Earlier this week I was fortunate enough to have attended an event put on by Digiday called Digiday Agency – the event as you might guess was very focused on advertising agencies, what they do, how they do it, and how they are adjusting to a very fluid world where digital is having a much bigger role in how brands present themselves. Overall the event was a bit outside of my work world but I wanted to be there to get some new perspective that perhaps I could also integrate into my own business offering.
For me, I have to say that when you hear about things like “advertising agencies” and you start to get some perspective based simply on how many people these firms employ, I always want to be able to say “yeah, I get why so and so has the job of heading up something like that”.
Well…. the highlight of the day for me was listening to Rob Norman, CEO of GroupM talk. I’ve embedded the video for you to see for yourself. I have to warn you this guy is really good. He starts off sounding a bit “bored” and talking about things like “I don’t have to tweet about what I had for breakfast” but that was a very clever rouse as very quickly after making the claim that he delegates how he discovers social media he quickly dives in and provides some really interesting insights.
In particular I enjoyed hearing Rob talk a bit about Google versus Facebook. Rob seemed to say that while both companies are great in their own ways, he was of the belief that the “Golden Thread” that ties the Google products together seemed to be much more compelling and valueable versus the “Golden Thread” that Facebook has built its business on.
Take a look at the interview and see for yourself.
Another interesting presentation was done by Dan Taylor, head of Google display network (also the main sponsor for the day). Google display is definately making some interesting moves, and in particular I think the way they are looking to bake “social” into their display offering is interesting – while still early days in this space there are some real opportunities. I think if you are considering a spend of any kind this is a very good video to watch as it will provide you with some really interesting ideas that might cause you to deploy your money in different way.