Click Conference

It's all conferences here at the moment. Here is a write up of 'Click' Creative Review's 4th annual european online creative advertising forum by Grant Hunter, CD or iris London...



Go here for the line up and here for the NY equivalent (much nicer website)

A merry iris band of Fourie (diggi guru), Torri (Moving image specialist) and I ventured North from Sunny Southwark to the squalor of SoHo for Creative Review's 4th Click event.

From my POV it's yet again an over priced industry conference with a tired format in a tired venue with crappy sandwiches that wouldn't look out of place at a wedding reception in Stockport. For 600 quid we weren't going to chance the fayre at lunch so we opted for Hamburger Union around the corner - I'll be sending Patrick (editor of CR) the bill.

That said the quality of speakers was good and there were a number of interesting thoughts flying around. I've tried to capture some of them.

Here are my rambling notes - I've divided it up into a couple of digestable
parts:


PART ONE

First Up Graham Fink the chairman who introduced the day's events. He had obviously had a serious smoke the night before as he got us all to close our eyes and meditate for 2 minutes - Far out. His hair was nice though and his colourful watch even better - where did you get that watch Mr Fink???

Michael Lebowitz CEO of Big Spaceship talked about cultivating creativity. He was a really passionate guy who is obviously frustrated by the old dinosaur agencies and the way they work. Particularly the way they treat his company as a production resource.

He described BS as a digital creative agency innovating where brands and consumers meet

His main point revolved around the importance of culture and how building a team who click and know how each other works is so important. When growth happens you fill roles rather than adding the right people.

He had a number of lookouts when building a creative agency:

- Everyone's a creative - don't use the word creatives. In fact his take is if you're not creative you can't work on his Big Spaceship.

- Don't hire assholes - no matter how talented they destructive influence ain't worth the risk

- Be the dumbest person in the room. Give autonomy.

- Small is good - but it's really hard to resist growth.

- Reward the person rather than just the wallet

- And experiment constantly

I recognised his frustrated ambition and it was great to see someone talking about the need to collaborate. Forget the big knob egos of adland - they're outdated. He described the way Big Spaceship works as similar to the way architects or software engineers work - I agree it has to be a group effort where you build on an idea and harness the expertise you have around you.

Tony Hogqvist of Perfect Fools was full of enthusiasm and talked through his Social footprint. He then showed a number of work examples including Be &0 today for AMF/F&B, Mentos, Kiss and the unloader for Nokia.

He made a sound point around social networks - as Facebook sells out to advertising/brands it's forgetting it's a private space. Because we're living human beings we will move. It's just like a cool bar if we don't like the place we'll move on.

Another tit bit I quite liked is "should viral be called voluntary"?????

Next up was Flo Heiss from Dare talking about Johnny x for Sony Ericsson. He presented in a really engaging Bavarian way. They spanked 1.5 million on the production. They shot in Bangkok and created 9 episodes 20 minutes in length. They went from idea to final delivery in 8 weeks. The films look great but I'm kind of left with a sense of why would I bother watching - he admitted that the 6 million viewers didn't see the whole 9 episodes. It feels like an extended tv ad online posing as a film - no data capture, no real conversation created .

Alasdair from Filter talked about mobile. His main point revolved around the 3rd screen (your mobile screen) is actually the first screen now. In the uk there are more phones than people - 1.2 cell phones to every person. So it's flipped from the TV screen being the daddy. He also pushed for content specific created for the small screen rather than existing stuff reconfigured.

A panel debate followed around a code for giving credit where credit is due.

There was a lot of chat around big name agencies (no names mentioned... Crispin) who have used small creative shops to produce work and then not credited them. They also discussed the fact that awards entry forms only have four fields for creative credits and big agencies tend to grab the spotlight. Freelance talent was also felt to be overlooked when it came to award recognition.

One thought that occurred to me is rather than an agency putting their name down why couldn't you create a project team name and that becomes the name entered in the agency fields - it could be a bit like the crew working on a feature film with a long list of credits - Ultimately as an industry we're still too obsessed by awards - they shouldn't be the driver but as creative types we need our egos massaged - we need to show off and tell our mums that we did that - I suppose that's just being human. The best recognition is people talking about the stuff you've done in the street or down at the pub - not the nobs in adland.

To quote Grant exactly..."if I can be arsed I'll type up the second part". We wait.