The New Age of Advertising

Omar Jamil, CEO Latitude blogs for Aurora from New Delhi

Session 4 – TED/INK – “The New Age of Advertising”

Post lunch – another lovely meal. Back in the main hall. Just before session 4 – another Fragments & Figments performance – another teaser from Kingdom of Dreams. Some really fun dance sequences… very Bollywood. Apparently snippets from Bollywood’s biggest musical. 

Rhonda Carnegie, Head of Global Partnerships, TED

Lakshmi Pratury, Host, The INK

Rhonda – better to be interested or interesting? Rhonda thinks the former. 

A single person sharing a single interesting idea is what sits at the centre of TED. Rhonda runs a video of people talking about TED.

Curiosity is one of the things that leads us to interesting places. TED represents how ideas can move from many people to many places in the world. There’s a social aspect to these ideas – social in that we can converse about them, that we can share them. Rhonda invites everyone to live Tweet the talk. Amazing how an idea can become a social conversation.

TED launches a talk every single day on TED.com – now launching talks 6 days a week – viewed 500 million times a day around the world. Rhonda gives examples of how TED integrates with communities – e.g. translation project. Volunteers choose talks they want – ideas that resonate with them – which are translated into the language of their choice. TED Open Translation Project – started May 2009.

TED now about launching conversations online. Creating a framework and letting the community drive the conversation. TED radically opened and give their brand away – e.g. TEDx – 3000 TEDx volunteers around the globe. TED Prize – community project – open globally… about ‘Ideas to Action’.

Loads of video demonstrations – from TEDx, TED Prize, other TED videos…  nice stuff, but given that I am already well acquainted with TED and the TED model, I’m more interested in the discussion part of the session.

What happens with ideas that click? Ideas that trigger something in you that makes you want to share…? One of the things that TED was interested in was how ideas were spreading and linking that to how ads were spreading. Advertising is a word that many agencies don’t want to use any more – because it’s no longer reflective of where the industry is going. 

In 2010, TED started an initiative called Ads Worth Spreading. When they launched, people really focused on the notion of ‘worth’ – is this worthy of my attention? Challenge to audience to find a video that reflect this idea – about ads (or other content) worth sharing. Special channel on YouTube: TED Ads Worth Spreading. Think of yourself as curators – not judges – and submit it online. Become part of the conversation. In Asia TED has around 800 small groups covering a number of subjects – huge trend towards youth, tech and social entrepreneurs.

Over to Lakshmi – some of the most profound journeys begin with the simplest questions. Young people so full of enthusiasm and ideas – no encumbrance of baggage – but no one listening. “We need to tell stories and create new role models,” says Lashmi. Which is what led her to bring TED to India.

One of the purposes was also to bring about new people together from across Asia. That’s what brought about INK (Innovation and Knowledge) – started in exclusive association with TED. Lakshmi sees INK as a platform which takes shape in the hands of the people who come to share, as well as those who come to be a part of the community, who come to listen, participate and share. That’s how things happen.

INK – community, catalyst. Key goals: inspire, interest, impact. Ultimately, it’s about impact. Especially on youth – INK brings a diverse group of youth to the conference as fellows; these are out of the box thinkers. 

Some great content and concepts and projects shared – some truly inspiring, like the lady who built a shelter for trafficked women, together with funding from Google – secured after her INK presentation; or the 23-year-old Shiloh, a technophobe who’s making a book/movie for the iPad. Lakshmi takes this concept forward by introducing some younger people to come talk and address the audience about their INK experiences. 

First one up is Reena Esmail – a young Indian brought up in the US. A classical musician, Reena was only exposed to Western classical growing up. Her introduction to Eastern classical only came much later as a young adult. Reena plays an excerpt from a recent composition – an interesting mix of Eastern classical (especially obvious in the Indian classical vocals) and (it seems) a Western classical orchestra. Reena found that not only was she able to cross-pollinate these two genres of music, she was also able to bring together disparate audiences. 

Second one up is Chakshu Roy. Roy supplies research support to Indian members of parliament. Roy provides non-partisan research support to 300 client members across political divides. Why does Roy do what he does? It gave him an opportunity to take a close look at policy and engage with a relatively “un-touchable” political group (in that most people don’t want to interact with them). The project has grown in the past few years, possibly because it’s a free service? Roy believes that policy-making should be well-informed and well-intentioned. Has he made any measurable impact? Impossible to measure says Roy. 

Lakshmi’s point: we’re greedy for interesting people, we’re greedy for stories. She adds, we’re ignorant; finally, we’re into making billionaires – but not monetary billionaires, but billionaires of moments. “We want to create new measures of success – celebrating billionaires of moments,” she says. INK and TED about ROI – but instead of Return on Investment, they mean Return on Inspiration. 

Another tech mess-up – wanted to show a video, but it didn’t show. 

Unfortunately, am under the weather, so heading home and shan’t be able to cover the remaining sessions – a pity because they seem quite interesting: “Acts; not Ads” and “Building Brands in a Trust Deficit World”.