Day 2. Morning yawning. Camping over a power socket.
What’s the 90s-ish “intelligent” drum n bass tune in the opening credits reel? Total head nodder.
Oh look footage from yesterday. Yay for quick turn around editing. To a daft punk remix. Nice.
Wrap-up
Nice one all! 
Reinventing: The Self
Scott Donaton (Moderator), Publisher, Entertainment Weekly
Matt Freeman, CEO, GoFish
Alec Gerster, Chief Marketing Officer, Navic Networks
David Verklin, CEO, Canoe Ventures
Why did they leave their jobs? “[someone at stanford said] you need to be re-potted every 10 years. maybe i just need to go out and get potted” - David
“6 months post-natal, hopefully you’ll never see a diaper commercial ever again” - David on targeted TV ads.
David sounds bitter about 30 years of kissing client’s ass, “i really don’t miss the agency business”. 
“came from the digital side of the business where I think alot of the future talent is going to come from”
“we never saw a problem we didn’t think a 30 second tvc could solve”
“the who’s your online agency and who’s your offline agency question is sounding very anachronistic” - Alec
Inventing: Transmedia
Tim Kring, Executive Producer/Creator, “Heroes”
Best video of the conference. Heroes trailer. Missed it on TV last night.
Really need to read the Heroes online comics. Still.
IAB CEO just went all comic fanboy. Cute.
Kring went out to create a property that wasn’t solely driven by TV and the nielsen boxes. Wanted to create a show which dealt with the big issues facing us in the future and the usual TV show scenarios didn’t suit - so scifi/comic/superheroes. This was designed from the inception, “baked into the DNA” which is why it can do all the things it does online well.
Transmedia = reaching across multiple platforms to tell a story - Tim. Reaching people wherever they are. The most exciting bit of a transmedia property is when the tentacles start feeding off each other e.g. character that was web only turns up on show.
Was very concious had to get credibility in the comic space. Tested ideas on an “expert” friend to see if he was ripping anyone off, turned out he was ripping everyone off
Showed pilot at comiccon - drove traffic to an unofficial-official site which had tools for creating your own site - 200 were created as a result.
Heroes is huge internationally it appears.
Heroes very expensive - NBC brought Nissan to the show. Kring had an internal fight with himself wheher to be the grumpy writer whose vision is being spoiled or the pragmatic producer. He went back to them and asked them to tell him how they fitted his vision. Again he said it had to be baked into the show not just “placed”. Worked well integrated into story and done humorously - relationships still going in 3rd season.
Is (happily) resigned to the ratings for the show dwindling as people find better ways to watch it other than at 9pm on Mondays.
Oh oh oh he mentioned ARGs. And the idea of creating a game then community then generating storylines and eventually a tv show off of this.
“Lays awake at night” thinking about the Heroes community and what to do with it. “the crass commercial side of me says what else can i sell to them? another show? but the better part of me thinks you can take a show which is all about saving the world and do something great with the community”
save the cheerleader, save the world!
Are Advertisers Becoming Media Companies?
Yes/No/Maybe.
“there’s nothing wrong with drinking the kool aid, in fact you should”
ooooooooo k.
Private-Label Ad Networks for Publishers & Advertisers: Solution or Distraction?
Andrew Q. Kraft (Moderator), General Manager, AMP™ Technology Solutions, Collective Media
Christine Cook, Vice President, Digital Advertising Sales, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia
Andy Ellenthal, CEO, quadrantONE
Michael Lampert, Digital Strategy Director, OMD
Christine, “we had an obligation to curate the web for our audience”.
“you fail if you can’t go in and tell WHY not just WHAT the result was”. - Michael talking on actionable learnings, scalability, predictability.
Christine down on pop-up surveys for testing brand lift. And worries that money will all move away to response based creative because thats where the better data tools are.
Targeted advertising example just sounded like creepy stalking. FTL!
Reinventing: The Agency
A Fireside Chat with Andrew Robertson
Battery running flat and no powerpoint in sight… might have to go oldschool for notetaking on this one.
“the time to make change is when things are going well”
He doesn’t see there as being a need for a distinct “digital agency” but believes that if you don’t understand digital, whatever type of agency you are, you’re in trouble.
Believes that “non working media” budget apportioning unfairly accounts for (social/digital) media which isn’t placement based. And that there needs to be a line iteam, “working non media”, i.e. digital work which is socially distributed not placed. And that this is one of digital’s great strengths. Being able to reach the type and size audiences you could never previously buy if you talk to the consumer well.
Reinventing: Brands
Picture This - The Relaunch of an International Publishing Icon
Life relaunch announcement.
“second life” pun totally not needed.
How can an image be iconic if its never been seen by the public?
Life.com - joint venture of gettyimages and timeinc. Old images from 1800s up to current news images every day.
Ken burns effect for the yawn as they show off their images.
Completely underwhelming set of me-to photo browsing features. Neat.
Completely odd comment, to paraphrase, “i see you’re all looking entranced at the photos in the books we left on your seats… well wait till you see these photos online”. Umm… yes 72dpi totally trumps print every time…
Rubbing me up the wrong way by implying “professional photographers” and “editors” are necessary to create a great photography archive.
Oh ok, but there is some opportunity for user photo uploads. Then he mentions linking in your flickr stream but not being able to have your family photos on there.
3000 new photos from them every day.
Order a book with Life photo set personalised for you.
iphone app. oh dear - a picture puzzle game.
Reinventing: CBS
A Conversation with Leslie Moonves (Interviewed by Randall Rothenberg)
Talking about CBS buying CNET for $1.8b.
[aside: someone takes photo of Leslie on the video screen rather than on stage directly. post-modern oddness]
“interactivity on a local level becomes more and more important as we go down the line” - Randall.
“one of the most important things,we think, about the Internet, is that we’re taking money away from the newspapers” - Randall. Ah so TV don’t mind if the net cannibalizes some TV, as long as they can eat up some of the newspaper revenue to compensate?
Asked about whether TV would still own branding… question is dodged a little.
The most loyal TV show viewer still only watches 2 out of 4 episodes. (And they’ll go online to pick up the other episodes.) Ummm… this must be a new thing? Surely when people had no choice they had to make a greater effort to catch a show?
“Put your content everywhere” - Randall. “Everyone that tries to define themselves by, ‘thats the only place you can receive this content’ will be left behind”.
Oh oh he’s talking about Gossip Girl. Sorry… fan boy moment. Ratings were bad but they knew online watching was big. They pulled it offline for 6 weeks and ratings went further down. They put it back online and its up 40% this season. (Not sure how this really implicates online. I’m sure the box set being available over summer drove a lot of new found fans to season 2 also)
Randall talks about testing new TV shows by seeings 5 min mini-clips online.
“talking about the negative aspects of the Internet is like trying to put toothpaste back in the tube” - Randall.
Inventing: The Spontaneous Organization
Charlie Rose Interviews Clay Shirky
“something we pay too little attention to, the cultural implications of the web” - Charlie Rose. Indeed. (Contrasting to talking to the likes of Michael Arrington)
“new technologies are just new potential” - Clay.
“these things don’t get socially interesting till they get technologically boring”. - Clay.
“just spend enough time within the community that you have a native’s sense of it” - Clay. Ethnography FTW
Cross-discipline ideation gets respect from Clay.
Non-economic motivations for creating value? Social.
Clay suggests Wikipedia doesn’t compete with Britannica on a product level - it competes on a world view level - it is a whole different approach.
The Obama campaign has 20 webheads on their team? Nice, it shows.
Talking about Joss Whedon’s new show Doll House and how fans are already organising save-the-show campaigns before it launches! (And the fan’s think the Marketing department is the problem - organising their own marketing)
16 elements on an average amazon page which have a social aspect.
“What does Steve Jobs know that the rest of us don’t?” - Charlie. Again Clay says cross discipline understanding of him and his staff.
Listening to customers, “you have to keep your ear open, but you can’t take dictation”.
Charlie Rose slightly annoying me by asking Shirky to bring it down to a take-away for the audience, “beyond the big picture”. personally i’m one for having people understand the big picture, letting it distill and then have that just “come out” in their work. If you distill an idea down to the practical or take-away, as more than an example, you confine the idea.
“Don’t make your first foray into a community be to sell them a product.” - Clay. Make it to listen.
“Use the full force of your business as the HR, not just the one department.” - Clay
“Phony transparency is a catastrophe” - Clay. e.g. Johnson and Johnson’s web blog managed by 4 marketing managers and no product. Awesome comment policy fail.
Welcome - Opening Remarks
Wenda Harris Millard, President, Media & Co-CEO, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Chairman, IAB Board of Directors
“there simply aren’t enough people to fill all the jobs in this industry.” … Trained people that is.
Just a wrap up of yesterday.
“it doesn’t take long to read, which is a good thing” - on Clay Shirky’s book. Ahem.
Tags: advertising · interactive · internet · mixx08 · nyc