• by Kelly Samardak , June 4, 2009

Digital Content Newfront 2009, Skylight, New York
June 3, 2009

It's hard to wrap up a full day event in one column, especially when it's as multifaceted as the one I attended yesterday -- the Digital Content Newfront 2009 (brought to you by your pals at Digitas and The Third Act: (do I have to include that colon? Anyway...). There was a block -size line already forming outside of Skylight, an event space (and really good one at that) way over on the West Side. Upon entrance, the first person I glimpsed down the hall was the silvered and Southern babe of butter: Paula Deen. Oh -- and I was cautioned that photography wasn't allowed during Al Gore's keynote, which irked me, but I figured maybe he had an adult acne breakout and didn't want that captured in the annals of history. I wouldn't.

Starlight was awash in rippling blues and turquoise. It was like lying on the bottom of a pool and looking up. I don't know where blue started getting associated with all things digital, but luminescent blues and silvers inject everything with digi-ness. Most of the tables were full, but I'm conference smart, I grabbed the table by the recharge station, which I eventually made my personal office where I tried to tweet the gasp-worthy and "oh, der" moments of the day as well as post any glittery photos instantly.

So now I ask you: What can't Al Gore do or influence? We already know the man invented the Internet and is singlehandedly trying to save the world from ourselves and now, as the co-founder of Current TV, he's leaping into the digital video goat rodeo and yanking on your... horns. How so, you ask? By keeping you honest and sometimes stating the already obvious like "The media landscape is completely different" -- ya think?

The digital content marketplace is populated by an empowered and knowledgeable audience. "Empowered" is something as simple as the remote, which is now a time-shifting device. They're empowered by vcams too. Oh that's right, he and others said vcam. That's all hip for video camera [insert smiley with a wink]. With this audience relying more on trusted referrals, advertising HAS to be thought of differently.

The former VP echoed the sentiments of the first speaker, Mark Beeching, Chief Creative Officer (you could tell by the scarf) at Digitas Worldwide, who said it's time to banish the golden era of TV networks -- it's time to stop fighting things like piracy, which is here to stay, stop waiting for digital rights to save the day, and start driving ahead and working despite it.

SUSTAINABLE isn't just an environmental buzzword, it's an industry buzzword. Al Gore says that a sustainable advertising model is nuanced and targeted, P2P, not top-down (we're not talking "Girls Gone Wild" here -- we're talking mouthpieces vs. customer raves/experiences, which is so "everything old is new again"), efficient and leveraged, not wasteful and expensive, and finally and most importantly: it should be appealing and authentic.

Don't think Gore is just blowing smoke, he puts this model into action with VCAM - Viewer Created Ad Message. Yup, more than half of the ads on Current are viewer-produced. Don't get your knickers in a twist; they're not just accepting Johnny Jackhammer's Flip cam testimonial to Trader Joe's TP. There's this little thing called quality control, and to reassure the brand opening themselves up to the VCAM world, the brand itself chooses which of say, 250 submissions goes live. 

Yes, the "winner" gets paid. "When ways are found to go out to the periphery and empower large numbers of people to participate in creating content and it's filtered and reviewed for quality... you get a level of freshness and creativity that's hard to sustain in the old top-down model," noted Gore.

Our former VP then went on to show a bunch of viewer-created commercials -- and they were really clever. I know I probably fell prey to the Current TV pitch he was giving, but my brain focused on opportunities for "young" people in the marketplace. What a break for budding directors and producers. What a fun early success for the high school A/V student. This is unprecedented exposure with built-in respect. YouTube "success" carries a bit of a one-hit-wonder, fat-hamster-on-a skateboard-reciting-Shakespeare stigma. Just as with digi video content, creators are trying to gain traction and respect by gathering sponsors and subscription bucks; I have a feeling that random YouTube dingdong would LOVE to have his/her video blessed by a brand. It's OK, you're not a sellout if you admit it. 

So what's the next phase in messaging? Al says, "the audience member...and authenticity." He hammered on the unsustainability of "greenwashing" -- that the truth of what companies are really doing to help the environment will get vetted out. "Be authentic about green-washed campaigns, proceed with deep analysis." Seems logical.

The audience questions were... varied. One asked what's the role agencies play in what Current is doing with VCAM (great question, considering the viewer productions are devoid of agency fingertips). Gore's answer was a fluffy dance. "The most successful agencies will be the ones who work with the changing marketplace..." Well, duh.

Perplexing EVERYONE at Newfront was the audience inquiry about alien energy... and Al Gore's opinion on how it should be used to sustain... something... I seriously looked around to see if Bruno was making a cameo.

But that's not all! Coming up, Part 2: Green Beer, snippets from the Tom Green panel. You're cool with that, right?

Photos are here !

If you're on Twitter, you can see what people were tweeting by searching on the hashtag #nf09