On the fourth day of the AdForum Worldwide Summit, we were treated to Social Media & Mobility: Brand Servants or Brand Masters?, a set of presentations and debate among people that carved niches into the nebulous frontier of digital communications. This list of thought leaders included Jerry Johnson of Brodeur, Nicco Mele of EchoDitto, Emily Nagle Green of Yankee Group and Joe Trippi of Joe Trippi & Associates. You may recall the latter as a shaping force of the Howard Dean campaign that, with help from social media, began well enough — and ended like this.

Johnson kicked off by telling us that in the future, our grandchildren will look back on two historical anomalies of our time: retirement and broadcasting. Then he dispelled a series of myths about social media. They follow thus.

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Draftfcb

Our first stop yesterday was Draftfcb, where familiar faces with crisp suits greeted us with breakfast bits. President/CEO Laurence Boschetto kicked off by telling us what he’d cover:

• What the agency’s been up to for the last three years
• How the model’s advanced
• What the future holds
• The work

So we began at the beginning. Where’s Draftfcb been for the last few years? Hunkering down post-merger, mainly, and trying to ensure integration didn’t result in too many inefficiencies. As a result — you’ll notice Draftfcb always comes back to the bottom line — 2009 was a record year for them, despite the economic downturn.

As for how they work, the model is simple enough. Their proprietary ad measurement tool divulges that a company only has 6.5 seconds to win the heart and mind of a user. So Draftfcb came up with 6.5 Seconds that Matter, a formula for producing solid work.

The model is based on the premise that your crucial 6.5-second idea lives at the intersection of two things: a little-known fact that changes how you think about a brand (internally known as the “holy shit” number), and an insight.

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Diversified Agency Services — The Healthcare Division

Wednesday morning the consultants got a taste of the healthcare ad world, thanks to the kind indulgence of DAS Healthcare.

DAS stands for Diversified Agency Services. It manages Omnicom’s holdings in a number of disciplines, meaning attendees got to sample a number of agency/PR offerings at once.

I spent most of the morning at procurement meetings, which ran concurrently. (I’ll blog about those later.) But I’d hate for you to miss out on the DAS stuff, so I scoured the bus on a quest for somebody who’d distill the session and provide a thoughtful view.

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We visited three agencies yesterday and sampled an additional three in a speed-dating segment, so I’m just going to highlight the key points of each presentation.

Ogilvy

The new office at 636 Eleventh Ave. is under construction, much like the culture of the company, now led by Miles Young.

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Will be doing the requisite write-ups tonight to supplement all that twittering, but in the meantime here are some teaser shots from Ogilvy and BBDO.

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