Michael Karnjanaprakorn

I’ve been running non-stop since Cause for Drinks last Wednesday (NOLA raised $400) and the conference starting last Thursday. We started the night off by hosting the Bachelor/ette Party at Lephare for all the attendees, drinks with the speakers at the Napoleon House, dinner at Galatoire’s and after-dinner drinks at Vaughn’s to hear Kermit Ruffin’s play!

The conference was a great success. Before I jump into what each speaker said, here are some of my personal notes from the first ever Connection Planning Conference (and first conference Trumpet and I ever threw).

- It would have never happened without the support and help of Trumpet. I am grateful to work for a company that nurtures creativity and entrepreneurial ideas. It started with an idea in the parking lot with Robbie (president of Trumpet) and with the right resources and backing of Trumpet, it moved into execution.
- 20 minutes for each speaker was just enough time. They each had something profound to say (which I’ll go over more in a latter post) but having a conference from 9 – 5 was too much. I literally could not talk at the end of the day because I had so many thoughts going through my head from the conference. Brain information overload. I’m thinking of shortening the next conference to two half-days rather than cramming everything into one.
- I had a lot of fun “curating” the first conference. From coming up with the name (with our lovely summer intern Beth Stone) to selecting the speaker, it was a great experience.

I got asked a lot of questions throughout the day which I’ll go over below..

1) What made you decide to think in a “connection planning” way from the traditional way?
I never knew a different way. My background was in economics and finance but I decided to turn down all my jobs coming out of UVA when I stumbled upon advertising (thank you Ogilvy). I started my career at the VCU Adcenter where I concentrated in ‘creative media strategy’ which ceases to exist because they combined the tracks into ‘communications strategy’ but I didn’t know a different way. I got taught this new way which is how I’ve been developing my thinking.

2) What made you choose these speakers? Why weren’t people from traditional media agencies represented?
I chose people that I respected very highly for what they were doing within the industry – the provocateurs, mavericks, zebras in the herd. Looking back, I wish we had more females represented but I tried to keep it very diverse. There were a lot of other speakers I could have brought in (including representation from big media agencies) but I really liked the group I selected. Here’s my thinking behind each person that was selected.

The agenda was laid out to open with Demian who would talk about titles, names, etc. I knew that Lisa would be great to follow as she would carve out her own POV. Jim Elms would talk about how he’s doing it at Barkely. All three came out of media backgrounds. Michael Jager was thrown in the mix because I knew he would mix things up from the creative perspective. The three account planners were put back-to-back because I knew they would discuss theories and trends into their POV on connection planning. I put Paul right after lunch because I knew people would come back to hear him (sorry Paul!) and he would be a great start to the afternoon. Followed by John King who would bring the Fallon perspective and Scott Lukas who would show the conference how to “do” connection planning. The Goodby guys would end the afternoon session with how they do it. And to end the whole day, Rob Walker would bring it home.

Demian Brink was my mentor throughout the two years while I was at the VCU Adcenter. He shaped the way I thought about communications from day one. I was very grateful to have a Media Director meet with me for coffee every month to teach me, answer my questions and connect me with other people that were 100x smarter than me. He handed me my first copy of Communications Challenge and we have been in touch ever since. He was one of the first people I asked to speak.

I’ve been following Lisa Seward’s column in Media Magazine for years now. I have my favorite ones saved in my delicious account and respect her greatly. I got introduced to her through Demian Brink and have been in contact since last summer. Advertising is a very SMALL world, especially within this group. Lisa is great friends with Ivan at Naked London and with Robbie at Trumpet. I really like Lisa because she’s a huge supporter of young talent within our industry.

Jim Elms is from New Orleans and a great friend of the agency. We were fishing in the Gulf when I told him about the conference idea. He thought it was a great idea and told me about how Barkely created consumer-based behavioral maps which I found fascinating. I told him that I would setup the conference if he presented how the maps were created. A deal was struck and the rest is history.

Michael Jager was booked because we felt that the conference needed a creative perspective. Alison Bonner (planner at W+K) introduced me to Tim Donza (connection planner at JDK) who reeled in Michael Jager (creative director at JDK) from the design perspective. I really loved the work they did with Burton and knew that Jager would give it a nice creative twist throughout the day.

The three account planners were selected because they were three of my favorite planners working right now.

I found out about Adrian Ho through his company, Zeus Jones. There was a lot of underground buzz around the launch of Zeus Jones so I blogged about it and linked back to the ZJ website. From there, Adrian invited me to hear a presentation he was giving about ZJ which I watched on my MacBook. The mantra revolved around “marketing as a service” was pure genius and I knew I had to get him down to the conference. I really believe that Zeus Jones is the new model for the industry formerly known as advertising.

I’ve been reading Gareth Kay’s blog for a while. I heard him present at the Adcenter a couple of years ago while I was a student and put him down in my “really smart” list of people. My friend, Kevin Rothermel, started to work for him at Modernista! and it was a simple email asking for a favor. One of my favorite posts by Gareth was this one where he says that we should stop obsessing over media channels and instead focus on the idea.

I’ve been reading Influx Insights for a while and really respect what Ed Cotton was doing with BSS&P and how well he branded Influx throughout the industry. I heard Ed Cotton speak at the VCU Adcenter also and was very impressed. I was sitting across from Beth Stone (our intern from the summer) who said one of her good friends was interning at Influx. A simple email was sent and Ed Cotton was booked. (Even though the Polygamous Wedding was a week after the Influx Insights Conference, Ed still commited to attending ours and presenting).

I met Paul Woolmington while he was still at Media Kitchen in 2005 and have been in contact with him ever since. He moved to becoming managing partner at Naked NY and global partner of Naked. I always thought that Naked was a great company to work for because of their POV, culture and people. I worked at the Naked London office before I started to work for Trumpet. Robbie and Paul got back to 1999 when they first met. They have great stories of each other while I won’t share here!

John King emailed me when he heard about the first Connection Planning Conference. He asked to be a speaker and as someone who was leading the Connection Planning department at Fallon (the first company to start connection planning in the US), I thought that it was a no-brainer to include him. Before John King emailed me, I set aside 45 minutes for each speaker but in order to include John King, I changed the format to 20 minutes for each speaker which freed up room throughout the day to bring in more speakers. Thanks John!

I met Scott Lukas at the AAAA conference. I sat in his breakout session and had the worst hand cramp ever because I was furiously writing notes down on his method of engagement planning. I really liked Scott because he developed a process to “do” connection planning. His whole consulting practice revolves around it. I felt that Scott would have been a great speaker to talk about “doing” connection planning over talking about it.

The Goodby guys – Sidney and Rob – emailed me because they were interested in speaking. I’ve always believed in planner teams (much like creative teams) and felt that they would be perfect to talk about it. And plus, they started off the email by saying that they weren’t directors of planning departments and were under 30. I thought they would “keep it real” which they did!

And Rob Walker is someone I respect highly. I read his book, Letters from New Orleans, have been following all his articles in the New York Times and read his blog all the time. I forward all his articles to Robbie who finally told me that he could get in touch with Rob for the conference. An email was sent out and within a couple of days, we had Rob!

I had coffee with Johnny Vulkan of Anomaly last week and I’ll never forget what he said. “You can get in touch with anyone if you have a good idea.” From someone that loves to meet new people and network, I think that’s true and this conference is living proof of that. (Johnny had a lot of great things to say, this was just something that resonated with me because he’s setting up a meeting to meet with Clinton because of a brilliant idea he came up with to help move Rwanda into the economic powerhouse in Africa and throughout the world).

Thanks to our team for all their help! Up next, I’ll post my notes from the conference and finally put together my POV on connection planning. Stay tuned!