Last week, Advertising major Benji Michaels (COM ’11) attended AdAge’s 2011 Digital Conference. I had the opportunity to get an exclusive interview with the soon-to-be grad. He shared with me his experience at the event and the insights gained.
Benji with his Google water bottle, a free goodie from the conference
How did you end up winning tickets to AdAge’s Digital Conference?
They ran a contest on Twitter, and you had to submit a question to one of the panelist who would be at the conference. I happened to be on Twitter at the right time. So, I wrote one and they picked it.
#winning tweets
So, tell me a little bit about the conference.
It’s a conference that brings together advertisers and marketers to talk about innovations, trends, insights in the digital space. It’s in its 6th year, I think. It was in NYC in a place called New World Stages at 50th and 9th. It was two nights—Wednesday and Thursday (April 6th-7th). Wednesday night, AdAge hosted a viral video awards show. The event awarded different campaigns or viral videos. I even met the BlendTec guy!
What sessions did you attend?
I went to everything I could. They had a few couple different tracks: social-based, video based or mobile based. The founder of foursquare, Dennis Crowley, spoke. The founders of Boxee were also there. They talked about cutting the cord with interactive TV and personal, customized set-top boxes like an Apple or Google TV. I basically went to one presentation after the other:
Were there any other students at the conference?
Not that I knew of. It was an older crowd than expected. The CEOs were the youngest people there. Chris Hughes, the co-founder of Facebook, attended the conference. Also, the guy who invented the bump technologies was super young. There wasn’t as much networking as I had hoped, but it was totally worth it because of the content of the presentations.
How can you apply the insights learned in the presentation to your internship or your own brand?
The stuff people talk about is close to common sense. We are the first generation to inherently understand these platforms and technologies. All these people are learning how companies have been successful using Twitter, Facebook, and Apps. But, these are things we know. We are the generation that has defined how Facebook and twitter are used.
The insights weren’t huge revelations. We take for granted how much we know about these things. There’s a gap between understanding how things work and relevant insights and strategies to apply. So, it takes savvy and experience to understand why a trending hash tag works as opposed to other marketing collateral.
Based on the information you learned at the conference, what is your advice for your peers?
We all use this stuff, but very few people know it as well as we do. Take your daily Facebook usage and make something of it. Stay trending on pop culture because so much of what drives strategy is culture and collective consciousness of society. No one is more tapped into it than we are.
Katelyn Stokes 