WPP 247 Real Media Digital Summit 2009

I had the pleasure of attending the WPP/247 Real Media digitial summit yesterday.  Kudos to Dave Moore, Jon Hsu & the gang for putting on a great program and a great party.  Nothing like bringing back a bit of 1999 in the midst of this recession – it was refreshing indeed.

Program topics included both entertainment and education.  To reinforce WPP’s commitment to digital (they do seem to be one of the more forward thinking traditional agencies who is rapidly migrating to digital), this video parodying the death of media was played at the opening of the conference:  Warning to traditional media publishers – this may cause depression:

WPP is clearly moving aggressively toward digital adoption.  In an opening recorded address by Sir Martin Sorrell, he stated that WPP clients currently spend 12% of their budgets online, but this needs to increase dramatically.  He also stated that at an $850MM spend, WPP is Google’s largest customer.  I say, with “frienemies like that, who needs friends” (Sir Martin was the one who coined the term frienemie in relation to Google at Zeitgeist a few years ago – see my blog post from Zeitgesit).

In true Internet fashion, after some entertaining and educating brief presentations by various WPP execs, industry experts and WPP partners, the ’09 Digital Summit ended with a happy hour and rooftop party.  Kudos 247RM on a great event and kudos to WPP on setting a high bar with your rapid embrace of digital.