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male speaker: --to mattscheckner and the whole team at advertising week forall their help. and they just do a phenomenaljob putting the whole event on year in, year out. so we're just really thrilledto be here. as most people probably alreadyknow, the creative community and the advertisingindustry in particular has been a real important area offocus for adobe, really since our inception.

but just as the agency communityis evolving, and today dealing with how to buildbrands in a much more complex, multi-screenenvironment, adobe's also evolving. so moving from just contentcreation solutions to content delivery and optimizationsolutions. and so our take is that workingwith our agency partners, the opportunity forcreativity and profit is greater today than it ever hasbeen in the advertising world.

and so we can dig into thosetopics a little bit here with the panel. and so with that, i justwant to introduce our moderator for today. it's jason witt, senior vicepresident and general manager from myspace studio. jason witt: thank you. could we turn up thelights in the back? i'm just kidding.

i'm going to get a migraine. so thank you guys forcoming out here. i was actually nervous abouttwo minutes ago. it looked like there were goingto be 10 people, and i thought we could justgo get drinks. but no. we probably can't. and since i'm going to forget,there's a really cool panasonic 3d thing happeningafter the show.

i'll never remember. we think it's all goingto be really cool. the other thing is in preparingfor this panel, the guys onstage said that they hadso much information that they didn't even want tointroduce themselves. so i'm going to tryto do that. i gave them a two-sentenceopportunity to describe themselves. in a couple cases, theirpr people did it.

so let me start from my right. steve nesle from deutsch. steve nesle, pronounced nes-lee,is the executive vice president, executive creativedirector at deutsch new york where he is charged withdeveloping the agency's digital practice as well asintegrating digital thinking into all of deutsch's accountsfrom pnc bank to microsoft. steve's a veteran digitalcreative and he's held executive creator positionsat tribal,

modem, mccann, and digitas. uh-oh. i have michael lebowitz,who founded and is the ceo of big spaceship. he's asked me to cut thisshort, but he did get a primetime emmy awardnomination. to my left-- michael lebowitz: it wascreative arts, not primetime. jason witt: to my left, daveschiff from crispin porter.

dave started his advertisingcareer eight years ago as a copywriter. crispin porter in 2003 waspromoted to creative director on coca-cola zero, where hehelped engineer the coca-cola company's most successfulproduct launch in more than 20 years. dave had a detroit to dcjourney on an electric motorcycle. and that was the subject of ahighly successful, shocking

barack viral campaign forthe oregon-based eb manufacturer brammo. dave schiff: i've also been tofive different county jails in three different states,including queens central booking here in kew gardens. [applause] i don't know why thepr people didn't-- tom o'keefe: that'snot on the paper. that has to be said.

you don't put thaton the paper. jason witt: dave mademe feel a lot better about what i'm wearing. so philippe meunier-- philippe meunier: good. you're good. jason witt: --ok. chief creative officer andfounder at sid lee. philip, actually, right?

philippe meunier: yeah. jason witt: so he and a highschool buddy founded sid lee 18 years ago, built in part ona multi-platform approach defined as commercialcreativity. you now have offices in paris,amsterdam, and toronto. and as the senior partner andcreative chief, philippe oversees all creative-- chef? it is chef.

philippe meunier: it is chef. jason witt: master chef. phi-leep-- philippe-- oversees all creative outputfor all major international clients including red bull,cirque du soleil, and adidas. anything to add? philippe meunier: nope. jason witt: that's beautiful.

and last but not least, tom--look at this, it still took a long time-- tom o'keefe from draftfcb. tom's boss jonathan harrisonce described him as a malcontent. and while he's still not sure ifhe meant it as a good or a bad thing, tom does everythinghe can to live up to that every day. that's very nice.

as draftfcb's executive creativedirector for north america, tom is committed toraising draftfcb's profile within the agency's6.5 seconds that matter operating system. and perhaps you'll have 6.5seconds to describe it. done. so-- tom o'keefe: howlong do i have? jason witt: you're over.

so i wanted to startthis off-- it's funny. i could tell the kindof panel i was on. i sent out a bunchof questions. and the initial responsewas it's too structure. and then i sent out a revisedset of questions. and i heard today it reallywasn't structured enough. so we know we're inthe right room. so i'm going to start with, ithink, a broad-based question.

but there was a lot ofdiscussion about sub-bullets. and hopefully folks will talk. at the end of the day, my pieceis done now with the next 50 minutes. and you're probably really hereto hear what these folks are saying, what their opinionsare, and really hear them react to each other. and i'm going to tryto facilitate that as much as possible.

so really the starting question,and this is for steve, is the name of thepanel is 21st century creatives and we had a debateas to what a creative was. and so i'm going to startwith steve on that one. it's 2010. what does a creativedo or look like? steve nesle: that's a reallydumb question. [laughter] creatives look like us.

no. first of all, i feel like i'min a pottery barn window. michael lebowitz: is there anyway to turn the lights down? it's like we're beinginterrogated. if we have ways of makingpeople talk. steve nesle: so the questionwas-- can you all hear me-- what does a creative do? i think a creative does in the21st century what they've always done.

and that is to solvebusiness problems. that's the boring answer. but i think that because we'reall here and we have a sort of digital slant to us, i think thekey thing to think about is that what a creative does isless about solving business problems with advertising butsolving business problems using an unimaginable amount oftools, be it media, be it software, be it promotionsand events. so it's less about ok, give theadvertising brief to the

advertising creative. it's more about give them thebusiness problem and see what they can [? put out. ?] what do you think,do you agree? dave schiff: i think it'sa dumb question too. michael lebowitz:i'm next, man. come on. no, go ahead. dave schiff: i think it's a dumbquestion because i don't

think there is a creative that'scapable of doing what we all have to do. i think you have to have adepartment that has digital infrastructure and has peoplethat are great at coming up with big ideas. and if you can find a wholebunch of people that can do both, awesome. but really you need both. and so i think if you can havea confluence of those two

things, that's what a creativedepartment looks like. i don't believe that there'sjust a singular creative that you can get a group ofand make great stuff. michael lebowitz: i'llgo you one further. i don't think that anybodyshould have creative in their title at all. and i think it's a pox on thisindustry that people are referred to as the creatives,as though everybody else is absolved of the responsibilityof creativity.

it also creates that horriblestereotype of the creative director, the don draper, i amthe fount from which all creativity spills. it's ludicrous. we don't have anybody in bigspaceship with creative in their title, andwe never will. well, never say never. we cannot foresee having it. because creativityis cost of entry.

i think what's reallyinteresting is surrounding problems with lotsof perspectives. when things operated a littlebit more linearly, you could have departments. but having departmentsnow slows you down. and we're in, at best, a lowlatency world and more realistically a realtimeworld. and there's no timefor departments. and so a creative departmentis a negative in my book.

it means you can't solve theproblems without hurling things over a fence to thenext people in line. tom o'keefe: i wouldsay, though, somebody has to pull together. and i think in everyagency, of course, everybody should be creative. we've heard that. but i think what creatives dois bring it together and realize it.

and what their job is is whatit's always been which is to turn it into something that'sinspiring, that makes people go i didn't see that coming, andwhat is commerce becomes more than that. yeah, everybody hasthe ability to come up with an idea. but i still think that creativesare the ones-- somebody's got to own gettingthat to become a product. and creative is both what werefer to the work, as well as

what we refer to the people whoare ultimately responsible for creating that. i think it's important to havethat signal that this is about the work. this is about the stuffat the end. and this is what we do. michael lebowitz: so thenaren't the production companies the creativesby that definition? because they're theones that actually

bring it into the world. tom o'keefe: yeah, when theydo their part of it, absolutely, when theyrealize it. and i always think of productioncompanies as being part of the creative. philippe meunier: i thinkwe're asking ourself the question for a creativeperson. on my side, i believe that inthe future, there's not only one creative person.

it's a creative attitudeof the company. and for me, being creative inthe future is being creative driven as a company. it makes a big differenceat the end. and michael, you're right. when you say there's no creativeat big spaceship because you're creativedriven. and that's the attitudeof the company. that makes a big differenceat the end of the day.

so if you're starting working inan agency, whatever you do. if you have the attitude ofbeing creative, that makes a difference. michael lebowitz:that's great. we say if you're not creative,you can't work here. and we really put our moneywhere our mouth is. and i completelyagree with you. it's about culture. everybody talks about digitalas though it's a

practice or a channel. and what it is is acultural shift. it's a cultural shift that goesfrom predictable, linear, static platform tounpredictable, hurtling forward at massive velocityand wildly fragmented. and the whole idea of one groupbeing able to solve every problem, or especially onedepartment being able to solve problems. or even justbring solutions together by themselves to me seems like itmay work for a little while

longer but probablynot very long. philippe meunier: and just toadd to that, it's all about confluence is whati'm hearing. and you guys are more digitallysteep but adding traditional capability. and i think we come from theother side where we started off traditional, and we'readding more digital. and just as you've tried toremove, or have said, no one's going to be called a creative,we stopped saying, well, this

is a digital copywriter,or this is a digital art director. and it's the same thing. and it all comes down to a groupof people that are all capable of doingseveral things. and we just have always saidthe best idea is boss. so if somebody has an idea andthey happen to be this person or that person, itdoesn't matter. the org chart is adjusted peridea if you have a big idea

that could be driven throughstrategy and advance the cause of the brand. jason witt: so there are a lotof different definitions, then, or non-definitions,of what a creative is. but let me go back then a step,which is you're only creative to the extent, ordelivering service to the extent that clients haveasked you to do so. and so the definition of whatit should look like in some ways has to follow what you'rebeing asked to deliver.

and was it tom who said 30 yearsago, maybe even 10 years ago, it was about fillingthe space. and now it's about somethingdifferent. what are you being asked to dothat allows you to give the varying responses. and how does that differ frombeing asked to fill the space, let's say, 10 years ago? tom o'keefe: well, i don't knowif i said filling the space, but i'll take that.

i'll say i think the differenceis, at least when i started, it was aboutthe story. advertising and brandsare about stories. but when i started, it wasabout telling that story. it was about a beginning and amiddle and an end and an arc. and it was about the emotion ofthat that was the message. and i think now there is justas much if not more opportunity where the actualmessenger is that story. it's how you're applying it.

what makes people go holy shitis the technology sometimes or how cool it is to be able totap into something from a different-- and so the story isn'tnecessarily that emotional telling a story as it is theway you go about it. and i think that'swhat's different. i think that's what opens it upexponentially in terms of what the possibilities areversus 20 years ago or 30 years ago when as a creative,you had an assignment, your

job was to fill that space,whether it was a television commercial or an outdoorboard or radio. and you told the storywithin that space. but now i think it really is themediums that you choose, the technology that goes intothem, the devices that become the whiz-bang that youget excited about. and there's nothingwrong with that. and there are other times whenthey come together and it's both the story andthe technique.

someone was talking about thearcade fire wilderness downtown video. the technology of that and thegoogle map is amazing. but at the end of the day,it's still a story about bringing you back to yourchildhood and all the sentiments that comewith that. and that's very powerful. steve nesle: but one of thechallenges we face today is that that grand story can't betold one way through one pipe

through one piece of contentno matter how beautifully crafted it is. you just go to google or you goto bing and you type in-- michael lebowitz: what's bing? steve nesle: bing's awesome. check it out. go to bing and type in nike,and there is the story. that's the brand's story. it's a confluence of all thethings that real people are

talking about when itcomes to the brand. now, part of it couldbe the advertising. most of it, though, is theactual product experience. so as creative people, i thinkwe have to recognize that yeah, sure, the brand'sstories are important. but we don't control them theway we did even 10 years ago. dave schiff: well, i thinkanother part of that, what you're saying is that it's aconversation with pop culture. and it used to be that you triedto make that happen.

now it's going to happenno matter what. so you can put somethingout there, but people are going to respond. and the questions is whatdo you do next? and it has to be realtime, or asclose to it as you can get and it has to be stillthrough the strategy. but having that conversationis what the brand becomes. jason witt: but you get paid bybrands to create a certain kind or facilitate a certainkind of a conversation.

isn't that true? i mean, do fans carry all thewater now when it comes to defining a brand? dave schiff: i mean, theoriginal question sounded to me a little bit like a mediaquestion and how do you roll out a campaign, maybe, or how doyou express a brand through all of these various media. and to be honest with you, ithink few people up here would argue that that incredibledigital tool or app or

property is probably moreeffective than a single television commercial. but the reality is that with alot of big brands, the client does not see the campaign untilthey see the television. and that's just reality. so you can make the most amazingthings in the world, and you would not just stick todigital, but you need that layer of traditional over it. and that could bea great thing.

and it can pour gason the fire. but often times, it's necessaryeven to sell something through. michael lebowitz: the problemis the process. tv still lights the fuse betterthan anything else. it will for a while. but it's a little like tryingto teach your child to speak by just having it repeat thesame thing over and over. like, here's a slogan, kid.

now learn to speak and learnto have a a conversation. you don't start with one-waycommunication. you start with two-way, and thenyou figure out how you're going to do it. and the two-way isthe dynamite. and all anybody's ever done tothis point is lay fuses. and they've never been heldaccountable to actually blow anything up. philippe meunier: but we'retalking a lot about mass

media, and we're talkinga lot about digital. for me, this is reality. we're just starting the hockeystick on this curve now. but i think the real question ofthe future is what's going to be next? are we going to talk abouttheatre, movies, games, all of that other stuff that arereally, really present around us and that we have to lookfor in the future. because this is where thecurve's going to happen and

the big surprise isgoing to happen. michael lebowitz: i couldn'tagree more with that. i think all of our role reallyis to understand human behavior, both emerging andexisting, much more than understanding technology. we're a digital agency born andbread, and we don't ever start with technology. we always talk about who are wetrying to talk to and what are we trying to say.

and then the next question iswhat do they want and how can we get that to them, not how dowe make you care about our brand, but what do you careabout it, and how can our brand make that happen? tom o'keefe: so that gets allthe way back again to the difference between whatwas and what is. what was is you only have somany ways, yeah, you've got a strategy, you've got somethingyou want to say about the brand.

now you've got all thesedifferent vehicles to say it. and i think that'sthe difference. it's like if you can thinkit, it can be. and at the end of the day, itstill is about what the brand stands for and finding ways ofgetting that across and having consumers engage and say that'srelevant, that's what i believe, that's what i'm engagedin, that's for me. dave schiff: i don'tthink it's about saying things at all.

i think it's about doing thingsand making either tools or utilities that make someone'slife better through the brand or possiblythat help them intersect with the brand. but people are done withbeing messaged to. and hey, this is what we standfor, check this out. you have to prove what you standfor by making shit that actually enables thatin the real world. michael lebowitz: yeah, i don'tthink a brand is a story

anymore in any traditionalsense. i think a brand is the sum ofits actions and not the ones that it's chosen to articulateor chosen to take, but all of them because everything'sbeen made transparent. and so a brand is no longer thesum of its communications activities. it's the sum of its customerservice activities, probably even more than its communicationactivities. and all of thosewalls are down.

and it's really aboutorganizations having to go through a process of breakingdown the infrastructure. part of what you're talkingabout about needing tv is because there's 50 years ofinfrastructure built up around procuring tv. i've spokento so many cmos. they all seem toreally get it. but they've got some marketinggroup in kazakhstan who needs tv. dave schiff: or they have towalk it down to the ceo to

justify their existence andit's like, where's the tv? tom o'keefe: but wouldn't youagree that brand still has to stand for something, whether ornot its message is what it stands for? i think that's what, at theend of the day, this is still all about. yeah, you may not come out andsay it's me pounding my chest, but i think that's some of theissues that we have to be able to still focus on.

dave schiff: i think stuff hasto stand for something, but it has to do something thatexpresses that. like, if best buy-- andi'm not trying to be self-referentialwith our work. but with best buy, you couldjust run a commercial that says best buy has awesomecustomer service. or you could create somethinglike 12 twelpforce, where we actually made it so that aconsumer can send a text to any best buy employee, even ifthey're off work, sitting at

home on the couch watching tv,hey, what's the best vcr for-- oh shit, i guess it'sa dvd player. i'm old. michael lebowitz:what's a vcr? dave schiff: what's the bestblu-ray player for under $400? and you're going to getthese things back. and then it's cool to do a tvspot that drives to that and celebrate that. but that is a livingmanifestation of best buy has

awesome customer service. michael lebowitz: that's agreat example of what i'm talking about. but you guys did thisamazing thing. it's a customer servicedecision. it's an operational decision. it's not a marketinggroup decision. i mean, obviously it has tocross all of those things. and someday we should sit downand you can explain how you

actually pushed that through. because i run up against thethat doesn't fall within my budget thing all the time. philippe meunier: but thisis a good example where creativity goes beyondmarketing. it applies to every stageof the business. and i think in the future fromproduct design to customer service to marketing, creativitywill be the major force in the future.

and i think it's excitingfor us. because it's like when musicchanged a few years ago, now we're listening to moremusic than ever. and i think everything willchange in the next few years. and we'll have more visualsimulation from brand exercise or whatsoever around us andit will be amazing. jason witt: so letme ask this. if you have either ademocratized brand experience or a lot of touch points thatneed television or some other

way to bring them together,if brand is the sum of its actions but those actions arenow smaller, more finite than before, who is guidinga brand? and i'm going to assume thatthere's probably no cmo that's going to keep his job if he sayswe are just the sum of what consumer is saying. michael lebowitz: not sayit, but embrace it. i mean, you need to embrace thefact that you don't really control your brand anymore.

i mean, there was that exampleof nestle on their facebook page saying, hey, don'tmess with our logo. and they just got destroyed. they got literally justeviscerated by people because you can't control it. you cannot control agroup of people. and especially on facebook. we say all the time, on yourown website, you can say whatever you want, you can bewhoever you want, that's where

you can speak about yourselfcomfortably with your own tone of voice. when you go into somebodyelse's space, it's the equivalent, for a lot of thesebrands, of going into a party, changing the music, and theninterrupting everyone and starting to talkabout yourself. no individual would everdo that, i hope. i wouldn't. but brands do it all the time.

they have no socialgraces whatsoever. and recognizing that if you arethe sum of your actions and that people are going topoint out your flaws more actively than they would withjust another person, you have to embrace the fact that youcan't operate from command and control anymore. all you can do is try to betrue to your brand values. and i agree with youthat a brand has to have a set of values.

it has to stand for something. steve nesle: the point there isthat people can see through a tag line. so if you're saying you believein x and you're meaningful because of y and thenyou're behaving a totally different way as a brand,people see through the bullshit and you lose. tom o'keefe: somebody's got tomanage what the thing is that makes the brand have a singlevoice and a personality and

doesn't feel like it'sby committee. and you're right, maybeit's not the tag line. maybe it needs to be somethinglike what's the brand's voice, or how do you articulate acertain soul of the brand so that when all these differentpartners are doing different things, they at least understandthat there's something that pullsit all together. and i think in many cases,it's the cmo or somebody within the client who's chargedwith that because

there are so many differentpartners now at the table. but the schizophrenic brand isthe one that doesn't have at least somebody who's ableto articulate something. well, the brand talkslike this. oh, i get it. whether i'm doing the digital orwhether i'm working for the client, at least i understandthat that's how to carry it. that's a tough thing. but the successful and the greatbrands are able to, i

think, understand thatand promote that. dave schiff: i agreewith that 100%. you've got to have a strategy. it's got to be a brilliantstrategy. that has to come from theagencies and the brand itself working together. and then you've got tohave a point of view. and then once you do that, ofcourse, you're going to put that out there.

and it's not announcement,i give you this. it's the beginning ofthat conversation. but i think that you absolutelyhave to have strategy and a point of view. and that's why a purely crowdsourced advertising agency model is never going to work. because you need thosethings to be focused. philippe meunier: and goingback, when you were saying you could have the best brandmanager, the best cmo on the

table, but if you have to managewith 10 people, they express your brand in differentways, that's a pretty hard job. but after that, after theirvision of the strategy, i think we need someone who'sin charge of the brand expression. and for me, that'sthe creative. the creative are in charge ofthe brand culture and put the brand expression out thereand follow the strategy.

but it needs to have one guy,not 10 companies going in different directions to provethat they are the best company [unintelligible]. steve nesle: the danger withthat is in how you define and if it's a loosely definedthing, great. if it's so tightly controlled,then you run the risk of chopping off all the otherpartners at their knees. you've got to let them do whatthey do and be great at it. because frankly, circling backaround a little bit, your

first question about creativesin general and having a creative culture, i think youcan apply that, frankly, or you should apply that, to theculture that surrounds all the partner agencies and the client,that broader team together needs to have acreative culture and that creative drive can't just residewith one agency that has anointed themselvesthe brand steward. michael lebowitz: right. there's too many services tobe offered for anyone to be

best in class at all of them. so everybody needs to learnthis really new thing that hasn't been part ofthe industry-- it's been part of my part of theindustry to some degree-- which is how to playnice in the sandbox with everybody else. know what you do really well anddo it, rather than trying to capture every singlemarketing dollar there is, because you'll build betterrelationships that way, and

it'll be long term valueover cash in hand. so i couldn't agree more. i think strategy is creative. i think it's one of the mostcreative activities there is. so i don't make the samedistinction you do, but i think we're saying ultimatelythe same thing. we talk a lot about frameworksinstead of processes. because the world is moving sofast, a framework is elastic. a framework can be adapted.

it just nudges you inthe right direction. whereas a process is extremelyrigorously defined. and i don't think a processfor how to execute communications against brandvalues is likely to stay relevant for very long. and you may not haveschizophrenic communications for three months or a year, butthe following year, you probably will. so thinking elasticity and howdo we communicate refinements

and learnings, i think a lot ofit is about going from the investment in the big,blockbuster spot that is of most value the day it airs andthen diminishes in value from that point forward to more of aninvestment model where you start putting a bunch of thingsout there and see what resonates and then double downon the ones that are working. dave schiff: well, i agree. quickly, and i don't mean to cutyou off, but i'm going to. michael lebowitz:i love this guy.

he rides tattoos. dave schiff: i agree with you. again, it's not just becauseyou're handsome and charismatic. but i think that the strategyshould be something-- and we said there shouldn't be adistinction between creative and not creative. but i think if you look atwhat would previously be called the planner, andwe call them cognitive

anthropologists. we have fucked up names foreverybody in the company. but if you take those people andyou take creatives and you put them together and youmake a great strategy-- and i also agree, don'ttry to do everything. you can do a lot of it, andit's good to have some consolidation. but invariably with these hugebrands, you're going to have a million partner agencies.

if you have a simple strategythat's based off of a true insight, those partner agencieswill be able to execute and do what they doand what they're good at against that. so i think that's the key. tom o'keefe: and i think that'swhere our value is. because the cmos, they'll talkabout i've got more data, and i've got more coming in thani know what to do with. our job is to be able to say,well, this is what matters.

that's the 6.5 seconds thatmatters, by the way. but this is really what youneed to be focusing on. and somebody's got to be ableto take the lead and show them the way. like, you're getting hit. you open the door andit's a tsunami. but we're able to boil that downand tell you something strategically based on that. and that strategy shouldbecome inspiration.

that inspiration is whateverybody should be able to work against. and itfeels effortless even though it's not. and i'm speaking froma larger agency. that's the value that we bring,i think, is the ability to do those things and to thinkit all has to lead to something in the end. jason witt: so thatwas awesome. one of the things thati struggle with--

so i'm trying to put this cmohat on here and collect the aggregate of what we've beentold which sounds like a brand needs a soul, it needs values,it needs a strategy, it may or may not need a story. and then it needs some way tonow express that to the world, that both is led by then butembraces the audience. and it's like, holy crap. that's a whole lot of stuff. and that's where, i think, iworry that we're putting a lot

on the backs of the cmo becausehe's not up here. and it's easy to say,well, you should do all those things. bring those in, bring in thesemultiple viewpoints, understand how to expressall these places. and i'm like, we all have photosthat we wish weren't on the web, and we're one person. we're going to deputizeemployees, and then we're going to deputize in someways consumers.

and knowing that one or two badcomments has to be offset by 10,000 or whatever thosestats are, is that realistic to do? michael lebowitz: we talk allthe time about the opportunity of negative experiences with abrand and that those are now transparent and broadcast. ifyou have a good relationship with a brand but you don'tfeel passionate about it, what's going to driveyou to passion? i have a friend who workson the client side,

international, digital. and for a cpg company. and he told me the story abouthow he's been buying the same brand of butter for 20 years. but he's never thought aboutit because it's butter. and then one time hegot a rancid batch. and because he's in cpg, heknew where to look to give them all the information. and no twitter or nothing fancy,he emailed them and

said, hey, just thoughtyou should know. and they wrote back this veryhuman, oh my god, all anybody else does is tellus to fuck off. and you gave us reallyvaluable information. thank you so much. here's a year's supplyof butter. steve nesle: all at once. michael lebowitz: yeah. exactly.

he's just bathing in butter. he's really greasy. but now he had a positiveexperience after a negative experience that he is now a diehard fan of, i don't know if it was breakstone orwhatever, because they responded in a human way to anotherwise negative situation. and so it's not don'tmake mistakes. that's unrealistic. those glossy, perfect brandsthat have existed for so long

aren't going to exist anymorebecause brands make mistakes more than an individual. jason witt: but if we increasethe number of brand representatives, the mistakesstart multiplying. imagine comcast has a guy whofalls asleep on a sofa. give every comcast guy a twitterhandle and deputize him to speak on behalf on thebrand, and what comes next? that's not rancid butter,that's not customer service per se.

i'm just saying, now giveconsumers the deputization and don't have somebodythat's driving or facilitating the message. i'm just curious, is thata realistic response? philippe meunier: i think it'shonest. and we have to go this way, because otherwiseit's going to break. and i think the key for thatis to go fast. because consumer thinks fast a lot. and spending months and monthstrying to test a tv campaign

and going to focus group andretest and blah-blah-blah. and then you go out there,after three, six months, it's done. it's over. it doesn't work anymore. you have to go faster. so that's why the consumerwants things fast. it wants a response. it wants to talk.

they want to express themselvesabout the brand. so let's not be too rigid,otherwise brand will break in the future. dave schiff: i think it'slaughable that we're up here talking about transparencylike it's in an option. whatever shit is going onwith your brand, it's going to get out. transparency is a foregoneconclusion with what's out there today.

and the question is whatdo you do about it? and the example hereis a great example. we worked with domino's. we had youtube videos of kidsthat worked at domino's shooting snot into the pizza. that's not part of the newformulation that we've had success with, by the way. but what we did was we had theceo come in, immediately respond to this thing.

it was like the next day, wehave a video up and running with the ceo. also, we've recommendedsomething like a twitter aggregator that goes on acompany dashboard or even as a consumer facing thing. and what happens is whensomebody shit-talks something-- even on our website now, wehave an aggregator that anything about burger king orany other brand we work on

will just come up in realtime as it's happened. and some of it's like, oh,burger king's awesome. and some of it's like,burger king sucks. and when you hold that up to theworld and you are burger king and you're showing them,it diffuses the burger king sucks comments so powerfully. so i think you have toembrace transparency because it's here. it's not something thatyou get to decide

you're going to do. michael lebowitz: to philippe'spoint, this goes back to the investment modeland doing a whole lot of things really fast and notworrying about them being perfectly polished, i have thisline that i say to my clients over and overand over again. it's never been cheaperor quieter to fail. so as long as you're learningfrom it, it's an incredibly valuable exercise.

because usually failing in thedigital world just means nobody showed up. philippe meunier: well, let'stry three campaigns and see what's happening in 24hours and remove two. michael lebowitz: we prototypeso many things and drop some off along the way and then putfour or five things-- and this is what i think is alittle bit of the fallacy of the big idea. i think big ideas are importantin certain cases,

but i think agencies have beenholding onto it because it's the last vestige thatthey can hold on to with their fists tight. sometimes an aggregate of awhole lot of little ideas that circle in an authentic way thevalues of the brand are going to be more successful. i think that's what gets to yourpoint about letting the partners do what theydo really well. again, it's iterative andcollaborative rather than

command and control top down. why does there have to be alead agency if everybody's working towards the same goal? dave schiff: i think that's acool point that the big idea is maybe changed to the bigpoint of view from which your communications come from. and another important point,just based on this whole subject is just we hear fromclients all the time, all the time, we want to be real time.

we want to be relevant. we want to respond to thingsas soon as they happen. and never ever do they have theinfrastructure that allows that to happen. and they want to, and we workwith them, and we try to streamline the process. but that's one of the biggestchallenges, i think, facing the brand today is how can yourespond when this is the way that pop culture speaks?

are you able to get yourorganization to a place, empower the right people, put aprocess in place that allows you to do that. michael lebowitz:there's so many catch-22s in business process. we have a client, one of ourbest clients, really forward thinking, and they say,we want never before been done ideas. and we give them to them.

and then they go to legaland legal says, well, we need a precedent. and it's like, well, ok. there's nothing we cando in this situation. jason witt: so we agree thatthere should be no lead created agenciesgoing forward. perfect. [interposing voices] tom o'keefe: whether it's thelead agency or it's the

client, somebody's got to stillbe the keeper, as i will say, it still has to feel likeit's coming from one voice, and the brand feels likeit's a person and not like it's a committee. and who's going to own thatis a good question. i think an agency, it's theresponsibility of an agency to be able to articulate that,especially if the client's not able to do it themselves. and whether you're the leadagency or you're just trying

to play nice in the sandbox,the brand has got to be the thing that we're all workingtogether on. philippe meunier: but see, maybein the future the agency will be better in that point. and they're going to be goodto manage their brand. and maybe advertisingagency, we're the middle man right now. and maybe they're going to getstronger and take over their business and they'regoing to do it.

tom o'keefe: i just saw barbaralippert said something about that today, that that's awhole new industry for us to be the air traffic controland manage that. but i think that is whatwe've been doing. it's just a matter of doeseverybody understand the brand that works on it, trulyunderstand it? what does it take to understandthe brand? some people say, well that's notwhat taco bell would do. and it's like, well, why not?

if you can't articulate it,then you're just saying something for the sakeof saying it. jason witt: so actually that'sa great segue to the last question, i think. if in the future it keepsgetting teed up, if you could blow it up and rebuild it rightnow-- it sounds like some of you are more likely todo that than others-- what would be the big thing thatyou would change? steve nesle: i'd abolishthe term lead agency.

honestly. i think our industry has alwaysbeen about meritocracy, the best ideas, the best talent,the best whatever. and when you get into thiscomplacent mindset, that there's a lead agency, then ifeel like we're getting soft. i think that the agencysupremacy should be constantly challenged. because at the end of the day,you always want the absolute best, not just the guythat was deemed lead.

you always want the best talent,you want the best ideas constantly infront of the cmo. michael lebowitz:i totally agree. i would say that thebest talent only works in the best culture. you have to have a culturethat actually embraces collaboration internally. we're not in the business ofproducing account services, so don't just put all the accountservices people together

because that's notyour product. put everybody who surroundsthe output of the agency together to really empower themand give them autonomy to solve the problems at hand. that's how we work acrossdisciplinary teams. and a real focus on culture. the culture internally is goingto be how you can adapt the culture externally. and to your point, we don't payattention to what the big

agencies are doing. we pay attention to what thereal small up and comers are doing because they're the oneswho are going to be closest to the culture. we have our interns have justas loud a voice as we're brainstorming and devisingstrategy as myself or my senior executives. we have interns who have comeup with brilliant ideas because they are closeto the culture.

and i think meritocracy isgreat, but meritocracy is spoken but it's not practicedin a lot of cases in bigger companies. because somebody's got tenureof 10 or 15 or 20 years, so they have to be heard first. and i think that's gotto be blown up. because at least for the timebeing, the closer you are to being completely born digital,the more native insights you're going to have into howpeople interact and what the

behaviors are. philippe meunier: the firstthing i think we should blow up is the building. because if we want to attracttalent, i think it's really important to open our doorsto whatever the talent is in this world. and i think when you're 26, 22years old and you're creative, you have your laptop, yourphone, and you're ready to go everywhere to enjoy and to workin great companies with

great culture. and i think the fact that we'rehaving those buildings and so many floors of differentdepartment and so many silos with differentcompanies, i think this is where we're getting fat. and we're not fast anymore. and if we're fat and not fast,we'll all die one day. that's for sure. so i say let's blow up, andlet's be small, and let's be

remote and focus on thetalent, on the people. dave schiff: if we get to blowshit up, i would like to blow up more than just the ad side. i'd like to blow up some ofthe client side as well. because first of all, itwould just be fun. michael lebowitz: let's blowup [unintelligible]. dave schiff: but honestly, ithink if you could just blow shit up and start over, youcan't just talk about what's happening on the agency side,because invariably, that is

going to get sent overto the client side. and if there's not a processin place or a structure in place there that facilities andbuys the ideas and gets them to market quickly,it's a waste of time. so what i would love to see, andthis sounds like fucking willy wonka, but i would liketo see an ad agency client situation, or whatever we wantto call ourselves, the creative and the brand sides,have a system that was able to work really quickly and bringthese tools like we've talked

about, utilities, applications,things that make people's lives more fun,more interesting, better, to market quicker. because right now, we're not inthe business of hey, we've got to get to this ideabefore those guys do. we're competing more againstthe startups. the kind of things we're makingare business model changing things, and they happenreally fast. and you can present an idealike groupon.

you could present that to aclient and say, hey, what if you did a thing where you letconsumers get on your website and get togetherand save money? well, then they're going to comeout with it and turn it into a billion dollar businesswithin two years. so that's the businesswe're in now. and it's competitive, and it'sfast, and it's scary, and it's fun, and it's cool,and that's it. tom o'keefe: so my turnto blow something up?

i think i would blow up whatcould be a trend that there's too much piling on and everybodygets an opportunity to put their littlespin on something. and that's both on the clientend and that's on our end. i think, again, i'm going toget back to my belief that you've got to standfor something, you've got to have vision. and i look at brands thattheir founders are still there, like your apples and youramazons and your zappos.

where it's like, this iswhat we stand for. because i founded this companywith this vision. and everybody's goingto follow that. and over time, brands that don'thave founders and other people interpret it differentways and they put their mark on it. and then other agencies orpartners can come in and they all put their littlemark on it, it starts to lose its focus.

and i think that the watch outis yes, you want to bring a lot of people to the tablebecause you can get a lot of great ideas. but the caution is thatthat becomes the schizo thing again. and that it's very importantfor brands to have that clear vision. so that's what iwould blow up. jason witt: do we have time todo q&a, or we've got to--

tom o'keefe: who wantsto blow stuff up? jason witt: one, two questionsand you're going to have people-- audience: [inaudible]. dave schiff: are you drinkinga coke zero? michael lebowitz: it worked. jason witt: all right. we've got time for two questionsbefore [inaudible] panasonic 3d.

dave schiff: was thata question? audience: it wasn't a questionbecause i'm addicted. dave schiff: put my kidsthrough college. audience: why isn't therea woman on the panel? jason witt: she dropped off. actually, there was one. she dropped off. michael lebowitz: she's actuallydoing work instead of pontificating.

jason witt: talkingabout the future. audience: perhaps what youought to blow up is an attitude about womenin the creative departments of the agencies. philippe meunier: that's true. dave schiff: well, crispinporter has had a reputation as a fraternity fora lot of years. but now with [unintelligible]and with more and more amazing talented female--

across every department, i wasgoing to say creatives, but i know you're going to lashout at me about that. michael lebowitz: i'll tryto restrain myself. dave schiff: but it'sincreasingly important. we've been working in apreliminary capacity for vitamin water. and you look at their business,and it skews female. and we've got all these guys. and so they're sayinglook, that's great.

get a really senior talentedfemale creative on this business right now or we'renot interested. because we what thoseinsights. and so yes. i think it's needed andit's good and it's going to keep going. michael lebowitz: absolutely. we've gone from the early dayswhen really it was only possible for the most part tohire geeks, or geeks were

mostly male then. i'm not really surewhat it was. but where we were 10% female,15% female, we've gotten much closer to 50-50 at this point. so i see a positivetrend there. i didn't invite peopleto this. and in fact, i wasa late addition. i'm probably fillingin for that female. so i don't know what to sayabout why the invitations went

the way they did. philippe meunier: but in 10years from now, it will be more female because guys arelazy to go to school. so i'm sure it's going tochange the industry. dave schiff: but obviously thisis just belaboring the obvious, there are insights thatonly a female can write competently about or thinkabout or present about. and so i remember early onbefore crispin had hired a lot of female creatives, we had alittle piece of the victoria's

secret business. and the kind of ideas you gotfrom guys were just like, ok, you open on a hot chick. and it was embarrassing. so they forbid any male fromworking on the business because the stuff was so dumb. i'm probably not doing myselfany favors here. jason witt: i think we're goingto end on that note.

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