How creative agencies should gear up for a hyper-connected world

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The talk featured heavyweights Amit Dasgupta, brand director for Adidas Southeast Asia; Sami Thessman, ECD, TBWA Digital Arts Network; PIE’s Thijs Jacob; global director of innovation TBWA\Worldwide Luke Eid; and Jusso Myllyrinne, the network’s global strategy director.  

“By 2020, there will be an estimated 50 billion devices connected to the internet,” said Eid, introducing the topic to the panel.

Myllyrinne moderated the session and kept the discussion around the following themes:

• The idea of the idea has changed. With connected technology, agencies can help clients solve business problems, opening up a bigger playing field.
  
  Thessman: Simple ideas will win
  
  Dasgupta: Ideas should be intuitive and less about what you make but why you make it
   
• Big data.
  
  Jacob: The discussion around data is abstract. If you are a digital business, you can’t succeed without data and optimization
  
  Dasgupta: We could drown in all this big data. It’s about actionable data and what we’re trying to achieve at the end of the day. I don’t think it needs to be confusing and we’re looking at agencies for that
  
  Eid: Yes, of course market research can have a lot of rigour. But we need to figure a way to tap into data sources ourselves. Ask the right questions and observe.
   
• Best practices around product development
  
  Jacob: Not getting sued is a good start. Also, go spend a day with a software startup and see what you can learn and translate that back to your business.

Campaign observation: An engaging and interactive session, where all panelists agreed that developing concepts in a connected world doesn’t have to be on a grand scale. Time and again we’ve seen that it’s the simple ideas, which don’t cost much, that become worldwide phenomena.