Russell Davies

Buying and Valuing Creativity

Miles Nadal is a really smart man. He kinda hides it behind an incredibly flat and minimal presentation style. And MDC are really interesting - a Canadian company with stakes in people like Crispin Porter and Bruce Mau.

They understand that creative people and companies don't necessarily want to work for them, but they do need to grow and they need someone to help with that. And there is entrepeneurial opportunity in that.

my thing

Seemed to go OK, though everyone looks kind of bored in this picture.

It was very nice to meet lots of people who read the blog (though kind of wierd too.)

if anyone wants to contribute to Planning 3.1 the link is here (the password is 'apg')

And the UK APG - which I urge you all to join - is here.

Business For Diplomatic Action

Keith Reinhard is speaking now. From Business For Diplomatic Action. He's talking about America's image around the world.

And obviously lots of data is showing that America's prestige around the world is in decline. But I don't think this is the only truth of this issue. Have a look at this editorial from Adrenalin mag. Click on it to make it bigger, and readable.

I like this guy. This is proper old school presenting. Well-written. (Actually written as a speech, not a seat of your pants presentation.) Articulate. Occasional flashes of dry humour. Good use of video and quotes.

sweltering gehry

Wandered over to Millenium Park at lunchtime and saw a recital going on in the sweltering heat. Lovely to see the orchestra in shorts. The Gehry pavilion is a fantastic thing.

The only problem with both that, and the Anish Kapoor sculpture is when it's sunny, they're very hard to look at .

39 channels

39 channels of telly from the Fairmont Hotel, Chicago.

the rest of day two

Gareth's summed it up much better than I can. He was very good in his panel session, as was Malcolm Russell from MindShare.

I've been concentrating on writing my own thing for tomorrow. It's called Planning 3.1 And I can't really remember why. But I've built a little wiki here (the password is 'apg') that I thought I'd invite people to visit and help me to create.

Might be interesting. I've just chucked up some really basic initial thoughts for now.

Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell was, of course, very good.

Articulate, amusing, clever, engaging.

Of course if you've read his books or heard him speak then you might have heard all the stuff. But it's still worth hearing again.

It reminded me that there's nothing like knowing your topic for making your speech any good. And there's nothing like writing a book for knowing your topic. That's probably why Mark was the only other significantly good speaker.

blogging from the account planning conference

Thus far I've only found these two other bloggers from the conference. Don't disagree with anything they're saying so far. Going to be very tremulous about what they say about my bit.

Gareth and Brand New is here.

Ritter and Chillout Lounge is here.

Co-creativity

Mark Earls did a splendid thing on Co-Creativity.

It did make me think that while American account planning is largely a sub-division of Business, British account planning is a sub-division of Entertainment. Or at least of the arts. You can argue about which is more effective, but I know which I'd prefer to watch.

He was talking generally about co-creation, about the way that real value in the world is created in the interactions between people, not by the prototypical lone genius.

He reminded me of one of the most hateful dynamics of client/agency life - the way that almost every meeting you have is about selling something. No wonder trusts breaks down. He suggested, quite rightly, that maybe some of those meetings should be about co-creation - the joint creation of something new, rather than just a transactional thing to do with selling and approval.

References from Mark - worth checking out:

Dirk Helbing and econophysics.

Boeing and the 'world design team'

C. K. Prahalad on Co-creating value.

damn

I missed Bob Greenberg of RGA, which is a huge shame, because everyone says he was good.