When my Account Director at
Rosetta asked me if I could take her place at the Business Insider Ignition
conference in New York, I jumped at the chance. “Sure I’ll hop on a plane and
travel 3,000 miles.” I didn’t even know who was speaking. I am, what you would say, a bit of a conference
dork. (But aren’t all conference attendees?) I love any opportunity to fill my
rung-out-sponge-of-a-brain and get on Tweetchat with my fellow tweeters and
exchange commentary. And wow, did this
conference come through.
 |
| Here I am with my new conference BFF's. |
The Ignition conference brought
together the top thirty digital, technology, publishing, and
entertainment execs, as well as venture capitalists, angels, and public-market
investors. Their purpose was to discuss the future of digital. Discuss, debate
and debunk, they did. I spent two days taking notes, tweeting and retweeting 140
characters’ worth of insight and revelation, delivered by the conference’s
impressive group of speakers and interviewers.
Okay. To be honest,
not all the conference topics spoke to me.
For example, “Computers Versus Humans: Is Automated Audience Buying Inevitable?”
Since I am a social strategist, this was
a bit of a snoozer. However, I am sure the
media buying wonks found this conversation riveting.
Overall, the
conference covered a wide swath of topics from LinkedIn’s CEO, Jeff Weiner’s,
“Transforming the Way the World Works” to Groupon’s CEO, Andrew Mason’s, “The Future of Groupon and Local Commerce” to
Time Warner’s Chief, Jeff Bewkes’, “The Future
of TV Everywhere.” As you can imagine, with a crowd like this, many insights,
opinions and stories were offered. Here are my key take-aways:
1.
It’s
confirmed. The future of digital is mobile. (There are 7 billion people on earth. 1
billion of them are on mobile.)
2.
Content
is still king. (Premium video is the king of kings.)
3.
Personalization
and customization is where marketing is going.
4.
We
now have the tools to measure and optimize everything.
Of all the take-aways,
the point about content (#2 above) resonated with me the most because of my
social leanings. But it also affirmed my long-held belief that while things
have changed dramatically in the media/marketing landscape, one thing has
remained the same. Great content has always reigned surpreme. I loved the story Don
Graham, Washington Post CEO, shared with the Ignition crowd. He related how his
grandfather purchased the Post back in the 1930’s for $850,000 just to get its popular
sports writer. That story emphasized an
even bigger point. To have great
content, you need the people to create it and the moments to inspire it.
I have to hand it to
Henry Blodget, Business Insider CEO, and his crew of reporters. They assembled
a premium group of leaders and got plenty of “shareable” moments from them. There
was the moment when I thought Groupon’s beleaguered CEO, Andrew Mason, was
going to cry. There was Dr. Oz talking about how to get a man to pay attention
to his health. Answer: talk about the shape of his bodily functions. Then, there
was the lively banter between scrappy Henry Blodget and swaggerly Jeffrey
Bewkes over whether CNN’s ratings were tanking or not. It was pure content gold and a
live demonstration of the future of digital.
To experience the great content from the top thirty CEO’s
firsthand, visit Business Insider’s website or Henry Blodget’s blog.
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