Day 2 kicked off with a quiet bang with a State of the Industry keynote roundtable. Among those participating was Rishad Tobaccowala, the CEO of digital think tank Denuo, who quickly became my hero for the morning. It was a format that made for lively discussion and soundbites (soundbytes?). Here are a few of my faves…

• “The future does not fit into the containers of the past.” ~ Rishad Tobaccowala, on how imagining the future of advertising is being held back by outdated notions of content consumption habits.
• “Content is king…but context is its queen.” ~ Jeff Berman, President of Sales and Marketing @ MySpace, on the building blocks of digital engagement.
• “Creativity is not copying.” ~ Rishad Tobaccowala, on true ideation within the echo chamber that is digital advertising.
• “You have to go naked, not well-dressed.” ~ Rishad Tobaccowala, on how to enter the blogosphere as a brand or on a personal/professional level.
• “Heavy users are not heavy voices. Consumers want utility, not engagement. The time has come to move from campaigns to ecosystems.” ~ Rishad Tobaccowala, on the the three things that are critical to understanding the future of digital advertising.

Following the keynote, I dived into an Omniture sponsored session (“Close The Deal”) on targeted testing. Unfortunately the session was a little more on the basic side of a/b and multi-variate testing, but it did yield this great client motivator from Jupiter Research on the benefits of testing:

Although only one-third of the market is currently testing, 79% of these companies have increased registrations per visit, 74% have improved customers’ satisfaction and 68% have increased conversion rates.

A little later I hit a session on “The Power of Storytelling” presented by Michael Perman, Levi-Strauss’ Senior Director of Consumer Insights. It’s saying something when at a digital advertising conference perhaps one of the most engaging presentations was on storytelling. It completely reinforces a fundamental truth of advertising — no matter what may change from day to day/year to year/decade to decade, our responsibility to be compelling storytellers has not. As Perman presented, we need to invoke strong characters, deep descriptions and provide souvenirs along the way to make those exchanges meaningful. “Imagination,” Perman said “is like perception in reverse.”

The “Kick-Ass Creative – Left Coast Style” was a loftily titled session that featured work from Agency.com and Publicis for their respective clients LG Lotus and Ask.com. The LG case study was a great example of an integrated campaign with strong social media legs, a no-brainer given the target audience consisting of the ever-coveted 18 to 24 set. Ask.com’s “Question” campaign was part of the search portal’s recent rebranding effort. (As a a sidenote, you know it’s hard times when even Jeeves the butler gets laid off, though it looks like he’s still working in the UK these days.) What I liked about both campaigns was the simplicity of the core idea. And the simplicity of the idea led to simple executions done extraordinarily well. And that is kick-ass.

My final stop was with communications cybernetics guru Paul Pangaro and a presentation on “Designing For Conversation.” There was so much to digest it’s a little hard to boil it down in this particular post, but I think there’s quite a bit to glean from just leafing through his presentation. Like Hayden’s Mandala yesterday, this is prime material for another post down the road.

Getting digital with Shelly Palmer this morning before hitting the BART for the airport. Not expecting anything earth-shattering, but looking for some good laughs and hopefully a new life hack or two.