Tuesday night marked our second Fresh Meet event and the first ever Pecha Kucha night aimed at the NYC branding and advertising community. We had a great turnout, with over 100 people joining us for the evening from more than 35 different creative and strategic agencies in NY.
Our theme for the evening was ‘Liberating Constraints’, a nod to the power of a tight creative brief and the Pecha Kucha format which all of our speakers adhered to (Pecha Kucha = 20 slides, 20 seconds per slide).
Moderating the event was Hall & Partners‘ very own Farrah Bostic from our Qualitative Research department. She kicked off the night with a pecha kucha presentation about pecha kucha (how meta). Here it is:
Next up was our friend Michael Hastings Black of Desedo Films. In a previous life Michael was an urban planner for the NYC parks department. He thoroughly engaged the audience by talking about what planners can learn from the way people are constantly re-negotiating or “re-mixing” the space around them.
The upshot is that while short-cuts and remixes are inevitable when systems or confines have been set in place, it’s important for brands to be able to anticipate these rebellions and steer them in a positive direction.
Paul Parton, from the Brooklyn Brothers agency, was up next. His message to the planners in the room was that they should try to fully embrace & understand any given problem, before rushing to find possible prescriptions. He’s found this to be a liberating constraint when tackling strategic problems that his clients are facing.
Rex Sorgatz, curator of fimoculous.com and all around online media guru, was our third speaker. He delivered a tour de force about how life is becoming more game-like. Full of brilliant examples, Rex told us how his tivo changed his perspective on how we’re interacting with brands and with each other.
Finally, Robin Hafitz, of Open Mind and kb+p, closed the evening with a presentation about how our proverbial walls are falling down, how what was once private is now very public and how our society today tends to be drawn to those who are the most liberated and the least constrained.
A big thanks to everyone who came and we look forward to seeing more new faces the next time around. Fresh Meet III will arrive this Spring. Stay tuned!
[...] week Robin Hafitz from Open Mind/kb+p gave a great presentation about how the walls of public/private space are melting. One sign of these times is the sex tapes [...]