Marketing will never be this slow again!

 

Our conference was opened by Paul Stoddart, Senior Director - Special and Strategic Projects, Microsoft who gave us the client perspective on what we will need to do to remain competitative by meeting the changing demands of marketing. He showed us how Microsoft are working with Agencies to reduce the time to market for new multiplatform campaigns to 14 days including TV! His presentation on 'Agile Marketing' was full of insights on what clients valued from agencies, agency structure and ways of working.

 

Bethann Colle, Partner, Sequoia took us through every aspect of finding, hiring and keeping talent that can help us work effectively in a world that is constantly speeding up.

 

Claude Legrand, author and Managing Partner, Staples Innovation is the key to delivering at the speed of tomorrow. He explained the differences between Simple, Complicated and Complex problems and how we should slit up a brief into each type and solve them differently. His whole presentation was full of valuable insights and practical advice on Innovative Thinking models, the best ways to work in teams, brainstorming best practice, working with clients and how we should organize our agencies for speed and innovation.

 

After the keynote presentations we split up into peer group workshops where we discussed in depth the learnings from the keynote presentations and the implications for agencies like ours. We covered topics like: How to interface better with clients, How to attract and keep Top Talent, and How to make our agencies more innovative.

 

Everyone left armed with practical advice on how they could make their agencies more agile and innovative.

 

Here's a quote from Hugh Treacy, CEO of ArnoldKLP who attended for the first time:

 

"I made my debut at the recent MAAW conference in New York. The quality of outside speakers was matched, if not exceeded, by the stimulating debate that ensued. Discussing problems and issues with like-minded agency leaders is interesting - and made for time well-spent; but the real benefit in learning, building and sharing practical, and often lateral, solutions - made this well-spent time, priceless".