By Alexandra Reid
If you’re interested in how the changing media landscape and consumer behaviour are impacting the future of advertising, the upcoming Social Media Breakfast Ottawa presentation featuring Sean MacPhedran is for you.
MacPhedran’s passion lies at the intersection of advertising and entertainment, but he also admits he’s a bit of a sci-fi geek, too. As both director of creative strategy at Fuel Industries and general manager for the Tomorrow Awards, MacPhedran is an expert on how advertising influences and is influenced by the consumer, and how understanding this symbiotic relationship can help advertisers reach consumers as their consumption behaviours change along with evolving technologies.
His resume of experience is far from modest. MacPhedran has been responsible for carrying out multiple advertising campaigns for high-level clients including HBO, Fox, McDonalds and Microsoft. He has also been involved with the X Prize Foundation’s $10-million competition that challenged space professionals and engineers from across the globe to build and launch the first private spacecraft.
At Fuel Industries, MacPhedran’s job is to help youth brands navigate changes in interaction, consumer behaviour and the media landscape. But his presentation will focus mostly on the Tomorrow Awards and the role this competition plays in helping the advertising industry embrace change and explore new routes of creativity. The Tomorrow Awards is the first international award show dedicated to discovering, showcasing and awarding advertising creativity that pushes new technological boundaries. But beyond the trophies and accolades bestowed upon the winners, the Tomorrow Awards seeks to educate the industry about new technologies and the creative possibilities that come with them.
According to MacPhedran, the advertising industry is undergoing extraordinary change and there is a huge gap in how we are educating advertising professionals to navigate this shifting consumer landscape. For example, the rise of social media and the consumerization of technology are impacting how we consume media and interact with brands. Yet even though advertising is at the core of nearly all free entertainment we consume, the average Starbucks barista has more education than the average advertising professional, says MacPhedran.
To explore the future of advertising, MacPhedran will walk us through the five winners of the Tomorrow Awards and explain the creativity and technology that made them successful.
MacPhedran will present at the Great Canadian Theatre Company on Nov. 23 at 8 a.m. You can show up at 7:30 a.m. to chat with other attendees and enjoy delicious home-made muffins and coffee (our last breakfast included a highly praised bacon muffin, which, it is rumoured, will make an encore at next week’s event). To further whet your Social Media Breakfast appetites, here is a video of one of the winners of the Tomorrow Awards, responsible for the brilliant social media payment idea, ‘Pay with a Tweet.’
