The discussion at the end of the second keynote from Robbie Bach titled: "Is marketing dead?" is fascinating listening. That was not what I expected, in fact there was a beer waiting for me and I had no real intention on staying on after all the glossy presentation stuff. But I couldn't leave...
This was mostly down to the brutally honesty comments from Andrew Rashbass (publisher and MD of The Economist), who had certainly not read the script, and he brought a refreshing honesty to what was, admitably, a fantastic conference, but one in which you can easily get swept away with all the spin.
Some quotes from him:
"nothing kills a bad product faster than good marketing"
"the best way to reach consumers is through technology that’s “under the covers” not the kinds of “technologies that have been talked about here.”
"It's kind of funny to hear Robbie Bach giving a talk on advertising and monetization when he just lost $300m in the last quarter."
"The way advertising works is you piss off 92 per cent of the audience to reach two per cent"
I recommend you have a listen: Download the keynote from here, and skip along to about half way through to get the discussion
posted @ Monday, May 07, 2007 6:40 PM