linkbizkits

First conference that I attend was Agency.com’s gig on Social Media. Nothing new there, but interesting stuff anyway. And more interestingly, the room was full, so good news. Traditionnal advertisers will have catch a thing or two there Most of the conference was on the influencers. Agency.com call the digital influencers the Uploaders. Cool name. They did a research in U.K. and found out that they represent in this country about 8% of total pop. Huge number, that represents more than 2 million individuals. They are bulimic infovores (they spend 50% more than online than average, they seek out info 30% more than the regular guy). They’re male, young and well educated. They are passionate, they are entusiast. And like I we were discussing the other day, altought traditionalist may see them as hitech geeks hiding in their dark basement, they are in fact hyper social creatures. Their average buddy list on the web represents 60 friends, and they communicate via sms with their friends 3X more than John Doe.

In fact, they are not only extremely social creatures, but this guy was saying that it’s almost as if they were trying to recreate a kind of Social Commitment that older cultures, like African tribes) used to have. They talk about anything and are in fact trying to do their bit for the community. “I am because we are”. They stronlgy believe on the wisdom of the crowd (don’t we always check how many people rated this book, movie or restaurant?), and not on unidirectional big corps blablabla.

Traditional agencies still see the social media websites like regular website. So they buy ads there, but nothing else. The ones that success are the ones that facilitates the conversations that are happening there. Presenter’s example was this Red Bull rock-paper-cisor app they did for FaceBook.

Good news is, althought they don’t care about (trad) advertising, they want to be involved with their brands. If they love a brand, they will communicate it with all their contacts, making of them the Informers of our Digital Age.

I will finish this post with the presenter’s conclusion on why trad advertisers should get the point that these Uploaders live their media in a different way. “Technology is onoly technology if it was invented after you were born”. Nicely said. Hope some of the oldies in the room will get it.

So what’s new this year ? To tell you frankly, not that much so far. We’ve seen a bunch of long list film categories, and yes, here and there, you will find a better 30 sec., but nothing blasting. Well not for me anyway. I also attend three conferences yesterday, all covering the same subject, but from a different perspective.

First thing’s first, we’ve made the Cyberlions’ Viral Marketing shortlist with this viral piece we did for COQC SIDA, a Montreal association fighting against AIDS. Cool indeed. Second year in a row with a shortlist (last year was Air Canada’s Breaking News banner)… who knows, maybe this little sucker will transform in a bronze-silver-gold Cyberlions? I will keep you posted on this. As a matter of fact, I will keep you posted directly from the Grand Audi via Facebook (look for Normand Miron). So check it out tomorrow around 19h00 (that would be 13h00, Montreal time).

Well, bonjour les frangins! This post’s call Cannes 01, but in fact we are today in Day 4 of the Festival. We’ve arrived on Sunday, just in time to pick up our passes and things. So for us, it is more like Day 2, sort of.

We’re still a little bit buzzy from the décallage horaire, and from last nigh party’s at the Martinez. We’ve saw a bunch of fellow quebecers there, some of them just arriving for the party. Hey, what is a couple more hours without sleeping when you’re way past 24 hours. In fact, I feel like we all are the Jack Bauer of advertising. We’ve got only 24 hours in a day, and we want to do and see everything.

Tomorrow nite, i’m leaving town for Cannes. Like Bob did at the FITC, I’ll try to keep you posted here on what’s happening sur la Croisette.