility to ensure they always would be the first media group invited into the room”.
Brilliant and a perfect demonstration that if the client feels you are addressing their business objective, they’ll be less hands on in terms of the work produced. Though he did also deal with the CEO rather than the Marketing Director which flows with Andy’s view the Marketing Director is dead, long live the CEO.
[See Andy, I credited you with something other than insulting me]
I enjoyed doing my preso.
I think it went down well, even if I slagged off some work in front of the people who created it … oops!
But hey, I didn’t do it to be nasty, I had issues with it and explained why. Besides, I wouldn’t waste my pettiness on something like that, I’ve got people who really deserve it and hopefully tomorrow, I’ll be able to hand deliver it via another preso.
Now are you sitting down?
Are you?
Well the thing is, I’ve written a new preso.
I know … I know … but it’s true and get this, it has 95% new pictures AND new words.
What the hell has got into me eh!
Anyway, it’s for the Big Thinking competition – like the one the APG run in the UK – however the only reason I agreed to do it is because being a Brit, I have no chance of any Aussie ever voting for me so I can have a bit of fun with zero pressure. To be honest, I’m very glad about that, because if I was taking it seriously, I’d be shitting myself because not only have I been placed in the business category, but I’m up against the fucking awesome Justin Baird from Google who could beat Einstein in his sleep.
In classic planner wankdom, my preso is called ‘Specialisation Leads To Limitation’ [take a deep breath Andy. Breathe!] and if you really are interested to see it [mainly so you can laugh at how bad and simplistic it is … even though in typical ‘Campbell’ fashion, there’s hardly any words on the slides to guide you through it so it’ll probably make even less sense than the poor buggers who have to hear me blathering through it, though I’ve added some words just to ease the pain a teensy bit] you just have to scroll down.
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[If it’s too small to read, you can see it better here]
Told you it was new.
Impressive eh! No, I didn’t think so either.
Anyway, as much as I am loving the conference, the big, Big, BIG news for me is that I’m going to be [hopefully] meeting Lauren for the first time today.
Swear-a-lot and tat lady.
I don’t know how long I’ve known her, but I am incredibly excited … though as I said to her, she’ll probably break her leg on the way and the whole thing will end up not happening.
Anyway we’ll see how we go, but with hopefully Lauren today and Rob M and Northern in a few weeks, 2011 is shaping up to be the year my virtual reality because reality.
You poor, poor bastards.