Sep
16
Brand Activation Conference Recap – Part I (Overview)
Filed Under Advertising, Digital Signage, Mobile, digital ooh, metrics
Last week, the Strategy Institute held their Brand Activation conference at the Bridgewater down by the Seaport in New York. I have to give it to them, they’ve done a great job in building up the quality of presenters and the right audience, although most of the crowd is STILL all Networks on one side and agencies on the other. When Stephen Randall, CEO of Locamoda, asked the crowd who was on the “agency” or advertiser side, only 2-3 people actually put up their hands. There were more than just 2 of course….I think most people on the demand side of the business just didn’t want to get rushed by 100 hungry networks at once.
Many agencies (Universal McCann, OMG, Zenith, Organic, Starcom, Carat, Kinetic), Media Sales Groups (ABC, Adcentricity, CBS, Clearchannel, NBC, SeeSaw) and Networks (OnSite, OMN, InnercityMedicine, CruiseMedia, this goes on for a while) and even Brands and retailers were in attendance (Nike, Best Buy)
On the whole, content was good and the “card swap-a-thon” was intense….I had some great conversations with a large number of folks and there was new faces, which is always good.
End of the day though, while some new players were in attendance (I was especially thrilled to see some of the Creative Media Directors start to show their faces – they’re where some of the great ideas come from), there was still a lot of the same folks who have been preaching the same message for a while from the agency side, saying the same message. Much of the agency position hasn’t changed (not that anyone should expect it too) but the same questions were being asked from new and old network alike. I sometimes wonder if the Demand side of our business feels like they’re no being heard at all.
Sadly, I was very involved in the sessions the first day, but got pulled into meetings most of the second. The first day was quite enjoyable. However, from those I spoke to, the morning of the 2nd day was apparently centered on “look at me, I’m important” self promoting type of sessions.
I’ll get around to posting on some of the sessions from the 1st day in follow up posts.
Some highlights:
- Media Leader’s Insights – Hanlon (Denuo), Schulman (imc2) & Glick (Zenith had some good things to say from the agency side on how to use the medium and their views on it (without the usual “why aren’t you buying” questions/answers built in)
- Some case studies came out of various sessions, which was nice to start to see
- Steve Randall (Locamoda) had a good presentation which I think made many think a little bit
- Lon (Access 360), Rob (Earthquake Media), Danny (Universal McCann) and Steve (Organic) had some interesting “Art v. Science” commentary during their “Where budgets are coming from now” session
Congrats to David, Christine and crew for the show! Follow up posts will highlight various sessions….stay tuned!
Sphere: Related Content
Print This Post
Email This Post
Get posts delivered to you by e-mail
Comments
2 Responses to “Brand Activation Conference Recap – Part I (Overview)”
Leave a Reply
-
Follow Me on Twitter Feeds
-
[...] to Rob Gorrie at Advertise Here for a recap of the Brand Activation Summit put on by the Strategy Institute last week. As I [...]
Sir -
It was great to see you again and thanks for the honest and candid feedback. We’ll continue to search for fresh viewpoints, speakers and case studies to further advance the digital OOH industry. I welcome any of your readers to get in touch with me any time.
Cheers,
Christie Liu
Conference Producer, Strategy Institute
liu[a]strategyinstitute.com