Monday

I had the opportunity to enter the Omnicom tent, one of the largest marketing and advertising agencies in the world. Here, I had the opportunity to connect with Paolo Yuvienco, the CTO of Omincom and hear what he had to say. Paolo and I talked a lot about my individual career goals, and how AI can benefit in both looking for a job, and in the workplace. After our talk, I was allowed to continue exploring the tent and listen in to some of the panels. During this time, I got to have a brief conversation with the President and CEO of BBDO, Nancy Reyes, which was very cool because that is such a large agency, and we even connected on LikedIn! The first panel was the Human Inspiration in the Age of AI, with Omnicom in partnership with Snapchat, and it discussed consumers demand for authentic connection. People want real friendships and connections with people, and AI can’t give that to them alone. They also briefly touched on embedding Snap data into Omnicom to help better optimize ads, which I thought was definitely really interesting (I wonder how that will be implemented in the future, will it be as personalized as things discussed within chat conversations??). The next talk was between Pepsi Co and Chris Beresford-Hill, the CCO of BBDO, and it discussed the viral Pepsi superbowl commercial where the Coca-Cola mascot, a polar bear, did a taste test and chose Pepsi over Coke. One reason this was so popular was because it got everyone in the industry talking about them in a positive light, as the idea to take your competitors assets is almost taboo. It was also successful because they had the polar bear be repeatedly spotted throughout TV and on the streets helped keep it popular after the Super Bowl. This definitely helped generate both a large commotion around the ad, and Pepsi sales. I think overall, my experience at Omnicom was super inspiring because everyone in there was so willing to talk and had such a positive outlook on where the industry is headed.