Hello and welcome back to the digital distillery podcast.
It is all go here at the TDD studios and since you last heard from me we a been to not one but two digital distillery events in two great, and very different European cities.
And as such we are very quickly realising that we have way more content than we know what to do with and since these events often hit on similar hot topics in the digital marketing space, we are going to structure things just a little differently for the rest of this season.
Instead of focusing on one event at a time and the topics therein, I am going to bring you a shorter recap of each event as they happen, and then follow up with our characteristic topic deep dives using content from all of the events up to that point.
And that brings us today to our recap of the second event held this year which took place in the very special Le Shack venue, right in the heart of Paris. So without further ado
C’est Parti or, lets go in French….I think.
Now personally this was my first time in Paris, or in France for that matter and I was really looking forward to experiencing the vibe, the architecture and of course the food of such a remarkable city, and i’ll tell ya what, it did not disappoint.
Upon bumbling around in the overcrowded underground, more than slightly overwhelmed by the sheer volume of bustling human bodies around me…..at heart I am still just a boy from the bush afterall.
Being completely at a loss as to which way to exit the train station and already being late to the sushi and pizza party hosted by our local country manager Jean-Phillipe, I picked an escalator, performed my everyday mental check of which side of the road I am supposed to be on…
yes, i’ve lived in europe for 3 years and still manage get in the wrong side of the car at least once a month…
I arose from the depths, blinking in the sunlight .. and like a croissant to the affronter, bam… right in front of me in all its glory was the immense arc de triomphe. And so the stunning architecture and fantastically french vibes began.
The event itself took place in this really interesting venue simply called Le Shack, and for those of you who don’t speak French as well as i do, that roughly translates to, The Shack. But despite the connotations of a small, hobbled together garden shed type abode, this place was anything but.
Designed in the late 1800’s by Gustave Eiffel, yes, that Eiffel, the brightly lit building was originally opened as a publishing house for Calmann-Levy, and Le Shack has done an amazing job of bringing together the old with the new in its new function as a venue cross workspace cross bar.
The main room is this huge and airy centre-piece bookshelves stretching to the heavens, and balconies ringing the interior, all looking down to the central space.
It was this central space that the Digital Distillery took place, perfectly matching the modern traditional feel with screens displaying video from eye-tracking glasses, sat in front of original 100 year old labels and other vintage paraphernalia dotting the shelf-lined walls.
The first major topic for the event was on the Ecological transition for a regenerative economy,
Here with head of regenerative business partnerships at Axa Climate, Maxamillion Rouer,
looking into the different ways we as an industry can and should approach the health of the planet beyond just being sustainable. The keynote was followed up with a passionate panel discussion on why 2023 may or may not be the year that the industry will finally make the sustainable switch.
[Interview - Emelie 3:09]] Okay, so the the panel was talking about the tipping points of the, the industry and in, in general, this tipping point…
The next big section at the event was all about attention and some eye popping new hardware.
The attention of users on the internet, how we measure it and subsequently how we can use that information to tailor more effective, more targeted and more sustainable campaigns has become one of the key talking points at all of these events and in the industry at large.
In this portion of the day we got to see one of these new technologies first hand. A nifty pair of glasses that could track the eye movements of its wearer and hone in on exactly what they are looking at in a video or image.
As we will get deeper into in future episodes, this kind of technology is truly changing the way that our industry operates, and is going to have an impact on some surprising and unexpected areas.
The following panel discussion, moderated by Laetitia Zinneti from one of our fabulous sponsors DoubleVerify, then dove into the specifics of Visibility measurement, and whether or not it will become truly superflous in the face of these new attention based technologies.
As the eyes and therefore attention of the audience shifted from the panel discussion wrapping up on stage to the buzzing staff from the venue hovering around with mouthwatering looking plates of small be-toothpicked morsels, the live duo Matild took to the stage and soothed the ears of the crowd as they settled into a lunchtime nibbly networking session.
And I, after a quick nibble myself, got prepared for my podcast interviews of the afternoon, by trying to make sure that i didn’t come off as a completely useless foreigner when it came to pronouncing everyone's lovely sounding french names..
I don’t think I succeeded but everyone was very nice despite my ineptitude.
It was at this point that I got to talk to Ingrid Cuasnon from Equativ, another wonderful sponsor, about the case study that Equativ had just presented on building inventory and creating value through curation.
And it was here that I learned quite a bit about an unexpected topic… Why the French market specifically stands unique in europe and the rest of the world.. Which was news to me.
Next in line was our topic from last episode on the increasingly powerful and interesting uses of AI in digital media, followed by a very tasty little development in the world of Digital Audio from another sponsor Audion. Now this was really fascinating to me from a technical perspective as the resident …cough… and lonely only audio nerd in the team. The clever gals and guys at Audion have figured out how to create truly dynamic audio content that can organically swap out key pieces of information as the content is delivered. So a pre-recorded ad could change itself slightly depending on the weather in a particular city that morning, or fine tune itself to a particular demographic upon being delivered to those listeners. Cool right?
CTV discussions rounded out the event talking about even though there are constantly significant advances in the space globally, France is again in a very unique position.
As the event was coming to a close the champagne was gleefully cracked and staff and guests alike settled in for a celebratory drink and chat, toasting a really great day.
And it was at this point that our team suddenly realised we had been on our feet for 12 hours straight and were collectively in desperate need for a shower and a quite beer in a corner somewhere away from all the action….or maybe that was just me.
After a stunning dinner and some cocktails….yes Konsta you owe us all a beer since you spontaneously and conveniently buggered off after dinner to go on a midnight Eiffel tower adventure.
And that was it. Paris. TDD2. a wrap. La fin
If you would like to see the venue and event for yourself you can head to the shownotes and follow the link to the recap video that Konsta and olafs did there.
Thank you to the whole team, it really was a massive effort and success. Pauline, well done, you did it, even though you thought it was impossible you pulled it off. Congratulations.
Thanks to Nadia & Basti also on the ground, to Ara from over at the Green About Media podcast who was also there helping out with french, spoiler, Ara was also there in Madrid working with me some super secret Green About Media business where she was also helping out with Spanish, Man these multi-lingual europeans put us aussies to shame…. I can’t even speak new zealand.
If you havent listened to Green About Media over on the TDD network i highly recommend it. It’s an informative show about digitals impact on the environment and everyone really needs a better grasp on this stuff going forward. We are currently working on an ambitious season 2 set to come out in a few months and so go check out the back cataloge in the meantime.
Thank you to Dennis Kirshner and Stefanie Leonardi for making the whole thing happen, check out how to get in touch with us in the shownotes or at the-digital-distillery.com, and catch us next time, somewhere else in europe, on the Digital Distillery Podcast.
Buenes Dias