SPECIAL EDITION: L'il Jon,Immersive,Hot Ones,AI. Here's What U Missed At The Advertising Week Conference. Click For Your Weekly Cultural Intel Brief!

Happy Thursday! Hope your week has been good. As always, here is a quick look at a few things I'm tracking at the intersection of power, deals, trends in emerging tech, and media/entertainment through a pop culture/hip hop lens. This is fuel for your insights and strategy to better reach GenZ and Millennials x 10 this week (and delayed from my usual Tuesdsay) because I just stepped out of the final day of Advertising Week 2024. I've got all the hot takeaways for you from the edgiest parts. Let's go!

Where to begin?! There was high energy and long lines at the annual Advertising Week conference in NYC this week. Ad agency execs, brand execs, celebs, techies, and more were out in full force for the 20th edition of this annual event.

The conference was held at Penn Center, a converted mall consisting of several floors that had been re-fashioned (no pun intended) to hold everything from private sales suites to networking lounges to stages to demo areas and more. A ton of brands were out and representing hard. Snap, TikTok, XM/Sirius, eBay, and more. Advertising Week's podcast studio was also on-site conducting a ton of interviews. Check-in was seamless and shout out to the conference for having tons and tons of helpful staff all throughout the venue!

Let's talk areas first.

A highlight was the ephemeral Female Quotient lounge that pop-ups at various industry events including SXSW, Cannes Lions Festival, and others. This one included a hydration station, skincare/makeup giveaway stations, glam stations, comp editions of new books by female authors, and a stage with non-stop panels on issues of concern to female executives. The vibe was warm and friendly with a bunch of networking going on and a lot of chatter. I was in and out of this area and found it to be a good, little base. Would like to have seen many more female speakers of any and all colors included going forward and more about entrepreneurship, though. There is definitely room to grow for this endeavor and partnering with those who have deeper domain expertise/contacts in this space would be nothing but positive for these lounges. If you wanna see the full speaker/topic lineup, you can check that out right here.

There were also several other special, invitation-only events outside of the venue. A particularly cool one featured a breakfast and fireside chat with recording artist Gavin Rossdale and various ad execs. Rossdale talked about how his show on cooking while chatting with celeb guests/friends like Serena Williams has taken off, and how he has had to strategize and work to put on a new hat of host/producer. The insights around brand integration into such content so that it is unobtrusive were a key part of the discussion. We'll see more of this as celebs and brands intersect in a number of ways. BTW, this event was created by Vizio from which you will be able to watch Rossdale's show and many others. (PS, he's surprisingly warm and unassuming IRL).

So now, let's get into the panels I dashed in and out of fueled by a quick grab of comp protein ball goodies from Epsilon on one floor, comp fresh pressed juices from Viant on another floor or comp decaf pumpkin lattes with oat milk. (Ah, why can't life be like this every day! LOL Although I have to say that the bubble burst after finding out there were basically no vendors inside from which to buy lunch each day. With back-to-back panels, meetings, and spontaneous encounters/networking; it was no small feat to actually get out and get real food!! Anyway...)

• Quick note about all these panels. If I had a dollar for every time the word "authentic" was mentioned, I would now be writing this from my yacht in the Mediterranean. The word is massively over-used and too many people are both hypnotized by it and think that merely saying authentic means that one is authentic. Authenticity from anything with a corporate structure driven by EBITDA is challenging at best. Further, now that we've all pretty much gotten rid of any level of trust around anything that is considered "authority" or an "organization," such a goal is even more difficult. I personally vote for changing this trend to something more akin to the word "effective." Now:

1) The panel with execs from The Sphere was intriguing. The panelists said that they are actually still trying to work out how to even describe the endeavor since the venue is a performance space, it's an immersive experience, and more. To date, The Sphere has worked with brands like Netflix and Google in ad partnerships. The reach for events is global due to the virality of tons of social media posts from any given audience. The venue is also going to be incorporating drones and is testing interactivity in various parts of the space. Given the "exosphere," the venue is a 24/7 canvas for brands. The team is also toying with the idea of creating original content as well. Loving all this and, of course, U2 and The Eagles are legendary; but given all the emerging tech elements; seems like the next phase has got to be artists and experiences that touch more on current pop culture and edgier vibes, no? Seems like these kidz should start to place a few bets on hip hop given the fact that it's not just music but a culture that is a hypnotic elixir when mixed with brands and emerging tech.

2) I was going to dip into a panel about GenZ because, I thought I just might encounter some conflicting info however, neither I nor at least 30 other people or more couldn't get in because seating was full about 7 minutes before the event. Note to future conference attendees and the conference itself: try to arrive at least 20 minutes or more before panel discussions; and in this day and age, why audio isn't simply piped into the app (and it's a good app, btw) allowing one to be able to listen anywhere inside the venue via one's own earbuds is beyond me. If I were the conference, I would even sell a bit of "air time" on this real-time audio stream as an added value to whatever exorbitant fees there are for marketing presence at the conference. Hmm... maybe I should copyright this idea :-)

?So I ended up being early for...

3) ...a panel on "Building Cultural Relevance." It was interesting because people are finally starting to realize that we are becoming over-reliant on data, and it is especially hard to quantify value around culture. Best quote from this talk: no one should be buying media by the pound any more!

*** Quick Note: if you are someone who wants to learn more about this powerful space of youth culture and how you can use it to better connect with Gen Z and Millennials and/or become part of the cultural narrative, connect with celebrated recording artists/notables in the space, and/or creates brand?strategy,?DM me to discuss further.

My team and I provide strategy and consulting for demystifying relevant emerging tech, defining the cultural opportunity, and defining a roadmap for the new era. We also provide content development, live event production, concept marketing ideas, proofreading/copywriting!

Learn about my Innovation Strategy & Creative Studio right here .

Not ready for a full strategy but definitely looking for insights to better plan for 2024 and beyond? Book?me to speak. From Keynotes to corporate leadership workshops, I provide competitive advantage through powerful insights, cultural intelligence, and emerging tech forecasts. Don't forget to check out my weekly podcast. ***Season 5, Episode 10 is live and looks at my top 10 moments at the intersection of emerging tech x hip hop for the year thus far. Don't miss my season finale. Season 6 kicks off on October 17, 2024. Take the downtime to catch up on any episodes you might have missed.*** I mix it up between an interview with an industry figure and analysis of the latest deals and news to help you make sense of the opportunities. Think of it as an extension of your weekly brief here. Click now to get the scoop. Apple or Spotify. Please rate and follow!

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4) "How Brands Can Stop Chasing Pop Culture and Co-Create It Instead" was kinda an odd panel. Listening to Verzion pat itself on the back about partnering with Beyonce around her country album at Super Bowl '24 and how many people they reached seemed, well, ridiculous. If you have the deep pockets of Verizon combined with the power of the Super Bowl and the majesty of Beyonce and can't create something that gets attention, then something is wrong. Such synergies are not massively breakthrough and are also part of why wireless costs for the average American in this economic climate are just too expensive.

The takeaway from this panel is that brands seem to define pop culture as attaching to the biggest celeb your brand can afford, putting some video around it, ensuring maximum reach, rinse, and repeat. Agencies can't create pop culture. No one thing can do that. It is an evolution over time of a dance between a number of different dynamics that are highly, highly nuanced. And this notion of working backward from "social listening" is going to always mean chasing. Why do you have to "listen" through a computer after the fact rather than actually know and live what is happening in real-time?! Crazy. Agencies and brands desperately need third-party allies that walk, talk, and think dramatically differently from them to keep them informed on what is about to emerge and explain to them why because by the time they finish "listening," debate about it and get approvals, shoot it, get more approvals, and do the media buy, well it's all probably pretty well washed up by then or wildly expected. For an older audience, this may work. For 18-24, forget it.

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5) The panels that featured (separately) Master P and his son, L'il Jon, and Common were interesting because they spoke about the collaborative aspects from a business and creative POV that is deeply personal on an artistic level. P talked about playing the long game and a focus on creating generational wealth when doing deals. Jon talked about the importance and value of creative input from talent. Common talked about one-and-done brand collabos being over and true partnerships as the way forward. Take note not only about the power of talent access but even more: how to best work with talent once you snag 'em (this is part of what my creative studio Lnk Agency specializes in so I love to watch discussions on this. A deep understanding of methodologies around co-creation is still either very, very hazy for most corporate types.)

6) A discussion on the lack of women in music for ads was eye-opening. Did you know that sound is the sense that moves fastest out of all of our five senses and that it has the power to influence all our other senses? (MIT info) Music is also deeply tied to memory. Music is the cornerstone of culture. Thus, if you do not have a killer music/sonic strategy (which I knew but didn't know as much from the biological/scientific side), I think you may very well be behind in 2025 and beyond if you are actually trying to get someone to somewhere to remember what you are offering and connect. What's more is that collaborating with female producers, talent, and music supervisors seems to be an untapped treasure. Definitely start expanding plans in this area if you want to win.

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7) I'd like to tell you a bunch about Michael Strahan's panel on his SMAC company, but there was primarily just banter between him and the head of his organization. Seems to be a talent management x production company. Not a second discussed about their plans for weaving emerging tech into what they are doing. Hmmm...

*speaking of celeb appearances, Drew Barrymore had to cancel the morning of her afternoon appearance. No word yet on what happened.

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8) Now if you wanna hear about a particularly good panel, I'll tell you about the Hot Ones!!! Great moderator, great panelists. Consisted of the creator of the show and the head producer. They spun tales (Halle Berry, Kid Cudi, and more as guests under hot sauce fire), gave insights, explained the brand evolution, how vulnerability of sharing experience leads to interview depth, talked about brand extension (their own hot sauces), and shared about the future vision of keeping things exactly how they are because it works and that they want to maintain the integrity and simply get better and better at interview questions. Go! Your takeaway from this panel? The word "authentic" was never used because they are authentic. Copy this move.

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9) The Live Nation panel was actually very solid, too, because the exec addressed exactly how the company is expertly weaving brands into the full-on buyer's journey of going to a concert from travel to outfit to payments to post-show purchases. Takeaway quote: You need to understand the culture or you will miss the mark. ('Nuff said)

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10) Perplexity spoke but seemed to have a bit of a challenge clearly explaining why the platform differs from Google or ChatGPT. However, the value prop seems to be that the platform is more about being an answer engine than building out LLMs like the aforementioned companies. Seems to also be a platform that more professionals using (I know fo' sho' that no kids on the street are talking about this company). They are charging $20 a subscription as part of a freemium model and working to build out an ad sale that they are "figuring out." I'm not sure if tiered AI answering is the future. Hold steady here and observe longer. Don't place any final bets anywhere just yet.

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11) I later hit a panel on how Black culture drives pop culture. Good mix of speakers. Top takeaway quote: Stop tapping the same well of Black personalities in your marketing plans and branch out. (agreed) (please don't do this :-)

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12) There were a few other panels I hit on pop culture (77% of respondents of a particular study said that provides an escape that is highly desired and that they do this through pop culture), one on "quality journalism" that featured NY Times' Andrew Ross Sorkin, as well as one on Hearst Media Lab. The former was about trying to protect the old guard while the latter is about leveraging its old guard pockets to create new tentacles. Think about how you are approaching your next moves and whether you are playing defense or offense.

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All in all, this was a super robust offering, and I didn't get to half the panels. There were at least 3 different ones inside of every 30 minutes. There is a contained, circus-like vibe that is funThe attendees I met were warm and eager to connect. I think the conference could benefit from the addition of more of an indie vibe inclusion to balance the big, corporate view especially when it comes to pop culture (though I know the draw is about the established names). Actually it would be nice to see a mix of both sides on panels and have them challenge each other a bit more. I'd also like to see a couple of actual workshops thrown in and more time for interactivity from the audience. I'm also wondering where Latino and Black brand and ad execs are because they were super scarce on these panels. Thank goodness for the hip hop addition (yay!) although that is not to replace execs (and pssst...there are female rap artists out who could be booked too, not just the guys). Also, there was not, unless I missed it, a lot about Web3 and brands nor AR/XR and brands, etc. What does this mean? That there is not a lot of focus on the fast-moving future but more about how to replicate prior success. This means that many will be in a reactive position rather than proactive. Titans are made from the latter, not the former. Now is the time for pilot testing, sourcing, and exploring to make sure that resources are well in hand as dramatic shifts in Hollywood and the music industry take place (old systems pummeled, old gatekeepers ousted) as powerful tech innovations arise. I can't stress this enough!!

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So there you have it!

Whew! That was a lot! Hope you enjoyed it! See ya Tuesday. Have a good weekend. I'll be catching up on sleep after all the parties, panels, and networking of the week!!!

LdC