Ron Samuel’s diary of the final day from the Emergence Creative Festival in Margaret River

Ron Samuel from Cooch Creative reports on the final day at the  inaugural Emergence Creative Festival held in the Margaret River region of Western Australia. Samuel (pictured right with Mike Rosenstein in middle) is writing a daily diary for Campaign Brief.

The final day began with a 6.30 fun surf session and surf lessons, for those who wanted to try, at Margaret river mouth. The weather was a little ugly and the surf was sloppy but that didn’t stop the brave participants. I found myself chatting and surfing with two very friendly locals who turned out to be Olympian Shane Gould (pictured below) and pro-surfing legend Josh Palmateer. Josh’s enthusiasm got everyone motivated, he generated enough energy to power a small town. Lovely guy and his energy seemed to set the tone for the day.

The first session was Richard Bullock, an ex perth creative who went on to global success and is now a film director based out of Perth. Being in Perth hasn’t stopped him working on major projects and documentaries. He used his life experience to discuss how to face change and embrace the unknown, taking risks and following your instincts. A lot of his work is now based around social causes and trying to get big brands involved which he has been very successful at. The change message was not lost on the people from Perth agencies.

Next up was Shane Walter who described himself as a curator of digital art. He discussed the importance of replenishing your talent supply to create collaborative creative communities. The work that he used to demonstrate his point was stunning in scale and execution. He stressed the importance of taking yourself to the people you want to interact with instead of waiting for them to come to you and also to keep connected to you audience. I think PIAF should definitely put him on the card for next year. His description of  code being the raw material for digital artists as clay is to sculptors helped to demonstrate the limitless possibilities of digital art. He showed work that he’d been involved with for bands like The Rolling Stones and U2, amazing.

Mike Rosenstein (left), who is the producer from Ben Stiller’s Red Hour Films, gave a very constructive presentation on where TV is headed using their web series Burning Love as an example. He went through the business case, revenue model and the lessons that they have learned along the way. This stuff was invaluable and the speed at which TV consumption habits have shifted in the states would make me very nervous if I were in the industry in Australia. All of the big web players, like Amazon and Yahoo, are now involved in production and distribution, they know exactly where the audience is and can reach them effectively with stuff that they want to see, gold.

I’m always surprised by the people who leave Perth, do great things and then come back when they can live anywhere else in the world. Simon Allen, an animator who worked at Pixar on films like Toy Story 3 and more recently Brave, which has received an Oscar nomination, is one of those people. He took us through the animation process and by the end you could see why it takes so long to make them. The cost is unbelievable at around $100,000 for five seconds of completed animation with an average budget of $200 million. They produce between three and five seconds a week.

Guy Gadney was next, he’s just been nominated for an Emmy, his take on the future of broadcasting was also very insightful. He used his company’s latest work ‘ The Great British Property Scandal’ as an example. This was TV specifically designed to influence the government to seriously address the issue of homelessness. Viewers were asked to spot abandoned government owned houses, photograph them and upload them, the TV crew then went to those councils and asked them the hard questions. He described it as a ‘transmedia’ production.

The two final sessions were panels and they were both great. The discussion (left) on the use of social media campaigns and some of the tragic results that we don’t see demonstrated that the influence which they create is not always good. Tobias Wilson shared his experience on what is happening with marketing on mobile phones, which is another change that our clients need to be seriously engaging with sooner rather than later. The second panel about brand connection and story was focussed on engaging the target rather than selling them something because they just don’t buy like that anymore. Scott Alexander from Oakley gave a simple piece of advice that none of us should ignore – ‘If you want to get likes on Facebook do something that everyone likes.’ Nice.

The final dinner was at Leeuwin. The food and wine were excellent and the casual set-up worked very well. I think that the Emergence team have created an event that will grow and that has the potential to make a real difference to our creative and business communities. The diversity of the delegates was refreshing and most of the creative organisations in Perth were there in one form or another. The PADC was conspicuous by its absence and should have a series think about next year.

The overriding themes that emerged (sorry), were the need to embrace change positively, let go of the stuff that’s not working, stay connected and get among the markets that you want to be in.