Microsoft delivered today. There were two excellent talks, the first one being by Nick Bailey of AKQA. It was a fairly traditional presentation of some very good work. Fiat’s Eco Drive, an in-car-USB-powered Nike+ for cars. Cool. Though I think that it would have been even cooler with an industry-wide call to action where Fiat could have become an environmental industry leader all of a sudden. Still cool though.
AKQA seem to have a fairly extreme “big head” perspective, rather than a “long tail”-one however. That sounds sketchy in my ears.
Then something happened. Naoki Iko came on stage. Naoki is the creative director of GT Tokyo, and a wonder of calm appearence, and apparently of creative genious. His entire talk is in English, even though he doesn’t speak the language (!). In the unprepared interview and debate afterwards, he has an interpreter. Impressive.
His entire presentation is fantastic. He shows very cool cases like The Uniqlo March, which is absolutely beautiful in concept and execution.
He also shows the Love Distance campaign for the condom brand Sagami Originals. Very complete, and very impressive work. I recommend doing a Google search on it for the complete story. I highly recommend it actually. If you don’t believe me, watch this:
All in all, Iko was the pinnacle of this weeks seminars.
In the debate afterwards he drops a line that should be framed and put on the wall of every agency and every marketing department:
“When we become quiet we start to think – what is the other person thinking”.
Amen.
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i totally agree. Naoki Ito is not only creating great stuff, he is also a very inspiring guest, gave me the impression he was a very good listener and a very humble person. And his english is pretty okay, actually!
Nick Bailey’s stuff was good and he delivered several interesting insights, but he only works with huge mega-accounts.