Carrot Creative Blog

 

This week, I attended AD:Tech 2007 in New York City. I, along with the rest of the Carrot Crew, was interested to see how the advertising and marketing industries are responding to the emergence and progression of Web 2.0 tools. And although I was unable to attend the entire week’s worth of events, my overall impression of the conference is that the advertising and marketing industries still do not “get it” when it comes to Social Media.

I attended the conference with Danny Epstein, the CEO of Pmbuzz.com, a nightlife social network based in New York City. While it was great to talk with Danny, the majority of my day was spent in the Expo listening to advertising companies, about fifty that I spoke with, drone on about the same diluted niche services and mass publisher marketing without properly knowing how to access the value of Social Media. I felt like I was in high school all over again, listening to my “wise beyond his years” biology teacher tell me why biology was important but never showing me how this information benefited me.

After attending similar conferences on the west coast, meeting business professionals that understand the importance of Social Media and how to effectively leverage its benefits, I assumed that the same atmosphere would transcend to New York City at one of the most revered Ad conferences. Once again, the old adage about assuming stands true. Yet, while I was overly disappointed in the Expo, I remain resilient in the notion that there are a lot of talented and savvy business professionals on the east coast that know how to leverage the power of the Social Media to promote quality products.

On a positive note, I was able to get tons of free SCHWAG…I like that word… I bet its not the last time Carrot uses SCHWAG.