The IPA Free Event

I was pleasantly surprised when I heard that in keeping with the spirit of Chris Anderson’s Free, which was the inspiration for the evening, the IPA had chosen to make its latest event free to attend – something that I don’t think they are accustomed to. In return, attendees had to blog, tweet, take photos or videos of the event and help publicize it. So here I am, doing my duty.

Ian Clark of thelondonpaper spoke about how they use free as an advertising model. I wasn’t quite convinced by what he had to say (“free liberates thelondonpaper to reflect on the priorities of the reader”), but was interested to hear about their Generation Free conference recently which documented what people had to say about the paper. You can see the output from their focus groups, as well as a couple of interesting presentations from the day, here. Ian also played a brilliant clip from the Conan O’Brien show that had him interviewing Louis CK who gave some killer one-liners, the best being “we have some of the most amazing technology in the world but it’s being wasted on the crappiest idiots”, with reference to people who didn’t appreciate technology for how amazing it is. Unfortunately, it’s no longer available on YouTube due to claims of copyright violation by NBC Universal, and unless you’re in the US, you can’t access it at all, even on their site. If you are in the US though, here you go:

So much for free – NBC Universal, you suck (believe me, the clip is EXTREMELY entertaining and deserves way more coverage globally than it probably is getting).

Clive Dickens from Absolute Radio spoke about their acquisition of Virgin Radio in their quest to become a bigger brand and of their initiatives to make money out of free in the music business, such as the Absolute iAMP for the iPhone app, investing in radio programmes that depend more on content via RJ’s rather than music since most music has a rights issue, and streaming footage of live concerts free online for a limited period like they did the Blur in Hyde Park concert recently. I thought Absolute would actually make an excellent ‘how to make money out of radio via free’ case study and kudos to them for sharing their lessons.

Marc Allera spoke about mobile phone company 3’s experience with free via Skype, and using it as a hook to win over customers who use social networking profusely – he showed how average usage has gone up over the last few months as a result. Again, a good example, I thought.

Finally, Matt Knight, Technical Creative Director at Wieden + Kennedy spoke about free in a completely different, and refreshing sense: he took us through the genesis of the Disposable Memory Project that he started and curates,and the stories he hopes will be told. Matt left a couple of cameras to make their way around the world at the end of the talk. I’m glad to say I managed to lay my hands on one, which I promptly went and dropped off in Dublin last weekend as I was on a holiday there, to play my part in the project.

The IPA has put up most of the presentations on Slideshare, again very proactive of them. I must say that they are quickly going up in my eyes following their not too ancient debacle at their January event. 

Update: The IPA got in touch with me on Twitter to let me know that Ian Clark’s presentation was on Vimeo, so here it is (and it has the Louis CK video – watch it!!)

IPA Strategy Group ‘Free’ Presentation 14th July 09 from The IPA on Vimeo.