The iMedia agency summit

I spent a few days in Brighton last week attending the iMedia agency summit.

It was a great chance to mix with senior people from both media, above the line and digital agencies and discuss the challenges facing our industry (and, let’s be honest, get to know each other over a few beers).

Jeremy Hill did an outstanding job of chairing the event and my thanks go to Gavin Sutcliffe and the rest of the team at iMedia who made the event happen.

PHD’s Head of Innovation, John V Willshire, took time out from thinking about butterflies and bubbles long enough to write up his take on the conference, and leaves us with this question:

We are an industry built around reaching out to a million people in order to affect a small proportion of them for our clients. It’s embedded in the language we use, the business models we’ve created, even some of the ideas we suggest and persist with.

However the opportunity exists to build conversations and relationships with the thousand people we originally wanted to affect in the first place… and if we create a great relationship between our clients and them, they will be more likely to be loyal, enthusiastic advocates of that company and their products.

Which is better for the company and the people. So I guess the big question is what role will the agency play in that world?

Of course, this is the question we setup We Are Social to help answer…