I missed some speeches on DLD to be honest. Why? Because this year the DLD06 was full of Big Corporate, Media Companies, Advertising Networks and the VCs, so consequently the level had to be a bit lower in order to bring them to a certain mindset. So contentwise nothing new... Or at least not so much new - which isn't criticism at all. The aim is to bring those developments we are seeing to the mass market and to diverse options of commercialisation.

The speech I liked most - by far! - was given by Andrew Robertson, 45yrs old CEO of the BBDO group. Robertson was 3 yrs ago the youngest ever CEO of BBDO group. It wasn't so much the content of his presentation that struck me, but the amazing and absolutely perfect presentation style - it was a performance!

Robertson didn't use Powepoint and told us why, because er ist on detox. He said he embraced .ppt for so long, that he just wanted to get away from it, to gain some freedom again. The next step to more personal freedom ist to stop using his blackberry, the modern Manager-heroin. He knew that he had a problem, when he was sitting on the toilet in the BBDO Düsseldorf offices and wrote an eMail to colleagues in new York. But Blackberry detox starts when he finally got rid of .ppt.

Then he told us, that just days ago he's been with his 14yr old daughter at a Stones Concert. For him it is amazing, that a 14yr old girl jumps up and down next to her 45yr old dad at a concert given by 65yr old men... This showed him how open minded young people are today. So for her it's normal to have 200 TV channels, her laptop, Chat, IM, a Blog, her Cell, etc.

But for him this is not about technology at all. The technology is just an Enabler to let everybody be more of themselves. He can see the permanent fragmentation of media markets. Every time you have virtually access to a million of plazes. But the technology isn't a guarantee to deliver anything! So Revolution is easy, you just smash down everything and start of new - Evolution is the hard part, where you have to work on a daily basis in a new environment. That's why for him it's all about creating compelling content - you have to engage and Users have to feel that.

He told also another interesting thing - in the US it currently costs around 9Cents to deliver 1 hr of Video to one Customer - one stamp to deliver one letter costs now 39Cents! So time & distance are barriers to the consumer which are diminishing... So it's almost all about compelling content.

Then he showed a Website which they actually made and he was quite proud of - it is indeed nice work and has some edgy features, but it's not really that dimension of "participation" we are talking about >> http://www.makemedance.com/

Finally he said: you can't buy attention any more! It's not about buying Media any more. That's why you have aim your work to earn time from your consumers.

The whole presentation has been done with virtually no notes, no powerpoint and he got the audience all the time. Thanx for the show Mr. Robertson, I learned a lot about performance...

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DLD06