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Advertising: Irreverence, and Youth, Reign at Celebrity-Studded Ad Week

Posted by Unknown on Wednesday, October 1, 2014

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Media |Irreverence, and Youth, Reign at Celebrity-Studded Ad Week



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From left, James Yammouni, Jai Brooks and Beau Brooks of the Janoskians comedy troupe. Monica Schipper/Getty Images for AWXI


Advertising


By STUART ELLIOTT






JUST as Madison Avenue is increasingly infusing product pitches with entertainment value — the better to connect with consumers and encourage the sharing of content on social media — the organizers of the annual Advertising Week in New York are liberally peppering the many panels and presentations with celebrities, improvisational comedy and other elements intended to keep those attending the conference engaged.



Take, for instance, a panel on Wednesday devoted to online video, titled “Living in a Short-Form World.” The obligatory senior executives from companies in the field were onstage: Alexandra Cameron, chief executive of Keek, a social networking service known for video clips that run 36 seconds, and John Sykes, president for entertainment enterprises at iHeartMedia. Joining them were Morgan Spurlock, the puckish director of documentaries like “Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold”; Perez Hilton, the flamboyant gossip blogger; and three young men who belong to the Janoskians, a popular five-member troupe from Australia that specializes in music, comedy, pranks and other material aimed at girls 12 to 17.


How young are the Janoskians? One, James Yammouni, began an anecdote about starting their careers by mentioning when he was in the 10th grade, in 2011; he is 18. The others on hand were Jai Brooks, 19, and Beau Brooks, 21. (Missing were, in the parlance of their homeland, their “mates” Luke Brooks, 19, and Daniel Sahyounie, 19.) The trio riffed and riposted during the panel in a breezy, cheeky manner that reminded at least one older audience member of the Beatles’ airport news conference when they arrived in the United States in 1964.


The Janoskians tweaked Mr. Sykes for not asking them to perform at the recent iHeartRadio Music Festival. He replied: “Three hundred million followers? We’ll be talking.” (Mr. Yammouni listed Instagram, Keek and YouTube as their social platforms of choice.)


The young men also enjoyed mocking Mr. Hilton’s behavior — he snapped a selfie as Ms. Cameron asked Mr. Sykes a question — and grandiose pronouncements. For example, after Mr. Hilton spoke earnestly about reinvention, Mr. Yammouni interjected, “What about your hairstyle, Perez, that hasn’t changed in a while.” After the panel ended, Mr. Yammouni said the japes had all been in good fun.


“Getting to Yes: Inside the Creative Process,” a presentation sponsored by O’Keefe Reinhard & Paul, a Chicago agency, did away with the panel format altogether in proposing that comedic improvisation is an effective method of getting co-workers to more readily agree and collaborate with one another.


Five comedians with improv skills performed skits based on audience suggestions of locations (restaurant, closet), relationships (prostitute and customer, chef and food critic) and phrases that begin with the letters “t” and “k” (“talking kangaroo,” “total knockout”). Among the energetic participants were the actor and comedian Scott Adsit of “30 Rock”; the actress and comedian Rachel Dratch of “Saturday Night Live”; and Sue Gillan, a Second City alumna who is a creative director at O’Keefe Reinhard & Paul.


The audience members were invited to take part in an exercise in creativity and cooperation that asked them to break into groups of three and talk to one another while the comedians paused in their onstage high jinks. The groups were told to respond to suggestions from one another in three ways: “No, I think...,” “Yes, but...” and “Yes, and...” The consensus after the lively interaction among the audience members, guided by Ms. Gillan, was that “Yes, and...” was most conducive to collaborating creatively.


Of course, plenty of Advertising Week sessions have retained traditional formats like panel discussions and one-on-one interviews. An instance of the latter was a conversation between Teressa Iezzi, an editor at Fast Company magazine, and Yannick Bolloré, global chairman and chief executive of Havas, the French agency holding group that is the sixth-largest in the world after WPP, the Omnicom Group, the Publicis Groupe, the Interpublic Group of Companies and Dentsu.


If, as the old slogan for Avis car rental had it, you try harder when you are No. 2, what do you do when you are No. 6? According to Mr. Bolloré, who took over the top posts at Havas from his father, Vincent, you focus on mobile, because consumers are adopting it so quickly; digital, because it is “offering so many new opportunities to address customers and prospects”; and technology-assisted initiatives like programmatic buying, agency trading desks and demand-side platforms.


Still, Mr. Bolloré acknowledged, “an algorithm will never replace the creative director,” because the more difficult it becomes to capture the attention of the consumer, “the more we have a need for highly creative content.”


Asked by Ms. Iezzi about the larger agency groups that Havas competes against, Mr. Bolloré replied, “When you look at the industry, I’m not sure the biggest company will win the race.” He likened a firm to a person, describing how he had lost some weight — “four or five kilos,” about nine to 11 pounds — in the last couple of months while training for the New York City Marathon.


“I’m feeling in much better shape,” he said. “I think we should look to be the fittest company, the most agile, to adapt to the new paradigm.”


In another light note, Ms. Iezzi asked Mr. Bolloré about a remark she said he had made in another interview to the effect that Havas had hired so many mathematicians that it changed the firm’s dress code. She set up the question by declaring that when it comes to a “French dress code, it’s not what you should or shouldn’t wear — it’s that you have to be insanely stylish.”


Advertising Week is to conclude on Thursday.



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