SPECIAL REPORT: An Insider Review of ClickZ's Conference

We’ve gotta hand it to ClickZ. Those guys know how to
put on one classy conference.

After the flash and noise of Iconocast’s Web Attack show
at the Roseland Ballroom, ClickZ’s choice of the elegant
Millennium Hotel in midtown Manhattan was a welcome one.
The quietly dignified hotel and its accompanying theater
provided a classy setting for a well thought-out
conference, ClickZ Marketing Strategies 2000.

Here are our notes for suppliers and agencies who
couldn’t make it:

* Attendees: most were from out of town, and we’ve never
seen so many agencies paying to attend a show unless they
were babysitting their clients!

* Networking: The long -- two hour! -- lunches both days
gave people loads of time to network, and attendees took
full advantage of it.

* Speakers: Gordon Paddison of New Line Cinema packed a
whallop with a case study of his Austin Powers campaign.
(We all want his job. In fact, everyone at the conference
wanted his job.) Sean Carton’s gave a seriously info-
packed presentation on wireless. (Note that Vindigo and
Bluetooth were pegged as the killer apps in this arena.)
While Sean may have overused the word “ubiquitous” in
referring to the Web, his point was not lost. And we
loved Conference Chair Darian Heyman of Beyond
Interactive. Besides the fact the Heyman quoted Seth
Godin on a regular basis, he asked the presenters the
questions we wanted to hear, and man, did he have some
spiffy clothes!

There were other great, informative presentations
throughout the event, with very few letdowns. One of the
said letdowns: a speaker, who shall remain nameless (but
you know who you are!) made the grave error of trashing
one of his very high profile clients in front of the 300+
attendees. We’d chalk this up to sending out a too-young
ad exec to speak at an event, except this guy was the
President of his company. Oh, well.

* Highlight: The ClickZ Challenge: A real startup,
BookLocker.com, was endowed with a fictitious $25 million
marketing budget. They then invited two agency teams –
one from Foote, Cone and Belding, and the other a group
of specialty firms, Digital Pulp, Mass Transit, and KSL
Media – to bid on the job. The goal was to see which
team could produce a better “Surround Sound” campaign, a
one-stop shop or a group of complementary firms.

Even though one of the teams was forced to bail – which
must have really given the ClickZ team some serious
palpitations – the remaining team gave a heck of
presentation. And, in the end, the goal was met anyway.

Party: We would have like to have seen the first night
cocktail party held at a different venue. ClickZ decided
to hold it where lunch had been served earlier that day.
While the food and wine were exquisite – as they had been
throughout the conference – it would have been nice to
give the out-of-towners a chance to really experience New
York City. (We should also mention that some attendees
dubbed one of the wait staff at the Millennium as “Ilsa,
She-Wolf of the Cocktail Lounge.” I guess there’s no
screening for that sort of thing…)

Chatcke Watch: The show’s 11 exhibitors produced some
nice goodies. MarketingtoWebMarketers.com’s staff
dedicates happy dances to the following:

Winner #1 Engage, Mamma of all things promotional, gave
away gorgeous full-sized, bright yellow umbrellas. They
may have been cumbersome to carry around for those of us
who weren’t staying in the hotel, but boy did we wish we
had one after the cocktail hour on Monday. Engage also
gave away brushed chrome alarm clock/calculators and
little green water pistols.

Winner #2 Evoice for their T-shirts that were shrink-
wrapped into packages shaped like wireless phones.

Winner#3 NewMediary.com for their Altoid-like tins of
SERIOUSLY powerful mints

Verdict: Overall, we really enjoyed this show. What’s
more, we felt it was the first show in a long time where
we’d actually learned something. So many marketing
conferences we’ve been to seem to rehash the same
marketing rules we’ve all known for the length of our
careers. Kudos to ClickZ for an elegant, informative
show.