Advertising Week is descending on New York, offering more than 270 seminars and workshops focused on the industry’s most important topics, along with a slew of other events from Sept. 25-29. From innovations in technology to creative storytelling and new trends, the thought leadership program is designed to be diverse, educational, engaging and provocative.
For more on what’s new this year, Interbrand Global CMO Andrea Sullivan spoke with Matt Scheckner (right), Global CEO of Advertising Week.
Matt, how does Advertising Week reflect what really matters to marketers and brands?
Our job at end of day and the leadership program is really the foundation of all of Advertising Week. Yes, there’s all kinds of sexy stuff at night—the opening gala this year is at Radio City Music Hall, and there are concerts and comedy and dinners and breakfasts. But all of that is based on a foundation of thought leadership and that’s really the bellwether for the whole agenda.
I’ve been doing this since 2004 when we started, so this is our 14th edition in New York and the 22nd globally, as we’ve had five in Europe and two in Asia. When you go back and look at what we were talking about in 2004, almost none of the subjects—with the exception of timeless topics like storytelling, talent, diversity—are the same, and many of the companies that are dominant players today weren’t even around then.
In 2004, Facebook was only available on the Harvard campus, for example. Nobody was talking about transparency, data-driven marketing, artificial intelligence, native ads, augmented reality, virtual reality. None of those things existed as topics for this industry. So it’s our job to keep our finger on the pulse of the industry and bring together the best and the brightest for our thought leadership program. Our job is to create a direct mirror of the times on the issues that are most timely, topical, pressing—or just plain interesting and worthy of discussion.
Advertising Week is now in New York City, London, Tokyo, Mexico City and Sydney. Do you see any differences in what’s top of mind in each market?
Everybody’s got the same challenges and opportunities everywhere you go. From ad tech to how brands are trying to figure things out to media owners—these are universal topics we explore in each of our locations and events. Advertising Week has always been about paving the way forward, and it sets the agenda for the year to follow. That’s very humbling, and it’s a responsibility that we take seriously.
We also try to talk about things that go beyond the industry, so we have a number of seminars this week about female empowerment, and the opening session in New York is a townhall that includes Arianna Huffington and Frances Frei talking about inclusion and the workplace. Both are involved with helping Uber address the challenges the company has had around women. Day one wraps with a session on CEO action on diversity and inclusion.
We’re also doing a panel on the challenges facing Brand America, and D.L. Hughley is leading a conversation about race in America. These are topics that are bigger than our industry, but critical to discuss. On the ‘just plain interesting’ front, we have speakers like Jimmy Buffett and Sarah Jessica Parker, Harvey Weinstein, Elizabeth Banks, Joan Jett. They’re all there for a reason, and they keep Advertising Week tied into popular culture.
How have you scaled Advertising Week globally?
The program is remarkably consistent, because this is a global business, but we also customize from market to market. So even if it’s Sky and ITV we’re featuring in the UK or ABC and Turner in the US, or TV Asahi in Japan and Televisa in Mexico City, the challenges are all the same. So we see a commonality of challenges and opportunities. We have many CMOs come and speak and attend to keep up on the evolution of their businesses. The CMOs of Samsung, Verizon, HP, Unilever and on and on are speaking at Advertising Week New York. They come to share but also to listen.
What are the big topics this AWNY?
There’s a lot of focus around artificial intelligence this year, so there’s an AI and cognitive computing track. The pervasiveness of technology is a theme that will run throughout our thought leadership program. There’s a data track and an evolution of video track, for example, and we’re also taking an empty store between 42nd and 43rd streets in Times Square and using that to curate a whole new tech experience. We’re bringing technology to life in a really exciting way, and it’s free for all delegates.
We’re also focusing on small business, which is a new area for us this year, with a small- and mid-sized business bootcamp. Our agenda is both broad and deep, and we’re in different venues with 15 different tracks or blocks of more than an hour, so we try to make it very easy to navigate. So you can immerse yourself in a specific topic or you can graze, just like a buffet.
How do you keep Advertising Week inclusive?
For a start, we keep it affordable so we get a ton of younger people just starting out their careers attending and also participating in our startup summit. The baseline badge in Cannes is thousands of euros, whereas if you’re under 30 it’s not only cheap to attend Advertising Week, you can go to as many seminars as you like. And with the cost of getting to and from Cannes not to mention staying there, companies can send many people to Advertising Week for the same money.
As for diversity, we’re excited to partner with the Girls Lounge and offer an inclusion-focused track that includes important topics such as attracting and retaining female talent.
It’s also the second year of the D&AD Impact Awards, which is the world’s only award show to celebrate the power of creativity to do good. It covers diversity, inclusion, sustainability, responsible production, education—there are 12 categories and a fantastic jury, including Arianna and the film director Richard Curtis, who founded Comic Relief, and we’re really proud of it because it’s celebrating great work around issues that affect all of us.
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