Creative Week 2012 Highlights

Creative Week 2012 was a whirlwind, an incredible whirlwind.  Each day started with a breakfast presentation at 8:30a.m. and ended with parties that lasted until 3:30a.m.  (Note: That’s 19 hours of inspiration, networking and good times, and it’s impossible to do it all for 5 days straight.)  Here are some whirlwind highlights:

• The people that think the Big Idea is dead are outnumbered.  No one is arguing about the Big Insight (as a replacement) yet.

• Curate the funny.  That’s advice from Ron Faris, the Director of Brand Marketing for Virgin Mobile USA.

• When an audience full of want-to-be authors are asked if they’ve ever wanted to write a book, 2 people will raise their hands – the guy who’s written a book and me.

• Adobe’s VP of Experience Design, Michael Gough, never mentions the word “creativity” to his people.  For Adobe, it’s about the alignment of 10,000 people and getting them all moving in the same direction.  Imagine the “creative” alternative…

• With an event like Creative Week, it’s imperative to know what you can and can’t miss.  The experience turned into this article for the Examiner: 5 Tips to Scheduling Work-Life Balance into your Business Trip.

• Every 7 to 10 years puppets become viable again.  The people of Jim Henson’s Creature Shop believe we’re on the onset of that.

• Band-Aid is doing some cool work right now.  JWT helped turn a moment of pain into a moment of joy for kids.

• The best networking happens after the events.  While business cards can be exchanged during pre-scheduled networking times, the most natural, genuine (and fun) networking takes place when people are hanging out because they want to.

• The concept of “collaboration,” with its best of intentions, continues to be the black sheep in discussions on creativity.

• People want to work with cool people and do cool stuff.

• If phone chargers are gold, finding an outlet to use in Manhattan is platinum.

• 72andSunny sat on a panel for provocative advertising and then swept The One Shows (yes, plural, both the advertising and interactive awards) with their provocative ads.

• Oh, and here’s some advice for creative students.

Coming soon: Advertising Week the first week in October 2012.