At Ad:Tech London 2010
Yesterday, I participated in a seminar at Ad:Tech London 2009 held in Olympia, Hammersmith - a short walk from where I attended school and, also, from the former HQ of the J.Lyons food company where famously Margaret Thatcher worked as a research chemist. Sadly, the once-mighty J. Lyons got taken over in the ’70s after its ill-fated foray into Swiss Franc debt.
My session was entitled “Entrepreneur power panel: How to turn a great idea into a viable business proposition”. The Chairman was the redoubtable Julie Meyer of Ariadne Capital and my fellow panellists were Alex Zivoder, Managing Director Europe at viagogo, and entrepreneur Ed Bussey.
Alex used to work at Expedia and was thus a valued client of Cheapflights. Ed is the founder and CEO of Trigga News and was previously COO of ZYB and one of the founding team of Figleaves.com.
It was fun to share business perspectives with Alex and Ed, both hugely experienced in the online retailing world. And Julie proved an excellent Chairman.
Ed and I were able to share with the audience our experiences of launching our respective websites in the USA. I was able to pay fulsome tribute to Hugo (easier in his absence) for the stellar job he did in starting up Cheapflights.com in Boston. I revealed the problem Cheapflights had with our first USA PR agency. Tact prevented me however from sharing Hugo’s less than successful sales call on a Texan airline which reminds me of the scene in “In the Loop” where the Scottish Alastair Campbell character is accosted in Washington DC by a shocked American passer-by).
Julie is a great advocate of entrepreneurship in the UK. As an American, she can vividly see the stark contrast between the USA and the UK business environment. I sincerely hope she has the ear of Messrs Cameron and Osborne who have shown to date shown little understanding of the problems early-stage entrepreneurs are facing in Gordon Brown’s Britain (and about which I have written in Growing Business Magazine).
Ed gave a fantastic response when he said that the biggest issues facing early stage entrepreneurs are regulation and tax. Alex (who I believe hails from across the Channel) said education was a serious concern. How can that be when the pass rate for A levels and GCSE and the number of university students has risen exponentially since Labour came into power? The Government says they have done a great job in education. So, of course, we should believe them.
Later, Ed asked me who is lobbying for entrepreneurs and the answer is I really don’t know. I suppose the IOD and the Chambers of Commerce come closest - certainly not the CBI which is the spokesbody for the mega-corps. The problem is that entrepreneurs tend to work seven days a week and do not have very much time to put their views to MPs and candidates which is a shame - especially with an election coming up.
Two great warm-up speakers appeared before we went on stage. First an American lady - whose name I did not catch - talking about branding. Tagline, colour, typography, graphics, characters, shape, sound and story should all be on the checklist. Cheapflights has always been strong on “the story” from the “light bulb idea” by veteran travel writer John Hatt in his Wandsworth attic to the present day and it is something that all early stage companies should focus on. Remember Pez (apparently fictional) and eBay! A cautionary note, courtesy of Oscar Wilde: “Be Yourself…everything else is taken“.
I learned too that the Coca-Cola bottle shape is the second most recognized shape in the world after the egg.
Then a fellow called Thomas Gensemer of Blue State Digital gave a presentation. It always strikes me as a little bit odd that, in the USA, blue means Democrat and red is Republican when in the rest of the world red means left (or worse).
Anyway, Mr Gensemer masterminded candidate Barrack Obama’s email campaign: 13.4 million email list (20% of American voters), 2 billion email messages, $500+ mm raised by emails, 300 segmented tracks. Anyone interested in the power of email should listen carefully to what Mr Gensemer has to say.
Emails - if handled well - are an immensely powerful form of communication which is why I am so excited by the prospects of Howzat investment www.cheaptoday.com. CheapToday, still in its first year, is getting sensational user feedback (well done to Chris and Milenko, as good a start-up team as any investor could wish for).
I enjoyed Mr Gensemer’s “barns for Obama” story. It will be interesting to see how far the British political parties embrace the power of digital media at the Election in six months or so. Allotments for Cameron? Yes e can.
- David
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The questions seemed pre-scripted but I would have liked to have asked him: what things would he do differently if he was starting Microsoft with the experience he has today and more generally as an entrepreneur. I would also want to ask him, given this internet “all pervasiveness” about the issue that big businesses seem to have with being successful on the internet. Big business is finding it very hard to make the transition and more often than not large companies are having to buy innovation through acquisition - how does he see that big companies need to change to embrace the internet? Can they change and grasp the huge shift that is happening or is acquisition the most likely path?