Advertising Week Europe 2015 – My highlights

What a crazy week it has been, hence the lack of posts this week! If you follow my updates on social media, you know already that this week I have attended the Advertising Week Europe. Over 200 presentations took place about what is happening in the Adland. It was very interesting, inspiring and informative. Even though I wanted to see as much as possible, it was impossible to fit all in my schedule or I really needed a break between the sessions, even to recharge my phone. In this post I will share with you some of the highlights from Advertising Week Europe (AWE) 2015 before sharing with you later some of the individual sessions.

Monday

Beautiful and sunny day in London to kick off the AWE. Most of the venues were in a walking distance from each other between Green Park and Oxford Circus tube stations.

© The MICE Blog - event management blog

© The MICE Blog - event management blog

The first session I have attended was called “how to win brands and influence people: why social influencers are the new celebrities”. I was interested in attending this session because Louise Pentland, a very prominent UK vlogger was on the panel. With other representatives from talent agencies they have discussed vlogging, social influencers vs. A- list celebrities, working with brands and creating authentic content. Later on I will share with you the full session.

The Newsroom was the official event lounge where Monmouth Coffee took care of much needed coffee supply and Hummingbirds Bakery of cupcakes. Chargers and sockets were also provided in sufficient amount.

© The MICE Blog - event management blog

Tuesday

The highlight of the day was the LinkedIn B2B Forum. It was the first time it took place during the AWE, which is in its third year now and it was a huge success in my opinion. Speakers, all from B2B environment such as Adobe, Microsoft, LinkedIn, PwC and IBM shared their best practices and how to make B2B “sexy”. Yes, it has longer lead time, it is more relationship driven and account management but there are lots of opportunities. One of the best talks was by Jason Miller from LinkedIn who, with good humour and storytelling skills brought excellent points across. Such as breaking your content into small pieces and spreading it across different platfroms and week.

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One of the cool ideas at this event was artist presenting the content in visuals. Great ideas for corporate events!

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The forum took place at the beautiful Ace Hotel.

Thursday

Wednesday I missed unfortunately but came fully motivated to make the most out of the last day of the event. I shortly stopped by the Microsoft booth where they presented an innovative technology tweeting with the eyes. Of course I had to try it, and it actually works. Sensors in the camera capture your eye movement and bring it to the screen. Simple version starts from £75K.

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Most of the day I spend at the ADARA stage as their afternoon was filled with presentation for the creative industry. First one “how come clients that pay the most rarely get the best work?” looked at why in the advertising industry the ratio of payment and results is so disproportionate. Isn’t it supposed to be you get what you pay for? The panellists suggested that creative work is a product, not a service, but what is the best creative work? There are several ways looking at it such as being fame led work or creatively awarded. But they also suggested that there is an element of luck to creativity and you can test it online.

Following session was about building a billion dollar brand with case study of Beats by Dre by James Temple from R/GA London, agency specialising on digital camapigns. I was truly fascinated by this creative work combined with the good product and the storytelling around it, using the latest World Cup as an example – “The Game before the Game”.

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Following session was called “behind the pitch” and looked what clients are looking for when hiring an agency, pitching process, how all fits with compliance, selection criteria and more. I am planning to do a full article in the following weeks about this talk as I believe eventprofs can highly benefit from it.

This was my first Advertising Week Europe experience and I extremely enjoyed it. Not only I got very inspired by all these creative minds, but I also got new and fresh ideas, relevant to our industy which I haven’t seen or read about before. I also realised that sometimes it is good to take a step back from events and observe what is happening in other industries and what we can learn from each other. Will see you there next year!

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