A pity. Because it looks like an awful lot of fun there - back in the fictionalised 1960s. If you’re the whiskey swilling big swinging dick ad guy type that is.

Season 2 of Mad Men was every bit as good as the first. It wasn’t able to rely on the aesthetic (or advertising industry history lessons) as much as the first so it had to take us deeper into the characters. We fall in love… or loathe with a number of them this season.

It’s been picked up for a third season which can’t come quick enough for me.

You can play both against others in the room and (with yet another Wii game code) play with friends or strangers online. Its not really a battle Tetris - you just aim to get a group of lines removed at once to have them added to your opponents board. But fun nonetheless.

The random new one player games are worth a go but I can’t see myself return to the likes of the “tetris racing car” mini game.

At an easy 1200 wii points (about $20NZD) from the virtual console menu its a no brainer though.

A masterfully constructed play for fans of spine-tingling thrillers, Wait Until Dark ran for two years on Broadway and the West End in the Swinging 1960s. The movie, starring Audrey Hepburn, ranks with classics of controlled suspense such as Rear Window and Night Must Fall.

Oddly I’ve not seen the film - given it is my type of flick. But there were a number of “ahhh” moments in the film when various things occurred that I had seen referenced in movies/tv/internets I had seen.

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.

Not sure if there is an official tag, but i’ll guess mixx08: twitter, technorati.

official live blog

Post is just backwards by speaker not entirely. Only noting things of particular interest/novelty to me not taking notes.

Case Studies in Digital Video: Innovation & Monetization on the Outer Edges

Last session of the tract and the day.

Sam Chadha, Director of Marketing, Deodorants, Unilever
David Lang, President, North America, Mindshare Entertainment

I lose context when a case study uses a brand i don’t see in stores.

‘the rookie’ webisodes used director of photography and other staff from 24 to match the aesthetic to the campaign for… deodorant. (degree for men) the second series of the campaign occurred during writer’s strike so it helped keep the actual 24 franchise active.

fox liked the adverts so much they included them on the season box set.

Teresa Nord, Group Director, Engagement Management, Organic, Inc
Larry Gelfand, SVP Media Sales, NHL

yet another car case study. i must be in america. “crossover”… ok my context is lost totally. i’m just thinking music industry when i hear that term. having to google to keep up with vertical terminology and sub-brands here

get onto the bit where you used the internet ftw please!

ahh NHL network online promotion used. Hockey is another thing I don’t understand. I did download NHL 09 demo onto the PS3 the other day and tried it. Made no sense at all. Sort of get how Dodge used NHL site to promote but not very excited by execution. video = increased engagement? wowzer. yawn.

[Aside: why can't people embed videos in their ppt/keynote slides?! I hate the switch to another app or video input stiltyness]

Case Studies in Mobility: Innovation & Monetization on the Outer Edges

Second of 3 in the case study tract.

[aside: ratio of laptops has tipped towards Macs. ]

[aside: just remembered the awful music is courtesy of attendees controlling a pandora.com instance. I'm judging you people.]

i want to present from a sofa. that looks relaxing. it’d probably lesson my gesticulation as a bonus.

Maria Mandel, Senior Partner, Executive Director of Digital Innovation, Ogilvy
Noah Syken, Manager Media Planning and Sponsorship Advertising, IBM

IBM as a case study. Turns out they figured in advance that people won’t buy multi-million dollar servers via mobile devices. Smart.

[aside: almost snared a high heel with my powercord nest, ftw!]

pushing links out via SMS to make it easy to visit a site, versus advertising mobile URL for manual entry showed much greater uptake.

Derek Handley, Co-founder and CEO, The Hyperfactory

kind of cool case study for nike football boot using outdoor 3d barcodes and phone app.

hyperfactory started in nz btw. derek sounds like an expat. oh yep, google confirms.

Q&A

“mobile is still in ‘dialup days’”. “average age of a mobile user is 31″ - maria

“‘mobile is ‘the first screen’” for many in many countries (e.g. india). - derek

“emarketer predicted that by 2020 there will be double the content consumption on mobile than tv” - maria

can’t be bothered asking a question (as i hate people who ask questions but are really just trying to take the stage to make a point)… but mobile is a bad name… it sounds like it refers to a style of device with a relatively fixed feature set (sms, mms, calling, wap etc). not the idea of location-specific and aware content & services. yes in 2020 people will consume more on “mobile” than tv, but that’s because the devices will be markedly different. c.f. percent of “mobile” traffic that is iphone rapidly because of screen size and browser make browsing non-mobile sites possible.

pet hate: when people seem to imply a lack of determinism just because _they_ can’t show how one thing led to another. complexity != non-causal. (tracking ROI of spend)

seeing 2% mobile banner click through (versus 0.02 web). sounds like early web days to me… ads promised the best content as the net had few(er) sites so people clicked. (and we weren’t all bitter and twisted) that eventually fall as number of sites and search grew. same will happen as mobile web gets crowded.

moving to mobile plane ticketing in the usa?

Case Studies in Gaming: Innovation & Monetization on the Outer Edge

First of the case study tract.

Hoping to trip someone up with my macbook powercord stretched across the floor.

Joe Migliozzi, Group Planning Director, MindShare Interaction
Dave Madden, Executive VP of Sales and Marketing, WildTangent, Inc.

Brand studies for sprint showed decent improvement off back of game advertising.

300 million online casual gamers versus 10-15 million “connected” console gamers.

Advertising supported online games… where the adverts themselves are games. Ohhhhh k.

Brian Bos, Senior Vice President, Convergence Director, Mindshare - Team Detroit
Ken Simon, Regional Sales Manager, Massive

Mr Massive… waaaay too sales pitchy. Pull it back.

Ford campaign case study.

their “banners” are specific creative for gaming not re-use. In the past used gamer lingo (e.g. frag) this campaign “recalled old school gaming”.

used “no 2-bit punk” as a tag line, to refer to 8/16/32 bit console etc. but huh there were no so called 2-bit consoles? i must be missing something.

problem for ford with marketing as car model names aren’t global - but moving forward they will be.

QA with all of the above

Casual gamer targeting: based on type of game you can learn a lot about a person.

“they’re not that dude in his mother’s basement… not that there’s anything wrong with that” - Ken

runescape - the game of choice for middleschoolers evidently.

Reaching Your Audience Where They Are - Mobilize Your Brand

David Katz, Vice President, Mobile Advertising and Publishing, Yahoo!, Inc.

hand show…healthy mix of brand advertisers, agencies, ad networks and other…folk in the room.

now have a souljah boy song stuck in my head (”my siidekick…my sidekick”)

“not everyone realises that most every phone sold has internet”… (colloquially most phone owners don’t realise their phones have it, or how to use it - which is the real issue. )

60+% of couples won’t share phone with their spouse. A similar proportion of kids won’t share with their parents. Hmm!

Feeling like he could have given this same talk about web advertising in 96.

People use mobile for 3 things - communication, find specific information (e.g. bus time) or to kill 5-10 minutes.

1 yahoo! ad too many.

“refresh the creative”… as users will come back many times.

[aside: pet hate when people describe hyperlinked content as being interactive. not unless its a pick-a-path and barely then people! its just passive content chunked up. interactive means something different.]

The End Is Near: How the Next Generation of Behavioral Targeting Will Change Traditional Advertising as We Know It

Matt Wise, President & CEO, Q Interactive

Bit of a behavioural targeting 101. And no mention of how creative optimisation fits into the mix - just placement targeting mentioned. I probably should have asked…

Reinventing: Next-Generation Metrics

Young-Bean Song, Sr. Director Atlas Institute, Microsoft Advertising

[aside: wifi is free but ad supported by superclick, who seem a little evil. of course firefox is blocking the popups. ironic at an advertising conference.]

neon sign example to illustrate the “last ad clicked” metric is great.

94% of touchpoints beyond the last click.

22% increased conversion on search ads if the user has viewed a display ad.

power failing..luckily i’ve already read the engagement mapping report.

sponsored search as navigation… yup sad but true. click on organic listings people! and bookmark or remember URLs! come on! 60% of search clicks are brand name or URL of advertiser… 50% of users re-use a search as navigation. i.e. 71% of search is navigational overall.

“winners and losers in the purchase funnel” - new study out this week. (wider set of advertisers than original, 500). note to self: locate and read.

music, city guide, auto, games and travel content sites have much greater performance under engagement mapping (but are relatively under credited by last ad clicked)

Inventing: The CMO’s Calculus

Michael Linton, SVP & CMO, eBay, Inc.

Plays on the school teacher introduction. FAIL reaction from crowd.

Disappointing, no actual calculus in “cmo calculus”. For a minute I thought High School calc was finally going to get used.

The ugly ebay logo and brand makes for ugly slides. So close to 80s/nu rave aesthetic - yet so far.

“marketing is the only public function” of a company. i.e. people will come up to you at BBQs and discuss your marketing. He thinks (e.g.) people won’t come up to the cio and talk tech a company uses. umm… ok so I move in IT circles too and know that isn’t true.

hey there, don’t hassle the crowd’s participation level. (we’re in the backchannels making the fun)

“no company is in the same place in the process. they used to be.”

‘ready, fire aim’ (is a good thing)…(reminds me i always seem to (accidently) say ‘lights, action, camera’ when doing a hollywood setup pun.) ‘if it feels like it might be within 70% right, i’ll do it’… ‘false precision”. nice.

make ROI accountable for as a whole, not for each tool - risk of killing new tools/activities otherwise.

well that’s no good… I don’t have any bestbuys in my country. (exclusive rolling stone dvd) ahem.

iab interruption

oh yes the logo _has_ changed. the website may have too. but the wifi is running slow so i can’t be bothered checking it out.

ah the logo was a freebie. nuff said.

note to self: check out their pamphlet thingummies.

Morning tea break

but no tea to be found. actually i didn’t check. but what’s the chance of their being soymilk? without soymilk - its not tea (for me). bottled “fiji” water instead. tastes like violent uprisings.

Administration FAIL on trying to re-enter conference room. I had been printed the wrong type of pass. Minor “aiiie” moment ensued in my head before going downstairs to rectify issue. All sorted.

Reinventing: Relationships for a New Era

Tim Armstrong, President, Advertising and Commerce, North America, & Vice President, Google Inc.
David Kenny, Managing Partner, VivaKi

Publicis and Google relationship. “5 things we must conquer collaboratively”.

Sometimes when people say “good morning” at conferences they say it in such a way that they channel a school teacher and I expect a chorus of voices to chime back.

Dubious claim: 2k bubble was “good for the industry” as it shook out bad business models?

“digital is going to invade…[all the usual suspects] and TV” - Tim. I was hoping for an annexing myself.

Publicis’ issue they discussed with Google early on was the amount of time spent on operational issues. 40-50% of time.

David echos call about TV. Not “traditional” digital (just).

“how long does it take someone to spend a dollar online [on advertising] and can we speed that up” - Time. Because digital actually slows this down with all the technical and measurement inputs it adds.

Ad placement is far too people intensive currently - David. “We’d hope the digital revolution would automate things, but it made things worse”. Google went inside publicis to see their processes were to match tools to these.

“remarkably helpful to live in each other’s shoes” - David on sending staff to Google.

Evidently mobile is big in Japan?

Ad units on youtube mobile. Note to self to check out.

[aside: whats with all the Windows laptops here? Not that there are that many laptops out actually yet]

Large photo of iphone on screen. Android mentioned lots to compensate.

Big things that will move brands to the web = social - David. They have seen ability to move brand feelings more through social web than anything else. “the challenge is… there are no ad units”. Claims, “more powerful than any advertising medium to date”.

[aside: just got emailed about a blackberry app for the conference to follow blog. nice.]

“data can lead to a vast improvement in creativity” - tim. amen. “the end of the project is not a data dump, but a creative solution”.

Inventing: Interactive Shapes a New CMO

Deborah Meyer, Vice President & CMO, Chrysler LLC

Tough in the auto industry… Hey try gas prices in new zealand!

80% of car buyers go online to start their car shopping experience. (only 80%?!)

“Awareness is overrated”. Web based engagement to improve opinion is much more important.

Scary metaphor in the post hadron collidor world: Consumers are acting like an “energy vortex” online - when they’re ready for a certain type of information, they open - its up to brand to identify these and pour in relevant content.

Best car tvc disclaimer ever, “no performance modifications” (Dodge webisodes). ramchallenge.com. Or do I just not watch car TVCs and they say this all the time?

Pushing upwards of 30 messages into market online and optimising which of these work best across campaign.

i find internal tools are often more interesting than people’s external tools/marketing. “customer advisory board” - chrysler tool for keeping in touch with dealerships.

Q: Aoes “leaving awareness behind” mean you can’t build brand online?
A: Yes… but differently.

Q: Dodge RAM. What makes them think their market place is online?
A: Every segment they surveyed (all age groups also) 80% start online. So yes.

Randall Rothenberg, President & CEO, Interactive Advertising Bureau

Conference theme, “Invention & Reinvention”

New IAB brand. Global friendly?

TXT “mixx” plus question to 88398 for presenter questions.

Request from IAB CEO for blogging to be gentle….we’ll see