Serious and hilarious: The best one-liners from Advertising Week
The second year of Advertising Week APAC pulled in circa 4,000 delegates over three days at Sydney's Luna Park, covering a mountain of themes from mental health to the future of tech stacks, agencies, AI, VR, influencers, industry secrets and lies and performance marketing versus brand building. Here's our curated selection of standout quotes from last week's event.
1. “Don’t tweet this because it might not be true ... but they sold absolutely every case of beer”
- Chuck Porter, the refreshingly irreverent founder of Colorado agency CP+B and AdWeek keynote on the success of his agency's work for a special Carlsberg beer line inspired by Liverpool FC.
2. "The day Maccas actually work out social media is a real thing, I'm f*#ked. Social media marketing is 90 per cent of my marketing"
- Lara Thom, Guzman y Gomez global chief marketing officer on the virtues of the Mexican food chain's obsession with social and influencer marketing. Thom also told the worrywarts to settle about likes being removed from Instagram. "You can't 'like' a television ad," she assured her audience.
3. "ABC Media Watch was right. It is cash-for-content but there's no outrage"
- Jules Lund, Tribe's irrepressible and nearly lovable influencer marketing pimp, speaking at his own session on why and how influencers have avoided a credibility collapse like the radio jocks of yesteryear and their advertiser endorsement deals. Journos, says Lund, should get off their soap box while we're at it.
4. "I'm the guy who doesn't wear socks - I am a total weirdo there"
- Brent Smart, CMO at IAG, talking about the art and science of emotional storytelling and brand building with CNN International's Pippa Scaife and neuroscientist and head of NSW University's Future Mind Lab, Joel Pearson.
5. "We will not need nor even use keyboards in the near future"
- Henrik Isaksson, managing director, Acast, disucssing the future of smart speaker technology on search in the 'Australia's audio tipping point' session.
6. "I love big data ... but everyone's got it. There are very few proprietary systems or data points that give you a leg up versus the competition. Being original, surprising and fresh is more important than ever because people are so saturated with messaging"
- Crispin Porter Bogusky's Chuck Porter returns with a robust argument for creative and imaginative work.
7. "I believe in creativity and striking an emotional chord. We all too often take the safe option and no-one sees it"
- Lisa Ronson, CMO, Coles in a session titled 'Is male advertising over as we know it'. More "emo" from Coles? Hope so.
8. "Brands aren't built through hyper-targeting but emotional promises that connect with the customer. Know when to art and know when to science"
- Brent Smart, CMO at IAG, on CNN International's panel on emotional storytelling again, just because we can and it's good.
9. "Our oceans will house more plastic than fish by 2050. Even if we all #take3forthesea we may not fix that but people are avoiding #stupidplastic where they may not have otherwise"
- Tim Silverwood, founder of Take 3 For The Sea on the power of amplifying social change on social media.
10. "Who do you have in your organisation who can recognise patterns? We have an ageist problem in this industry which makes us miss patterns"
- Geoffrey Colon, head of Microsoft Advertising Brand Studio in his keynote 'Future Proof: Marketing Transformation in the 2020s'.
11. "Over half of business leaders ranked social media as one of the most effective channels for brand building, coming second only to word-of-mouth, when the evidence places social at the bottom of the list"
