Planning conference Day 1

As Russell Davies has been doing a fantastic job blogging as the day unfolded, I thought I'd simply post some observations from the end of day 1.

1. There's a lot of people here - around 750 - which is good news for the health of the industry and the discipline.
2. There's more soul searching than normal - I think people here are genuinely concerned about their role in their agency and their agency's role in their client's business (truer of those at ad agencies rather than interactive or direct agencies)
3. The panel in the morning on the changing landscape and the workshop on 'planning neutral planning' highlighted the confusion and, frankly, paralysis, of the industry in working out how best to respond to limitless options and ways to engage consumers.
4. RGA seem to be a very impressive company, and a good example of how agencies need to change their structure to put problems at the heart of agency process.
5. Highlight of the day was Mark Earls' session on co-creativity. His thesis - explained with references to Peter Kay and the Babarians rugby team - was that we need to break down the barriers between departments in agencies - all admit that ideas can come from anyone and anywhere, and are often better when developed together - and develop pieces of 'communication' that don't simply engage consumers but instead invite them to participate.

Comments

[anonymous]

Have been reading Russell's blog on the same conference and I'd be interested what you think of mine.

http://noisydecentgraphics.typepad.com/

Cheers