Just returned from this year’s Association of National Advertisers’ annual conference in Orlando, Fla.

Overall, I must say the ANA meeting provided a glimpse into changing times.

New technology garnered the most attention. Attendees agreed that new technology posses a chaotic challenge to the marketing world, but the industry for its part is adapting.

By most indications, the 1,000 marketers in attendance (half of which were senior brand managers from member companies) are navigating the nontraditional landscape with renewed vigor. The upbeat mood of the event was in sharp contrast to last year’s, held in Phoenix, where marketers were under siege battling critics on everything from obesity to their dependence on television advertising.

This year, it seemed that the industry has indeed embraced the idea of reinvention.

Brandweek’s Marketer of the Year event kicked off the conference on Thursday night. Toyota’s Jim Farley, group vp-marketing, was named Grand Marketer of the Year.

Procter & Gamble chairman and CEO A.G. Lafley, who keynoted Friday’s general session, contended that although media has changed, basic human needs haven’t. “What’s different is how people are using media and technology choices to meet their needs.”

Lafley cited, putting mirrored ads in women’s bathrooms asking, “Is your lipstick still on?” and running targeted five-second TV spots with the same theme helped P&G increase sales of its Cover Girl Outlast lipstick by 25%.

Hit consumers when they don’t expect it and offer a positive solution, he advised: “It’s not about being at all the touchpoints, it’s about being at the right touchpoint when the consumer is open to it.”

If there is any company struggling with reinvention right now, it is Wal-Mart. Stephen Quinn, svp-marketing, told the story of how the retailer’s namesake brand became threatened by the din of its critics and its dependence on one type of consumer: regular discount shoppers.

Global concerns came to the forefront numerous times. Lafley emphasized that in this age of the Gates Foundation and the Bono-driven Red effort to fight AIDS in Africa, it doesn’t hurt to trumpet your company’s charitable efforts. Hence, there was some mention of P&G’s laudable campaign to use its PUR technology to purify water in poor areas of Africa.

Sadly, said Lafley, some 5,000 babies die every day from drinking fouled water on the continent.

Still, there were numerous times during the event that it seemed marketers should not be brimming with confidence amidst this new world order.

Missteps weren’t hard to come by during presentations in which ANA president/CEO Bob Liodice cited scandal-marred Hewlett-Packard as an example of corporate accountability. The Partnership for a Drug Free America was credited with creating a 30% drop in drug use, even though a recent Government Accountability Office report blasted the $1.4 billion effort as ineffective. The capper was perhaps Linda Kaplan Thaler showing a spoof video that skewered Wal-Mart with footage of goose-stepping soldiers taking over the U.S., just minutes before Quinn took the stage to talk about reinvention.

Most stories of reinvention, heard from many speakers, seemed to require abolishing or diminishing the use of the 30-second television spot. However, marketers seem to have trouble doing so as nearly every presentation began, ended or heavily spotlighted big-spending brands’ 30-second TV ads.

Kaplan Thaler, head of her eponymous New York ad agency, offered a more lighthearted variation on the theme of tech-driven change with a whimsical theory. She said that the 30-second TV spot might resume its rightful place in the media hierarchy in 2016 after people stop using the Internet and decide they want big media companies to once again tell them what to watch.

Thanks for reading, and as always, feel free to email or post your comments.

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