Agency boss slams ‘time wasting’ self-promoters at industry events, ‘If you say ‘game changer’ without justification, I will slap you’
A PR agency head has spoken out against media and marketing executives who speak at industry events to promote themselves and their companies without offering their audience anything new or original to learn from.
In a post on his Facebook page, Tony Ahn, owner and founder of Manila-based PR firm Tony Ahn & Co, said that such people who presented case studies of their work without sharing learnings, and who used marketing buzzwords to trumpet their success stories, were “wasting his time”.
He wrote: “I attend professional conference seminars/presentations to learn new things. If you stand up there telling me to “get back to basics,” you’re wasting my time.”
“If you cover a topic that hit the blogosphere recently and you’ve added no new insights, you’re wasting my time.”
“If your presentation is mostly award submission videos of the campaigns you’ve done, you’re wasting my time,” he said.
He went on to say that he would “slap” any presenter who used the words “game changing” or “disruptive” to describe something that had not been deemed notable enough to be covered by independent news outlets.
“If you present case studies that pretty much show your campaign was successful, without adding any special insights that will inform how my agency plans or executes campaigns, you’re wasting my time,” he said.
“And if you say “disruptive” or “game changing” without referencing something so notable that it has had independent news coverage, I will slap you,” Ahn wrote.
Ahn himself speaks at industry events, such as last year’s Unilab Social Media Summit, the British Chamber of Commerce and at De La Salle University, where he is a lecturer on digital PR and marketing. He recently attended events such as the Ad Summit in the Philippines, which was held in May this year.
His comments come soon after Vaasu Gavarasana, the former head of business marketing at Yahoo!, waged a one-man campaign for the industry to cut down on the number of events and avoid clashing dates.
I agree with Tony that presentations without substance or insight are frustrating – especially when you are asked to pay big $$ to attend many. I believe that to get value out of these events, one only needs to learn ONE truly new thing. From my experience whilst it can be arduous to have to wade through hours of self promoting drivel to find that one gem… it’s always there. As a sometimes speaker at these things myself I’m going to take this to heart and make sure I check and double check my own content for new insight and real value before I next step up to the lectern.
PS – I did enjoy a little ironic smirk noting that this lecture on not self promoting came from a guy who named his firm after himself….. 🙂
ReplyI organise events and I want to shake this man’s hand – couldn’t be more on the money!
ReplyI so agree. But it’s nothing new. I gave up attending nearly all conferences years ago for this very reason.
ReplyIn my opinion to be a good speaker you need to be a good storyteller, don’t just deliver an aural selfie, disrupt the current paradigm if you really want to be considered a thought leader. Blue sky is fine but you need a deep dive into big data to create true audience engagement. Be responsive, deliver a world first and don’t forget the wow factor. It’s really not that hard!
ReplyQuite a game changing talk by tony ahn.
PS. Neal Moore, what the hell did you just say?
Reply‘aural selfie’, ‘disrupt’, ‘paradigm’, ‘thought leader’, ‘deep dive’, ‘big data’, audience engagement’, ‘responsive’, ‘wow factor’…. That’s a mouthful of buzzwords in just a few sentences, Mr. Moore.
ReplyI am reluctant to speak on Neal’s behalf, but I have a sneaking suspicion he was being ironic.
Cheers,
ReplyRobin – Mumbrella
Firmly agree with Tony. Industry events are pretty much only good for networking now with very little insight or learning to be gleaned from keynote speakers.
ReplyIn general if anyone uses terms like ‘game changer’, ‘Blue Sky’ and ‘Big Data’ in conversation I pretty much write them off as mediocre immediately.
How dare you Hicks! I was being absolutely sincere.
ReplyHi all, thanks for the comments and kudos. All are appreciated! I forget where, but I once saw an app that would generate a sentence that sounded like something a digital marketer would say, and would generate new ones as fast as you could hit the button. What Neal wrote looks like he was using one. And thanks for your comment, Neal, it made me laugh.
Adam, while you’re enjoying your ironic little smirk, note 1) I never said anything about self-promotion in that status update. That was editorialized in the reporting; and 2) I named the company after myself because I had a recognizable personal brand, having spoken at a number of major events in the Philippines, which I chose to leverage rather than picking a new name and starting from zero brand awareness in the market.
All that said, I personally don’t care whether or not people self-promote as long as they don’t waste my time. I want to learn something, and I’m reasonably competent, so that means I want to see people that have really innovated or operationalized something beneficial.
When I’m going to speak to a group of undergrads at a university, I don’t prep. I walk in cold, speak off the top of my head, and take their questions. And they love it. That’s how I got on the faculty of the university where I teach. But when I speak at a national conference or summit of industry practitioners, I make sure I’ve got something to say that they’ve never heard before. I’m appalled at how rarely it seems other speakers do the same. Or do they think they are, thus presuming we’re all ignorant of what they’re telling us?
ReplyHi Tony,
I think you’re looking for the New Age Bullsh1t generator:
http://sebpearce.com/bullshit/
Remember, Passion is a constant. We exist as electrical impulses. By flowering, we dream. The goal of transmissions is to plant the seeds of potential rather than discontinuity.
ReplyHaha, no, but it works on the same principles. This one however, just generated one sentence, that had sentences that contained phrases like “leverage social conversations,” or “disrupt existing channel paradigms.”
ReplyHave your say