44 Club: Social Media - A Missed Opportunity By The IPA

Promised myself that I wouldn't blog about this - but after reading some tweets, I changed my mind!

Last night, full of excitement and expectation, I attended an IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) 44 Club event, "The future of advertising in a networked society.”

Held at the rather youthful London College of Fashion and in front of a packed and expectant audience containing some of London's finest.

Publicised as:

"There’s a revolution in the air that’s transforming society. It’s social networking and it’s empowering the consumer. Agencies must get to grips with this changing marketplace over the next decade or they could face growth of only 1.2% per year by 2016. This is according to the second future of advertising report to be published by the IPA and the Future Foundation. To find out more come along to the next 44 Club, chaired by Moray MacLennan, Chief Executive of M&C Saatchi Worldwide on Monday 19th January, where all will be revealed.

Guest speakers include:
• John Willshire, Head of Innovation, PHD Media
• Russell Davies, Founder, Open Intelligence Agency, and Campaign columnist
• Cheryl Calverley, Senior Brand Manager, Unilever
• Nigel Gwilliam, Communities Senior Manager, IPA"

The excitement and energy ended there I'm afraid.

The IPA announced that Russell Davies, the crowd puller, was unable to attend, and couple of traditional marketers (certainly from the "don't get it" side of the industry) were introduced.

I’m not going to name but they proceeded to suck the life from an expectant audience, whilst explaining how to bludgeon an online audience to death with one way brand advertising messages. Referring to the social media community as “gossips” and “editors"

The audience were pretty much subjected to 50 mins of death by ppt, as the IPA plugged their latest 60 page publication entitled "Social Media Futures" - priced at £63.75.

.... And this is where the IPA demonstrated that they hadn’t quite grasped the concept of social media - surely this should be available free for sharing? I hope that somebody will buy and swiftly post it on slideshare.net, although I suspect that more useful documents are freely available on slideshare.

To be fair the Q&A session with the panel was more enjoyable, although cut short before it got going and leaving the audience rather flat.

Hats off to Cheryl Calverley at Unilever (The Client), and John Willshire from the panel who both added some passion and energy to the event.

Opportunity missed by the IPA I'm afraid, not a patch on the IAB events.

Comments

[John V Willshire]

Hi Graeme

".... And this is where the IPA highlighted that they hadn’t quite grasped the concept of social media - surely this should be available free for sharing?"

A very good point, and one I'm trying to get the IPA to address here...

http://feedingthepuppy.typepad.com/feeding_the_puppy/2009/01/the-ipa-social-is-as-social-does.html

Cheers
John