To the faithful 49 of you, my apologies for my week away.  I headed out to New York for “Ad Week” and a bunch of interesting meetings and assorted merriment.  Anyway, I read an article a few weeks or months ago about some poor guy who told everyone on his blog that he was leaving town for a 2 week vacation, only to to return to a house devoid of all his valuables.  So until I get a Doberman, I think talking about leaving town, or alerting people to when I’m out fo town, is a bad idea.

Now, I’m no prolific blogger who is going to give you a play by play from all the evnts at Ad Week in New York.  Clay and I hung near the more social media related events and seminars, and here are a couple of things I took from the week.

1) I’m not sure where all the unemployed people are in New York, because every good restaurant in that town is still hard to get seated in, even at 10:00pm on a Monday night.

2) At the risk of annoying all my friends and partners in the Ad World, I posit this theory.  It’s possible that the explosion of Social Media is a direct result of consumer backlash against advertising.  People (aka Consumers) got tired of a one way communication channel.  Then things like blogs, facebook and Twitter appeared, and suddenly everyone had a way to talk to each other and ignore the advertising.  Only after the social media attack on advertising did the agencies decide to embrace Social Media.  In fact, the agencies did everything they could to dismiss it as a passing fad.  And so now, to hear all the agencies on stage talking about the power of Social Media and how they are integrating it into client strategy, is kind of funny to me.  It’s kind of like a coal or oil company suddenly recommending what solar panels you should buy.  It’s just my theory.

3) A quick note to all panelists and keynoters: Please dial down the hyperbole about “Social Media Revolutions” or “The Incredible Power of Social Media.”  The reality is that consumers have always wanted to tell companies what they think of them.  They’ve always wanted to tell the Slurpee Product Manager that Banana sucks and to quick wasting a spigot on such a dumb flavor.  Or that the battery life of their laptop needs to be as long as a movie, otherwise it’s worthless.  People have had these opinions forever.  And now they have a megaphone, and their friends have megaphones.  It shouldn’t be a gigantic revelation to think that people who spend money on a product they like would want to have interaction with that product and provide ways the company could make the consuming experience more enjoyable and effective.  I’m not saying your keynotes are wrong, you can just dial down the rhetoric a little.

4) Before I get accused of being negative, I want to add that I think it’s great that the agencies are now going full steam into figuring out how to build creative campaigns for customer engagement.  I’ve always believed the creative teams at the big agencies are more representative of Joe Consumer than Malcolm Corporation III.  And now instead of using their creative powers of good in a way that cost them part of their soul, they’ll be able to unleash themselves in ways that develop connection and goodness.  So I think we’re going to see some really cool experiments in the next 12 months.  

5) I’m not sure what to make of the fact that Ad week was going on the same day of the UN sessions where Khadaffi (sp?) and the Iranian President (whose name I won’t even attempt Spellcheck to fight with) went off on crazy soliloquies.

Overall, we had a great time chatting with partners, clients, friends and colleagues.  Lots of neat announcements and fun times.  Thanks to everyone who made it a good, fun and productive week.