Birmingham Bound

On Friday, September 19 I'll be speaking at the Birmingham, Alabama Ad Fed. Many thanks to Mason Guttery for chasing me down and brokering the opportunity.

Here's the overview of my presentation:

What is the future of advertising? Perhaps the better question today is, “What is advertising?” In less than 10 years we’ve witnessednever-before-seen mutation in the marketing and advertising industries.Technology, consumer empowerment and media fragmentation are helping redefinethe rules and methods of what defines an ad, how they’re made, who makes themand what kinds of impact we can expect to achieve. Tim Brunelle thinks thisstate of affairs is wonderful and hopes to convince you it is, too. Hispresentation mashes up management consulting, philosophy, copywriting, design,interaction, strategy, media negotiations and, most important—the primacy ofideas—to help you evolve your work in this new age.

This is kind of based on a talk I gave at the Miami Ad School in June. But I'm refining it to look at the financial and strategic positioning of traditional ad agencies, versus PR, interactive and design firms—especially as it relates to new areas like social media. Every client I know says they get pitched the same capabilities from their entire spectrum of communications partners. Which means, ad agencies truly aren't just in competition with ad agencies anymore. 

We're also talking about job descriptions here. How would you define a copywriter who concepts print ads, edits paid search term lists, does blogger outreach for clients and writes/produces radio? Rather, how do you determine equitable salary?

There's such great diversity of mediums, techniques, roles and opportunities now that are forcing our calcified industry to wake up, throw out old assumptions and rewrite the rules around staffing, compensation, and even the answer to, "What is an ad?"

I've been soliciting all kinds of Chief Creative Officers and other agency thought leaders across the U.S. to answer the question: "How do you define advertising now?" Lots of great response to date. I'll start sharing them here as the presentation takes better shape.

My goal is to cover the broader philosophical stuff, but provide a few actionable insights.

What do you think? Am I missing anything?