• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, February 25, 2010

Freeman said a key for brands in the digital world is to go back to being useful. "Having brands approach investments as

"how can I bcome a utility, a service how increase functional quotient instead of how can I shout at them louder and more often," he said. Key to that effort is establishing a more human, one-to-one connection with consumers and linking together in-home, out of home and in-store marketing. That's where agencies come in, connecting the different  platforms and generating conversational marketing campaigns.

That requires more collaboration than agencies typically engage in because of their hyper-competitive nature. They're happy when other agencies bleed.  "I'm offering that this needs to change and we really need to absolutely work together," said Freeman. What's with kumbaya theme today? Likely to be forgotten as soon as everyone leaves the room to go back to the dog-eat-dog agency world.