Monday the AdClub EDGE Conference rolled into town and consumed (see what I did there) the Institute of Contemporary Art. When I walked into the auditorium, The Ad Club’s Big Orange Couch was front-and-center, though it remained mostly untouched by the speakers, who elected to stand while presenting. (Sidenote: My coworker Paula pointed out the couch reminded her of our famous nap room couch here at SoftArtisans.)

Eleven speakers in rapid succession made for an engaging conference and a ton of fascinating insights surrounding the advertising realm including issues of privacy and big data. While the majority of the speakers focused on B2C marketing as opposed to B2B, (which is what we focus on with OfficeWriter) the insights proved to be extremely valuable. I wish I could cover it all, but in the interest of (your) time, I’ll just leave you with the key takeaways I gleaned from each speaker. As a bonus though I’ve also rounded up a few of the most interesting tweets from the conference to give an inside look at the conversations it sparked.

The Topic: Consumed (although the power of storytelling snuck in on more than one occasion)

The Gist: To steal the words of @SchneiderMike – Exploring “how brands and marketers are approaching this collision of media and data to better understand how their audience consumes content and what consumes them.”

Cue Rihanna’s bouncy “We Found Love” for walkout music as Kathy Kiely (@MadamePrez), President of The Ad Club kicked off the event.

Helen Molesworth Institute of Contemporary Art

Discussed the background of the ICA and the consumption behind contemporary art.

Fun Fact: Pictures allow us to think contradictory thoughts simultaneously. Molesworth cited this as possible reasoning for why people are fascinated (or consumed) by art.

@SchneiderMike Allen & Gerritsen

I always enjoy hearing Mike Schneider speak, but maybe I’m biased because of his love of startups.

Discussed Big Data and startups. Described a world (coming soon to a society near you) where a “floating head of awesome” reigned supreme, giving you branded, personalized recommendations of exactly what you want when you want it.

Big Questions: How do we get those highly personalized recommendations without being constantly inundated with advertisements and information?

How much data are we willing to give up to get better content?

Quote: “Startups have gone niche in the best possible way.”

“Curiosity as ultimate engine for consumption.” (I hope I’m attributing this quote correctly)

Hoping for a meta API which leads to giving you content/experiences you want when you want them.

Rob Walker Writer for NYT Magazine

Jumped in with a joke about how he was disappointed to learn the whole conference was not about him as he writes a whole series called CONSUMED (a very insightful and fascinating series on marketing, which I highly recommend looking into).

Discussed the transformation of objects through stories. He argued a sense of alienation exists between consumers and what they buy when they don’t know the story of where it came from.

Example: Aside from the poetry bombing project (where a poet sews her work into garments sans permission), Walker talked about an experiment they did called “Significant Objects,” where they attached stories to random, thrift store items and sold them over the internet. The items they attached stories to sold for a considerably higher price than the same objects without the attached story. They saw a $2,706 increase from when they bought the items after they marketed them with a story. In other words: marketers, find that story in your product.

Quote: “Stories are not a means to an end but an end in themselves.”

“Culture is made by playing with boundaries.”

Marshall Lauck JWT and John Della Volpe SocialSphere

Big Question: How do you send a powerful video/message (especially if it’s long) without intrusion?

Their answer: You need to embed yourself into your target market.

They discussed their campaign strategy to target young millennials for the marines. John Della Volpe went over their findings that millennials had a strong focus on service, not military service per se but on community service and were consumed by social media and new technology.  Their challenge was to appeal to this audience and capture their attention amid a myriad of competing technologies/messages. They previewed their video, Toward the Sounds of Chaos, and lightheartedly joked about recruiting people during the cocktail hour.

Chris Soghoian Indiana University

Discussed privacy in relation to tracking consumers’ online behavior and targeted advertising.

Soghoian arrived with a mission: To advocate for better privacy options. He did not hesitate to give the advertising industry a firm scolding. He provided evidence, consisting of polls and surveys, which showed the vast majority of consumers are unfamiliar with how online tracking is happening.  In addition to that, they are unaware of the ad networks (which use their data to create targeted advertising campaigns) and how to effectively opt out of tracking. He said privacy settings were created by computer geeks for computer geeks, and the majority of consumers are unfamiliar with how to use those privacy controls.

Quote:  “Targeted advertising depends on consumer ignorance.”

Advocated for A more user-friendly way of opting out of tracking and a clearer way to manage privacy settings on web browsers. He also denounced AOL’s “privacy penguin,” saying that marketing/advertising people were a creative bunch and that it was disappointing that all they could come up with to explain how a user’s data was being collected and used was a condescending animation. 

Christian Meyer Game Show Network and Matt Snyder MediaMob

Discussed the “gamification of every aspect of society” and the reasoning behind people’s fascination with games.

Quotes: “Games have become the ultimate virus.” (especially due to the rise of social media and the ability to interact with your friends constantly (thanks to mobile) across social networks)

“Games are containers of repeatable suspense.”

“Content is still king.”

Secret Sauce: Repeatable Suspense. Competition, prizes, and points are important aspects of gaming but not the ultimate reason behind their success. He advocated that repeatable suspense provided reasoning for the unending success of Bingo, Slots and Solitaire, which are consistently the most popular games played.

3 Keys to the Consumer Experience:  1. Suspense 2. Don’t make me think (lovingly known as The Paris Hilton Rule – womp womp) 3. Enable winning

Steve Phelps NASCAR

Discussed NASCAR’s new marketing strategy.

NASCAR relies on earned media and word of mouth. One of the big changes in their marketing strategy was to reclaim the rights to their social media because they had previously outsourced this. They created an integrated marketing communications campaign and moved NASCAR.com in house to have more control over their publicity and image.

Jim Lucchese EchoNest

Discussed trends in digital music and using data as a “passion index.” He talked about the ways in which people share music and how we can use that data to discover trends and build more engaging apps in the future.

Music Apps You Should Know About: 6 degrees of Black Sabbath – Riff off of 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon

The Swinger – Turns any song into a swing song

Fun Fact: Most passionate music fans: Metal fans

 

Josh Karpf PepsiCo (also a BU COM alum – Go Terriers)

Last speaker, first to sit on the orange couch. Naturally drinking a bottle of Pepsi.

Big Question: How do you stay ahead of consumer trends so that you can help shape future trends to your competitive advantage?

PepsiCo10: Karpf talked a lot about PepsiCo’s new incubator program for tech startups. My favorite part of the program was the employee exchange, where PepsiCo would trade one team member from PepsiCo with an employee of the startup for a period of time to truly embed them into each other’s culture. The aim of this was to “build up a digitally competent culture.”

Aftermath:

Overall, an exceptional event. And what could be better than ending with cocktails (courtesy of Fresh Tilled Soil) overlooking the harbor? For more interviews and recaps you can check out the #AdClub Youtube channel.

Back at work and still consumed by all of the speakers and information, I sought to find what was consuming our very own SoftArtisans, starting with news and music. To see what media we’re consuming and for the full playlist see my previous post here.

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