After having spent a couple of great days at the European Marketing Summit in Istanbul, I have a yearning to write
about it because it will feel a bit like reliving it. The day began with a surprisingly good (if bumpy) flight on
Turk Hava Yollari. I last flew them in 1989 and all I remember (besides a short layover in pre-war Sarajevo) was a claustrophobic experience on an airline that used to be the world's most dagerous (see chart to the right). Istanbul looks a lot like Sarajevo (or vice versa, to be historically accurate) but is a lot more modern and sprawling. I stayed at the Hyatt Regency, which was well on-par with its counterparts in the US.
Day 1 at the conference was interesting. The conference was held at a conference center near the hotel.
Costas Markides was the opening speaker and he did a competent if rudimentary performance about the importance of innovation. The theme of the conference was a speed and I was a bit disappointed that this was only a loose red thread. Few speakers bothered to go into any depth about what speed really is and how companies can re-organize themselves into doing things faster. The second big name of the day was
Don Tapscott who did his wikinomics-schtick with the kind of professionalism that you'd expect from someone charging €30,000. He was also due to speak in Delhi the day after so he rushed straight out the door after he was done. Charming!
I met some truly inspiring people. Daniela Krautsack is managing director of Magic
Moments in Vienna, Austria. She's into public space advertising and how it can be improved from an aesthetic and political perspective. Nils Müller is the CEO ("Geschäftsführer") of
TrendOne in Hamburg. He did a great speech about the emergence of immersive media (he called it "Media 3.0"). Ruben Robert runs
Fellowforce.com, a crowdsourcing company, and is a well-travelled Dutchman. Apart from giving a great speech about the intelligence of crowds, he and I went to an old-school hamam where muscly turks tortured us for what felt like an eternity.
Dijana Bosnjak, brand manager of
Lumalive at Philips, showed me a protoype LED-shirt. Great seeing the technology IRL as it's been something that many have talked about but few have actually seen.
We all went to dinner Thursday night and had some great Turkish food (a mixture between Bosnian and Lebanese cuisine to remind myself of how it tasted).
Day 2 was my big day. The auditorium was huge but I had the luxury of being the closing speaker so I coukd cherrypick insights and techniques that I thought would patch up the empty spaces that other speakers had left behind. I focued my speech,
Fast Futures, on what we ought to be telling our children about the future. I also got a chance to play the piano. I sang and played Robbie Williams's Angels. I thought it sounded great but that wasn't everybody's impression. My point, however, was that it's OK to be an amateur and I hope I got that point across.
The man behind all this is
Peter Fisk. A great British marketeer and author of Marketing Genius. He's been chairing
the conference for the past few years and he's the reason I was able to go to Istanbul. Thanks, Peter! So....In conclusion, a terrific few days in a vibrant city with some new-found friends. What a great way to wrap up the autumn speaking season!
