Daily Horoscope 6/21/18

June 21, 2018—The kind of energy and excitement the stars are sending your way is likely to have you feeling totally connected, full of life and raring to go. It’s also likely that you’ll have other people taking plenty of notice of you—the positive, admiring kind. And if you shed the inhibition that’s got you feeling a little bit confined, well, you’ll just turn up the volume up on all of it. When almost anything goes, almost anything can happen!

Day four: another day, another pain au chocolate, and another morning starting with huffing and puffing after sprinting for the temperamental train. I started my day at the festival with the talk with Jason Kreher, UGA alumni and Creative Director of Wieden + Kennedy, who provided insight into the ups and down of the creative world of advertising. I, then, went to the session, What Creativity Can Do, hosted by Google, which explored how Google has transformed itself into a technologically focused company into a human-experience. I think the tone of the session was set when the speakers said, “the best search results are from people’s lives,” which I think is the message of the whole festival of trusting personalization is the new wave of advertising. They showed how Google has taken initiatives in helping the Syrian refugee crisis as well as the Grecian bankruptcy situation, but what I wish they had further explained is how they found certain world issues more important than others to put emphasis on and aid as well as how their creative advertisements of their services impact future. However, I do appreciate the insight that Google provided that “Creatives can invent the future” because the invention of these technologies and outreaches allow further exposure by audiences, giving more availability for moving forward into the future productivity.

The next session I attended was Hollywood Meets Madison Ave: Does This Ever Work?, hosted by Blk-Ops. This session was all about how stars and talent from Hollywood in the film industry can impact advertising world for the better in perspective and creativity; Common, the hip-hop star and actor as well as two Hollywood producers discussed their involvement with Microsoft in providing new commercial content. Something, right off the bat, that I noticed that the session did not cover is how the collaboration of Common, the producers, and Microsoft came to fruition, especially because all the speakers put emphasis on the trust and respect they all had for each other in the collaboration. I think one of the most important points of the talk that resonates with the notion of the whole festival is the idea that Microsoft has pulled away from talking about the “things” they can provide; they, rather, focus on how these provides “things” are impactful for society for real people. Something I heard and noticed that was to Microsoft’s detriment is that of verbal comparison to Apple in the sense that they acknowledged their need to measure up to Apple, their competition. This idea of competition was quite a juxtaposition from the overall message of “collaboration” and “empowerment” that they were attempting to bring across.

      The third session I attended, The ‘Fearless’ Interview with Tommy Hilfiger’s Avery Baker, hosted by The Lookinglass and Tommy Hilfiger was probably the most disappointing session of the festival for me thus far. The description of it being a lesson in Tommy Hilfiger brands’ pioneering in disruption was just not what was presented in the session. Instead, I saw more of a marketing ploy of the same iteration—in a more boring way—of how brand authenticity and social understanding is integral in the brands’ new “disruptive” plans. I wanted to know why the company even needed a cultural remodeling for disruption as well as why
Hilfiger’s new business model will continue to thrive for the next five-ten years. However, from an empowerment perspective, I thought Baker’s personal story of moving from Swatch to becoming the CBO of Tommy Hilfiger is what shone from the mediocre presentation.

Finally, I ended the day with the session called Alpha Audience: Finding the World’s Most Receptive Audiences, hosted by Live Nation, which explored whether live performance is still socially and emotionally relevant in the upcoming generation. The global president of Live Nation explained their new studies in biometrics to measure the emotional discrepancy between live and digital performances, in which the live performances trumped the metrics for digital metrics every time in every emotional capacity; this was tested by measuring sweating rates, heart rates, and brain stimulation. I think the session did an incredible job showing the digression from digital-focused back into the physical presence of live shows, because shows allow a range of human emotion and transcendence from every kind of stress. What I was curious about from this session was the comment by the global president that “the best brand managers are artists”—why? Is it their ability to curate as well as create a vision? Or is it just because they are able to understand emotion as a means to connect with an audience? All in all, however, this session was incredibly impactful, for me, as a person who is genuinely curious in how to connect human emotion in a non-manufactured way into the content of brands.