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Heading to Switzerland this weekend we’re looking forward to celebrating the best in creative media thinking and strategy together with exploring emerging media opportunities at the The Festival of Media this Sunday 8th May to Tuesday 10th May. The event originally starting as The Venice Festival of Media in 2006 is moving this year from Valencia to Montreux. We’ve been a supporter of the Festival since it started five years ago being a great platform for new advertising economy and industry leaders and players looking at new business models and fresh creative ideas. This year we will launch a new initiative at the event, called the “Microsoft Advertising Ad Vision Series”.

The idea is to gather leading lights in the digital advertising industry from around the globe to impart their wisdom on industry hot topics and tackle burning questions facing the industry. We aim to enthuse, inspire, excite and delight marketers and advertisers with this series, becoming a watchword for deep thinking and industry insight via a series of panel discussions and 1 to 1 interviews at key industry events like Festival of Media Global 2011, IAB Interact or Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

For the industry, here and now is a massive time of change and opportunity – and so there’s no better time to host a conversation about “Navigating digital possibilities” in our first “Ad Vision Series” discussion at Festival of Media Global 2011.

I’m excited about hosting a panel discussion being joined by Ian James, chief digital officer for EMEA at Starcom MediaVest, Monica Gadsby, CEO, Latin America at SMG Multicultural, Steve Parker, Managing Director at Mediavest UK, and Stewart Easterbrook CEO London Centre of Excellence at SMG.

Our discussion will be framed by three key trends that are reshaping the way we live, work and play - and the way we interact with brands along the way. Mobile is providing the next wave of revolution in computing. Smartphones will soon be so ubiquitous, they won’t be called ‘smart’ at all. Apps are springing up here, there and everywhere. No longer confined to mobile devices, apps have spread to TVs and desktops. Gamification is also spreading to all parts of life. Games themselves have never been more popular. But the thinking behind game design is today driving powerful changes to the way brands engage with consumers.

We think this will make for a lively and fascinating discussion and we would love you to join in! So make sure you come along to our first Ad Vision Series event at the Showcase Theatre on Tuesday, 10th May 2011 at 11.40 AM, listen, take part, re-tweet our hashtag #AdVision together with the official event hash tag #FOM11 and give us your feedback afterwards.

We are also keeping fingers crossed to win this year’s Festival of Media Awards on Tuesday night at the Festival Gala Dinner. As you might have read recently we are nominated in the category ‘Best contribution to a campaign by a media owner’ for our two great campaigns: the Ford Galaxy User Engagement and HP Families of the Future campaign.

So, keep an eye on our Twitter feed, hash tags #AdVision and #FOM11 and become a fan on Facebook to get all the latest from this year’s Festival of Media Global 2011. Our team will be around their cameras while tweeting, bringing the event alive for those of you that can’t make it. So, if you aren’t attending the Festival, look also out for the webcast and our write-up after the event on our Community Blog, which will include videos from the Ad Vision Series discussion.

We are looking forward to seeing you there.

Thank you,

Laurent Delaporte (VP EMEA, Microsoft Adverting)

 

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