We were trying to imagine what the best planning conference ever would be like. Here are some of the ideas:
1. It should be like a festival. Three days, in some fields somewhere warm (Not hot, warm). There'd be a main stage. A quant tent. And some beat-up vans selling dubious insights parked around the edges.
2. Costs would be kept low by making everyone bring their own tent. Ad students would be allowed in for free but they'd have to chop wood and do laundry for everyone else.
3. 20 minutes per speaker. Only exception, Paul Feldwick.
4. No Powerpoint, but speakers would be encouraged to create data presentations using rock show style lighting and lasers.
5. No planning prize, but agencies would be awarded fabulous trophies for superior BBQing.
6. Compulsory - frisbee golf, fry-ups, teams of people reenacting 'scenes from the great spreadsheets'
7. Banned - croissants, ethnography, pads and pens with hotel logos
8. Every evening the planning flag would be reverently lowered while the whole of Testing To Destruction is intoned by a male voice choir.
9. At dawn every day basic planning techniques would be taught by wise old planners doing Tai Chi.
10. Everyone would take home their version of the perfect creative brief, carved in whale bone.
i love point #2, thanks for thinking about us kids.
Posted by: nien | July 28, 2006 at 08:10 AM
I always feel very insulted when I'm offered a croissant. That's not real breakfast is it?
Posted by: Ben | July 28, 2006 at 08:33 AM
Ooh, ooh, and lots of cheesy sing alongs!
Posted by: Emily | July 28, 2006 at 05:15 PM
Maybe scary campfire ghost stories of tracking studies gone wrong, followed by a kum-ba-yah of best propositions?
Posted by: Dan Ng | July 29, 2006 at 11:48 PM
11. To deploy a Pro-bono PR team to neutralize any bullets from accounts and creative intended to cancel each years budget (for those persuaders that´d get away with making agencies pay for the festival).
Posted by: ivan | July 30, 2006 at 02:42 AM
Let's just tack it onto the back of Sonar. They do most of that stuff already.
http://daresessionsblog.blogspot.com
Posted by: Nick | August 01, 2006 at 01:09 PM