dailypixel

nextMEDIA: Conference Session 1

When Creative Meets Digital and Brand Meets Content

With the nextMEDIA conference now underway in Toronto, everyone is wondering what each of the sessions will be about. The first session was headed by Brandon Berger, the Director of Digital Innovation at MDC Partners.

The title of the session was "When Creative Meets Digital and Brand Meets Content". It covered some facts about advertising, and branding in the digital world and how the channel of media delivery continues to find new avenues, such as through game consoles, mobile devices, and other Internet enabled technologies.

Brandon had great charisma, and had some great content. He tried to get the audience involved with the conversation during his presentation, one of the only people to really do so, but was ineffective at this due to it being so early in the day, and not giving enough time for people to respond.

The other shortcoming in Brandon's presentation was that he didn't always enunciate well, and some of his jokes, which were great, were then lost on his audience. I was sitting in the front row, and some of what he said was passed over.

He said some very important things, and one of the phrases that stuck with me the longest was "prime time is now my time", which talks about the shift towards giving video content to the users when they want it, rather than having a prime time system decided by executives who don't necessarily understand the daily routine of the modern web user.

We live in an always-on world, and because of that, how we think about advertising will have to evolve and change to meet that market, and give it what it is craving.

Brandon brought up some great examples, saying that people need to break the normal rules of advertising. You have to listen to your audience, and digital media allows you to listen more clearly and carefully than ever before. Once you listen effectively, you can then adapt to your user base allowing your message to reach an even wider section of the population.

One issue that this, and many other presentations had was with the Internet access in the building. Both the wireless Internet, and what I assume to be wired connections of the presentation computers, were dreadfully slow, messing up the chance at being able to view some of the video examples that Brandon and others wanted to show.

Brandon also let us know that branding will always be about the art of story telling, and that there is no formula to make something viral. You have to create stories that people will want to share.

He also advocates experimenting with your advertising, and don't be afraid to try new things, as it could bring about your most influential promotion.

It was definitely an interesting session, with a great deal of information. So many things that both small companies and large will have to continue to learn and become more efficient at if they want to perform better online.

posted by David Peralty, Head of Marketing Splashpress.com

TAGS: 2007, conference, dailypixel, nextmedia, toronto
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