My wife made me tidy up my stuff the other day and I came across napkin notes I made at the recent 4A's conference at Laguna Niguel in California. Here's the gist:
The new 4A's chief Nancy Hill did a great job getting some fascinating people to appear on the stage, like NBC chief Ben Silverman and Eric Schmidt of Google. My favorite performer of the week was chairman of the 4A's Tommy Carroll. In numerous stage visits to inform or link to another speaker he momentarily transformed the stage into a hearth for sharing stories over an ale -- a skill.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt spoke and it reminded me of a rousing and confident talk once given at a marketing function in the U.K. by one of Rupert Murdoch's sons. He was in his early 30s at the time and already CEO of Sky TV. A hoary marketing lifer next to me nodded his head at the boy Murdoch and muttered, "It's a wonderful thing, certainty." Having one of the three most powerful people in the world as your dad can lend your views a certain authority. Schmidt has one of the world's most powerful companies behind him, which may contribute to the almost eerie certainty with which he addressed, well, absolutely everything.
I am a Hillary-lover not steeped in American politics, but isn't Schmidt obviously presidential? Or am I being silly? He seems like what my friends from the north of England would call "a good man in a blizzard." Because I am a creative director and my day is taken up by 200 or so one-minute meetings, I have developed an in-grown lack-of-attention-span. So while Schmidt (or anyone else for that matter) talked, I would drift off in reverie. One such daydream was an absurd plot in which Google turned into Skynet from the Terminator movies and took over the world. Imagine my amusement when, discussing this later with the puckish Ian Schafer, head of social networking company Deep Focus, he told me there actually is a Web site entitled Google Is Skynet.
Interesting man, Schafer. I enjoyed eavesdropping on his conversations with other digerati. A particularly interesting conversation was why, even in the new media, people still try to execute what is essentially print or TV advertising. I think this is a barrier not entirely surmounted by the brilliant ad agency minds completing their conversion to the new world. Part of it is how we judge and praise what we do. There is a powerful knee jerk to want to be at the Oscars and praise and award great movies or great stories or great pictures, and most of the so-called "important" awards go there, it seems. But there are so many other ways to activate behavior, even if awarding them wouldn't fit in the all-purpose, deeply old-fashioned yet seemingly untouchable Oscar-ceremony format.
Lee Clow appeared on stage at the 4A's. Colleen Decourcey was Twittering next to me and I noticed she received an IM that read, "Omigod, Lee Clow just sat next to me!" And then, "Lee Clow just asked to borrow my pencil! I will keep it forever, never wash it and put it in a frame." Kind of summed up the general attitude toward Mr. C. Later on I bumped into the effortlessly nice Mr. J. Goodby, who joked about his second career as Hal Riney's eulogist. The red-hot Mike Sheldon, boss of fellow Interpublicers Deutsch/LA, was there, disarming and low-key, even though his agency is on a big roll. These West Coast
