Are You Caught Up in the Marketing Maelstrom?
A Word From the Chair
“Enter the Marketing Maelstrom”
Greetings, attendees and friends of ad:tech.
As our co-flagship show, ad:tech San Francisco, approaches, I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself and talk about a bit about our upcoming show, the evolution of ad:tech, and the current state of the industry and what may very well be on the horizon.
As the industry continues to evolve at what seems to be lightning speed, it is important that ad:tech stay nimble and that our programming and editorial coverage remain current and relevant. In the final analysis, our central goal is to insure that our attendees find great value in ad:tech as an effective forum for learning and that all of our attendees walk away from each ad:tech as smarter and more effective executives. I should also note that in an era where we are all addicted to email, instant messaging, our cell phones, Blackberries, and other forms of “virtual” communication, I am confident that there is great value in ad:tech serving as a place where we can physically reconnect with our friends and colleagues in the business. Despite the communications revolution we find ourselves in, nothing can replace the value of catching up—in-person—with old and new friends, colleagues, and clients.
As many of you have seen with the program, ad:tech San Francisco has a slightly different look and feel from an editorial standpoint. For the past several years, ad:tech has been marketed as “the #1 event for interactive marketing”. From my perspective, this is a bit too “Internet 1.0”. Make no mistake, ad:tech is still a fantastic show for those in the business of interactive marketing, and the “online community” will continue to represent our core audience and foundation. But I believe our reason for being must evolve beyond this scope, which now seems a bit narrow. My vision for the ad:tech conference and exhibition series is that ad:tech shall become the leading forum to discuss how digital media and technologies are transforming the business and discipline of marketing communications. Despite our brand name, this goes far beyond just “advertising”. This is a relatively more strategic and broad positioning to be true. I also believe we can engage at a strategic level with our audience while continuing to provide our very sophisticated and savvy attendees with powerfully informative and tactical conference sessions and workshops that give even the most advanced online and integrated marketers valuable insights, analysis, and perspective.
In regards to how we are actually trying to execute this vision at ad:tech San Francisco, I would like to point out some of the sessions that I think are quite compelling and fresh. In our “TV 3.0” session moderate by Daisy Whitney of Television Week, we have leading executives from Major League Baseball, Oxygen, NBC, and Scripps Networks talking about how their focus on multi-platform programming distribution is impacting and will continue to impact viewer behavior and the overall advertising value proposition of television. Along these same lines, in our “On-Demand Universe” session has a fantastic analyst, Brian Wieser from MAGNA Global, leading a discussion of executives from Comcast, the CBS Television Stations Group, Revision, and Universal McCann to talk about how on-demand technologies are impacting the viewer experience, programming and distribution, and, ultimately, the advertising value proposition in this rapidly evolving environment
Of course, digital is also transforming the publishing business and at ad:tech San Francisco, we have a session titled “Publishing in the Digital Age: Feast or Famine” where Randy Bennett from the Newspaper Association of America will lead a panel that includes leading executives from old guard publishers and some of the new-breed players including Hearst, Edmunds.com, Mansueto Ventures (Fast Company and Inc.com), and McClatchy.
To switch gears a bit, after years of promise, might we finally have a mobile revolution on our hands? While we have often focused on cell phones, I think we need to explore the broader concept of mobility, which now includes multiple devices and distributors, as we look for signs of critical mass and broad and consumer acceptance. We have two exciting sessions at ad:tech San Francisco which are co-produced by Laura Marriott and her team at the Mobile Marketing Association where leading operators, media companies, agencies, technology companies and service providers from companies such as Sprint, ESPN, Yahoo! Mobile, AdMob, iLoop, IMC2, Neo@Ogilvy and others weigh in on what appears to be a burgeoning revolution in its own right.
And, of course, ad:tech would be not be the center of gravity that it has become without having leading online / digital companies such as Google, YouTube, MySpace, MSN, Yahoo!, DoubleClick, Atlas, Advertising.com, Right Media, eBay, and many others on the docket talking about how they continue to fuel and drive the broad-based marketing communications revolution we find ourselves in today.
There is so much more to talk about and I will continue to post blogs as we lead up to San Francisco and into the future as we ramp up for our remaining shows in 2007 which include Hamburg, Miami (our inaugural conference focusing on the US Hispanic and Latin American markets), Chicago, London, Beijing, and New York.
I will leave you with an initial thought about how I can best sum up the world we all find ourselves in—and will talk more about this in a follow-up blog next week. I came across the definition of the word “maelstrom” the other day and it seemed to sum up our universe perfectly: “a powerful often violent whirlpool sucking in objects within a given radius”.
During my recent travels across the globe, the clear common denominator I found was that we are all increasingly finding ourselves in the middle of this “marketing maelstrom” which not only seems to be growing in force but also seems to feature an ever-expanding radius. More on this next time.
If you have thoughts or suggestions regarding my comments or about ad:tech in general, please feel free to drop me a note at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
I look forward to seeing you in San Francisco!
-Drew Ianni
Senior Global Analyst & Programming Chair
ad:tech Asia Pacific and The Americas
