Monday, April 4: Anders Sjostedt - "F*CK DIGITAL"

UPDATE: Video from Anders' presentation is embedded at the end of this article.

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Join us for the third session of Conversations About The Future Of Advertising on Monday, April 4, 2011 when we welcome Hyper Island USA Managing Director Anders Sjostedt (@anderssjostedt).

Based on Hyper Island's very recent experience counseling marketing and ad agency executives, it's easy to understand why agencies express worries their digital efforts aren’t sufficient. In fact, whole floors of agency executives hope to retire—without really having to care about all that new technology stuff. The sentimentally inclined lament the loss of art and beauty in their work, often laying the blame on data, measurements and Facebook chats.

Meanwhile, CMOs are equally worried they’re not able to ask the right questions when being presented with Google search optimization strategies, that they don’t know how to trust the increasing flurry of agencies that advise them through more fragmented channels.

What most agency and marketing leaders have in common is that they really just want the whole digital thing to go away.

But there is still room for beauty and enchantment, argues Sjostedt. Everything doesn’t have to be squeezed into 140 characters. Digital is not the message.

What digital does is change the way societies, humans, and consumers interact. We have to build our organizations accordingly. Creativity doesn’t have to suffer, but be sure, both you and your organization will have to get ready for a serious digital, uhm, f*ck.

Based in Sweden, Hyper Island is a global leader in training within the digital/interactive field. As the Managing Director of Hyper Island USA, Anders Sjostedt is in charge of building and expanding the organization throughout the US and heading the company’s Global Business Development. Previously, Anders was Director at Swedish Creative Industries and CEO of Sweden's largest business incubator, Minc.

This event is free. No RSVP required. Just show up!

Like our previous 17 speakers, Anders will appear at the Fine Line Music Cafe, 318 First Avenue North in Minneapolis.

Doors open at 5:15 p.m. Ander's presentation starts at 6:00 p.m.

Many thanks to MIMA and MCAD for their generous sponsorship!

Monday, February 28: Julie Roehm - "Fearless in the Face of Marketing Complexity"

UPDATE: Video of Julie's presentation is embedded down below.

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In the digital age, successful marketing organizations embrace and leverage the complexity wrought by interactive technologies—they're fearless in the face of empowered consumers and ever-changing media. On Monday, February 28, our second CATFOA speaker, Julie Roehm (@jaroehm), will bring decades of global marketing experience to the Twin Cities to discuss the advantages of her fearless approach.

Julie spent six years as a brand manager at Ford, before serving as Director of Marketing Communications for Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge, overseeing $2.1 Billion in marketing investment—earning praise from Brandweek as its 2004 Automotive Marketer of the Year. Also in 2004, Julie was inducted into the AAF Advertising Hall of Achievement for outstanding performance in the field of marketing and advertising to executives under 40 years old. She then moved to Wal-Mart, as Senior Vice President of Marketing Communications, with responsibilities for its $800M marketing budget. Julie currently serves as a marketing advisor and consultant through /Meta LLC for start ups, media companies and corporations including Sports Illustrated, Time, Credit Suisse and ADP. She is an official AOL blogger and commentator for Fox Business News.

This event is free. No RSVP required. Just show up!

Just like our previous 16 speakers, Julie Roehm will appear at the Fine Line Music Cafe, 318 First Avenue North in Minneapolis.

Doors open at 5:15 p.m. Julie's presentation starts at 6:00 p.m.

Many thanks to MIMA and MCAD for their generous sponsorship!

Monday, January 31: Ana Andjelic - “Do We Need a New Definition of Creativity?”

UPDATE (Feb 10): Video of Ana's presentation available at the end of this post.

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Join on Monday, January 31, at 6:00 p.m. for the inauguration of the fourth season of Conversations About The Future Of Advertising, co-sponsored by the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association, when we discuss rewriting the creative dictionary with Ana Andjelic (@andjelicaaa), Senior Planner at HUGE, Inc.

The creative of the digital world is vastly different from its traditional predecessor; where creative once represented the astounding idea comprised of art and copy, or a brand identity turn cultural icon. Now the best work is about coming up with relationships and interactions that connect people into networks — potentially never ending, always in beta. The era of strategic creative has begun, and the best campaigns are being executed by the most unlikely of sources. Let's have a conversation with Ana as she shares her insights from Groupon, Best Buy Shopkick, SCVNGR, and more — illuminating how brands can leverage new approaches to great effect.

Ana works as Planning Director at HUGE, Inc. Prior to joining HUGE, she worked at AKQA, Razorfish, The Barbarian Group, Create The Group and Wunderman for clients Citibank, Nokia, CNN, Kashi, Maybelline, Unilever and Burberry among others. She is a frequent contributor to AdAge, and her articles often inspire fierce discussions in the industry. Ana regularly shares her thoughts on digital marketing on her blog, "I [love] marketing." She was a guest on Bob Knorpp’s The Beancast in November 2009, and presented “What is Digital Creativity?” at Miami Ad School in October 2010. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Columbia University. Her dissertation, “Google Doesn’t Have a Jingle: How Digital Media Turns Brands Into Behaviors” is currently being reviewed for publication by Palgrave.

Once again, we'll be at the Fine Line Music Cafe, 318 First Avenue North in Minneapolis.

The event is free. No RSVP required. Just show up!

Doors open at 5:15 p.m. Ana's presentation starts at 6:00 p.m.

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Here's the CATFOA video of Ana's presentation on January 31:

Just announced: February 28 CATFOA to feature Julie Roehm

Stop shoveling.

We're excited to announce the fearless, resilient, dynamic and even unruly Julie Roehm will be our fourth CATFOA speaker on Monday, February 28 at 6:00 p.m. at the Fine Line Music Cafe.

More information to come very soon.

In the meantime, don't miss Ana Andjelic coming soon on Monday, January 31.

2011 CATFOA season to begin Monday, January 31

We're excited to announce the complete line-up for the fourth season of Conversations About The Future Of Advertising (CATFOA), proudly co-sponsored by the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association.

2011 will bring four unique perspectives on "the future of advertising." We're proud to post our four speakers today:

Monday, January 31, 2011

Ana Andjelic, Planning Director, HUGE

Monday, February 28, 2011

Julie Roehm, Marketing Strategy Consultant and 2004 Automotive Marketer of the Year (Brandweek)

Monday, April 4, 2011

Anders Sjostedt, Managing Director, Hyper Island USA

Monday, May 2, 2011

Andrew Keller, CEO, Crispin Porter Bogusky

All four events will take place, as usual, at the wonderful Fine Line Music Cafe on First Ave N in Minneapolis. Doors at 5:15 p.m., speakers start at 6:00 p.m.

Admission is free. No reservations needed. Just show up, enjoy each other's company and ask intriguing questions to keep the conversation going.

Thank you everyone for your continued enthusiasm for CATFOA!

(More info on each speaker, including our fourth, and their take on our theme will appear here shortly.)

Rock.

What do you think about Fast Company's "The future of advertising?"

The most recent issue of Fast Company magazine is on the street. We were excited to see Danielle Sack's piece titled, "The Future of Advertising." Good fodder here for those of you beginning to think about the 2011 edition of CATFOA.

A couple of comments stick out for us. How about you?

"'The irony is that while there have never been more ways to reach consumers, it's never been harder to connect with consumers,' explains (Brad) Jakeman, chief creative officer at Activision. The death of mass marketing means the end of lazy marketing. At agencies, the new norm is doing exponentially complex work. Think of the 200 Old Spice YouTube videos whipped up by Wieden+Kennedy in 48 hours. 'Creating more work for less money is the big paradox,' says Matt Howell, president of the Boston agency Modernista."

Howell's quote is likely the most telling. It's noble to draft the new treatise and brave the edge, but ultimately people expect a fair paycheck for the effort. As Seth Godin stated recently, the challenge of the Internet is "either you do something I can't do myself (or get from someone else), or I pay you less than you'd like."

"At a time of shrinking budgets, chief marketing officers don't know where to turn. They have little confidence that old-world agencies know how to navigate the chaos, and they don't know which newcomers to trust.

With clients in a tailspin, the very role of agencies is in question.

Squeezed by clients, agencies are also beset by a host of new competitors attacking from every direction."

Sounds like fun! The quotes in Fast Company from Hyper Island convey these sentiments with greater emotion. We are in an era graced with great change and even greater creativity—but at a cost to old ways, comfortable assumptions and lazy habits. As the esteemed writer Robert Grudin put it back in 1991, “Creativity is dangerous. We can not open ourselves to new insights without endangering the security of our prior assumptions. We can not propose new ideas without risking disapproval and rejection.”

Great to see our friend and previous CATFOA presenter Edward Boches quoted heavily as well!

2011 CATFOA series coming soon

Hello, friends and fans of Conversations About The Future Of Advertising.

Good news! MCAD and MIMA have agreed to sponsor us again in 2011.

We'll be back with four awesome speakers, likely in February, March, April and May, 2011. Exact dates to be announced very soon.

We'll also be returning to the Fine Line Music Cafe in Minneapolis, because they're awesome.

Stay tuned. And thanks so much for your enthusiasm!

- Tim