Inverge 2008

Before anything else, I have to say a giant thank you to UO J. school for sending Megan and I to Inverge! It was a great opportunity and we’ll be able to implement quite a bit of what we learned into making AHA/NVC 2009 amazing…

With that said…Inverge 2008! Inverge is a 2 day interactive convergence conference where thought leaders from a wide variety of industries speak about their specialization under the umbrella topic: the influence of technology and it’s effects on society, specifically how it has affected the advertising/branding/marketing world.

Inverge

I could go on for days about all I learned; however, here are a handful of my favorite thoughts/ideas from Inverge:

Renny Gleeson, Global Digital Strategies Director, Wieden + Kennedy

• Are we using technology to create bubbles (past) or to create communities (now/future)
• Technology has caused major miscommunications (we rely heavily on visual/audio cues – email for example eliminates this)
• Flickr has some freaking awesome groups. Ex – Dinosaurs in Inappropriate Places (and yes, I’ve already joined and added a photo in case you were curious!)
• Brands are no longer 9 – 5, they are 24/7
• How can technology make us more human than less?
• We now spend hours maintaining our online identities – has this affected our real life identities?

Renny Gleeson

Raven Zachary – iPhone Intelligence
• 75% of mobile web traffic is from iPhone and iPod touch (iPhone was released just over a year ago!)
• iPhone apps.
o Win at wasting time
o Identify a song
o Drink a virtual beer
o Audience feedback (speakers iPhone turns red if audience doesn’t like topic)
o I am rich (cost a million dollars just to show you can afford it)
o Phone saber (think light saber…iPhone style)

Raven Zachary

Scott Kveton, Chairman, Openid Foundation, VP of Open Platforms, Vidoop
• Predicting the Future
o Olympics – multiple announcers – we choose who to listen to
o Phone will vibrate when Obama supporter walks by
o Media that targets you but doesn’t include you isn’t worth it!!

Scott Kveton

Paul Matthaeus, Founder, CCO, Chairman – Digital Kitchen

Thesis -> antithesis -> synthesis

Paul Matthaeus

Ed Lantz , President & CTO Vortex Immersion Media
• Will immersive media provide enhanced experiences or cause cognitive overload?
• Digital flirting

Ed Lantz

Richard Rosen, President + CEO + author: Convergence Marketin

Interactive ≠ Interaction

Richard Rosen

Amber Case, Cyborg Anthropologist

She live-tweeted the entire event – how freaking awesome is that???

Here I am, watching both Amber’s live speech and live tweet:

watching Amber

• Too many feature reduce value (hello Facebook and MySpace!!!!)
• W/out humans, theree would be no technology, w/out technology…there would be no humans…?
• Twitter = transcending silos of mental isolation

All in all, Inverge was fabulous – cre8con tomorrow to complete the weekend of business+culture experience madness

advertising: it’s the journey, not the destination

Ok, so that’s not completely true.  HOWEVER…

The destination of course is important, but in my opinion, the process and strategy is what constitutes a quality campaign.

With this said, I have to say I am quite happy with team Kiwi’s process & brand strategy for our Sameunderneath campaign:

1st brainstorm Sameunderneath team Kiwi

1st week Sameunderneath brainstorm – target audience

Sameunderneath product benefit and target audience

So much more – week 1

Sameunderneath positioning statement – week 1

Sameunderneath brand values week 2

brand values Sameunderneath – week 2

Sameunderneath idea mind vomit – week 2

connecting ideas – week 3

Sameunderneath final pitch layout – week 6

Sameunderneath speech layout – week 6

(just a tasting, there is a whole heck of alot more concepting and brainstorming photos to come…)

final COLAB eval.

I still can’t believe COLAB is over!!

Overall, great first year! As this was the first year, I am extremely impressed with the program as a whole – congrats to the CoLab board for bringing such a great idea to life!

With that said, and with a few days to let it all sink in, here’s my evaluation:

COLAB Program-excellent!!!! – the best way to meet a ridiculous amount of industry professionals, fellow students, network like crazy, see the inside of multiple agencies and create a campaign with fellow interns – in six weeks.

Length-it’s got to be longer. I know scheduling was an issue; however, 9 weeks would be ideal – it was challenging to take on projects at the agencies with only 8 days. Aside from that, with all the networking events, get togethers, parties, etc. – there’s not enough time to take it all in in six weeks…

Time Commitment- interns need to know the commitment they will be making with this program – between work, interviews, networking events, intern project, etc. – there literally was no time for anything else. People need to know this and I don’t think future participants should not have outside work or school – it can be done, but A. the student won’t have the full COLAB experience, and B. that means the work usually piles up on those only doing COLAB – all or nothing, baby!

Team- I spent a ridiculous amount of time with Kiwi, but did not have much opportunity to interact with Lattice – next year it would be nice to have more organized events to bring both teams together.

Work- Aside from the help we all get from our agencies, to honestly represent the talents of the COLAB interns and to establish a level playing field, all work should be produced the COLAB interns!

Background: Interns need to have some background with advertising/branding/marketing. Without this, it makes it difficult to incorporate strategy and all the psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy that is so incredibly vital to developing a campaign not only in the business and marketing plan, but in the art direction, copywriting, graphic designing, media buying, etc.

Intern Roles: an idea for next year’s positions:

Account Manager

Brand Strategist

Media Buyer (if there is a budget)

Art Director

Copywriter

In terms of the intern project…

First and foremost, I couldn’t have asked for a better company to create a campaign for! Good job! (=

I would suggest that next year’s COLAB have clear objectives. Because this year there were not clear objectives and no budget whatsoever, both teams really built different campaigns. I can’t speak on behalf of Lattice, but Kiwi established the campaign objectives and strategy based on primary and secondary research. It seems that Kiwi built more of an awareness campaign while Lattice built more of an advertising campaign.

Budget: In terms of budget, we didn’t get one. After speaking with the Sameunderneath marketing coordinator, Kiwi determined that a budget of $150,000 – $300,000 would be realistic. Lattice created a campaign of $1.5 million. This doesn’t mean that one team is right and one team is wrong because we were told to not worry about the budget; however, in order to provide a level playing field, the teams need to be working with the same budget.

Distribute the marketing plan a week beforehand, and have the marketing coordinator be involved. As Chris from Fish explained, it’s the job of the owner aka Ryan to have the big ideas and it’s the job of the marketing coordinator to shape the ideas into a plan that is realistic and affordable – if in future years the business actually wants to use 100% of one of the campaigns, it would be beneficial to involved the marketing coordinator.

Winner-This is a great element of the program as competition naturally encourages higher quality work. HOWEVER, to fine tune for next year, it needs to be established exactly what the team is winning (I’m couldn’t tell you that for this year!) Is the team winning for the best overall idea? Most realistic plan? Best ability to show the spirit of COLABoration? Best presentation? Best research? Best strategy? Best art direction? Best original work? Best use of resources?

With these suggestions, I’d like to reemphasize how ridiculously proud I am of both Kiwi and Lattice – everyone worked extremely hard and produced exceptional work. Beyond that, it is not only our work, our time and our effort, but that of everyone who took time to help us at all of the agencies. Without them, their ideas, their workspace, and their dedication to making this internship a success, we wouldn’t have been able to create such impressive campagins.

On a personal level, I have to say I am so impressed with everyone on Team Kiwi. Everyone pulled their weight. We were all dedicated and worked together [even though that frequently took longer than necessary due to our tangents and inability to focus for more than five minutes (= ] We made sacrifices and helped each other out so that we could create the best campaign possible. We all have extremely different ideas and backgrounds which at first I have to say I felt might be a problem; however, on the contrary, we were able to take our strengths and put them together in order to get the best out of everyone’s specialties. Communication, dedication, and commitment, respect and most importantly the spirit of COLABoration was there with everyone on team Kiwi which made all the difference in the world. Whether or not we knew how to do something or find some sort of information, from the initial brainstorming, to the research and strategy, to the artwork and photography, and recap final video – everything was done by the five of us and I’m really impressed with all the skills that were brought to the team by each team member.

Again, great job to both Kiwi and Lattice, to PAF and all the wonderful agencies who participated!! eROI, Anvil, Fish Marketing, Asterix Group, Livengood I Nowack, Grady Britton, HMH, CMD, The New Group, Ascentium, Henry V, Pop Art, NORTH, ID Branding, Coates Kokes – thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!

Also, a giant thank you to: Jamie Sexton, Tom Bennett, Leticia Kleinberg, Becky Mairs, Jenn Mele, Lindsay Magnusen, Mason West, Ilona Berry, Hallie Janssen, Heather Dougherty, Maureen Pimley, and Chris Stewart for making this program happen! Also a special thank you to Bram Pitoyo and Amber Case for keeping track us of during these crazy six weeks!

Last but not least, the wonderful COLAB-ers: Christine Vo, Mary McPherson, Bryan Davidson, Luke Rolka, Megan Nuttall, Heather Schwartz, Melissa Casillas, Allison McKeever, Whitney Bard – congrats you guys!!! Way to make COLAB year one one to remember!!!!

Marketing, public relations, advertising, branding

Marketing, public relations, advertising, branding – it’s all the same, right??  Frequently, these words are used interchangeably; however, there IS a difference:

Marketing, Public Relations, Advertising, Branding

what COLAB should be (and is) all about

From: Vo
Date: Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 11:46 AM
To: Mary McPherson, Kim Karalekas, Bryan Davidson, Allison McKeever, Megan Nuttall, Heather Schwartz, Luke Rolka, Melissa Casillas, Whitney Bard, Heather Dougherty

———-
From: Allison McKeever
Date: Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 11:49 AM

———-
From: Kim Karalekas
Date: Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 12:01 PM

———-
From: Vo
Date: Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 12:03 PM

———-
From: Luke Rolka
Date: Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 12:04 PM

———
From: Allison McKeever
Date: Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 12:42 PM

———-
From: Luke Rolka
Date: Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 12:46 PM

———-
From: Allison McKeever
Date: Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 1:01 PM

———-
From: Kim Karalekas
Date: Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 1:06 PM

From: Heather Schwartz
Date: Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 1:15 PM

Great email thread! For a person who doesn’t really know what Twitter has to offer, you guys are a great resource. Now I know who to go to with all my Web 2.0 questions… lucky you!

Hope everyone is having a great Monday!