MRS Conference 2005: Simple But Effective

Today was the first full day of two of the MRS Conference 2005. In attendance: the great, the good and a lot of other people who seem to turn up to MRS Events, including our own reporter.

The Barbican Centre echoes rather with the Conference in it, but that may reflect the size of the halls rather than any problem with attendance, so we'll await the official figures before passing judgement. The decision to move to London two years ago was a good one, long overdue in some people's view, and does make attendance easier for the great majority of the industry - like it or not, You separatists from north of the Watford Gap, three quarters of the industry is in the capital or the home counties. However, among the cold concrete of the Barbican the Conference has neither the cosy feel of the BIG event in Chepstow, or the buzz of key events in the marketing and advertising sectors.

What it does have is some top notch papers. Occasional scratching of heads as to how one talk or another had been shoe-horned in under a particular session title is perhaps inevitable, and was more than compensated for by the quality of individual offerings. If this means that the selectors pick the best ones first and then organise or slightly reorganise the topics around them, it seems a successful plan.

The opening keynote session was apparently well-received, as might be expected with Society President Jeremy Bullmore on the oche. Former JWT Chairman Bullmore made a plea for simplicity in our communications: if researchers are to make an impact, they need to deliver insight in the form of 'high potency expressions' distilled into short, sharp statements - 'insight bites' might be appropriate, we think. Such choice cuts would act as viral marketing for the profession, said Bullmore - they would be remembered and passed on, hopefully attributed to Us. To achieve this, in the speaker's view, means dumping the marketing jargon. We respectfully suggest getting rid of 'high potency expression' for starters, and perhaps replacing it with 'punchy words'.

The remainder of the morning session in the Main Hall continued the theme of reconstructing the industry. David Smith always excites controversy with his style - and for those able to keep up, with his content too. Today's paper apparently saw forty or so charts in 15 minutes, a gear down from his record sixty-something in 20 minutes at BIG, but rapid-fire nonetheless. There's usually somebody moaning about this in the foyer afterwards, but if you're a quantie, you have to hand it to the man when you see his overall ratings, and no doubt he'll prove popular again.

As usual, we'll concentrate in our write-up on the afternoon sessions we attended and hope it gives you a flavour of the event and some of the themes under discussion - a representative sample of papers is probably impossible anyway. For write-ups of sessions on 'Way of Working' and 'Futureproofing' continue here...

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.