Boards summit

By Cristiane Roget
As Madison Avenue inches closer into Hollywood, the recent Boards Summit in Santa Monica targeted such 21st century issues as how advertising can play as branded entertainment, new distribution platforms and their respective supported technologies, interactive advertising—and whether this brave new world will lead to an increase in advertising production with more work for members of the industry.
The November event—tagged “rewriting the script for the new Spot economy”—brought together commercial production companies, ad agencies, clients and purveyors of the latest incarnations of digital hardware and software. Among the conference’s quotable quotes:
Grisha Alasadi, executive producer, Flarefactory: “New outlets for commercial messaging, including interactive Internet ads and banners, longer-format spots for television broadcast and branded entertainment are here to stay.”
Commercial directors Noam Murrow, Tim Bieber and Kinka Usher agreed that “longer commercial formats allow time to develop more compelling narrative, more complex production values and a willingness to put the work above immediate financial gains.”
Don Faller, of Doublewide Media, who came up through the crew ranks and now runs a New York-based international production house: “As mediums of distribution [continue to become more varied and less costly], all that will eventually remain as a business will be the ‘pictures.’ This will open the floodgates for innovative creative approaches. Work will always be available for those who aggressively seize the day and go for it.”