The revivified Ad:Tech New York 2016 show featured a rollicking panel that the Producers Guild of America (PGA) produced on Thursday, November 3rd, Day 2 of the show, in which leading New York agency producers (all but one PGA members) discussed the trends that are shifting behaviors among brands and consumers alike.

Produced and moderated by Chris Pfaff, one of the founders of the PGA New Media Council, and head of consultancy Chris Pfaff Tech Media LLC, the panel, ‘Ad-Tech and Content Collide: Producing in the Programmatic Era,’ featured Jason Jercinovic, global head of marketing innovation and global brand director for Havas; Cindy Pound, executive direct, R/GA; Tom Goodwin, executive vice president, head of innovation, ZenithOptimedia, and Raoul Didisheim, consultant with Mariana Media.

A packed house filled the “Titan Hall” in the Javits Center, listening to a discussion that focused on various topics, including:

• AI and automation are dominating discussions among producers. How do we harness machine learning and real-time technologies for greater storytelling?
• “Conversational content” is now part of the lexicon. How are these devices and platforms – from Amazon Alexa to Cortana to Siri and Google Talk – part of the “targeted consumer?”
• Chatbots are the rage now; everyone’s mother seems to have a chatbot. Every VC is talking about chatbots. Is this another fad, like Pokemon Go, or are chatbots going to be a sustained part of the producer’s world?
• The luxury sector of the economy is still robust.  The whole premise of the luxury relationship is to have a bespoke experience. How do you deliver that in an era of commoditized personalization?
• The “cognitive” era may be upon us, but can we deliver truly “real-time” experiences that swing with societal trends, fast-moving news, or even more granular data on consumers? How does human creativity catch up to the massive technological capabilities comingout of our research labs?
• “Targeted advertising” has reared its head again, largely from AT&T. How do you see this playing into the mix of platforms you leverage for reaching consumers?

(From l to r): Cindy Pound, R/GA; Tom Goodwin, ZenithOptimedia; Jason Jercinovic, Havas; Chris Pfaff, Chris Pfaff Tech Media LLC; Raoul Didisheim, Mariana Media

Tom Goodwin talked about how AI has created a new set of expectations, for brands and agencies, and that the industry has to manage these expectations carefully.

Tom Goodwin discusses agency expectations for AI

Jason Jercinovic iscussed the “humans behind AI” and how cognitive computing – namely, IBM Watson – has helped generate better decision-making for clients such as TD Ameritrade, where customers were more likely to honestly interact with machines than with their human counterparts.

Jason Jercinovic discusses the cognitive era of producing

Cindy Pound mentioned the Pumpkin Spice Latte chatbot that Starbucks set up in October, 2016, where more than 500,000 interactions yielded impressive engagement for the coffee company.

Cindy Pound discuses the chatbot phenomenon

Raoul Didisheim outlined the challenge that luxury brands still have with new technology, and said that the integration of human high-touch retail experiences must be delicate and seamless in order not to offend luxury customers. He said that “any email list of a luxury brand would show that a large percentage of their consumers still have AOL addresses.”

Raoul Didisheim discusses the luxury sector 

 A view from the audience.

I was fortunate enough to have my personal reflections of growing up the son of an ad industry legend – Warren Pfaff – in the ‘Mad Men’ finale issue of Adweek, datelined May 11, 2015. The print edition had some retro fonts and design, and captured the spirit of the era. Dad would have been proud.

The full copy is below, and the link is at: http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/growing-son-mad-man-advertisings-golden-era-164629

Warren Pfaff’s work yielded iconic slogans, lyrics and campaigns for Pan Am, McDonald’s and the Marines.

There are many memories of the so-called “golden era” of advertising that are conjured up expertly by Matthew Weiner’s Mad Men on AMC Networks.

Largely, it is the effort to create a world that somehow captures the excitement of an era that stood for unyielding possibility. For someone like me, who was a small child during those years, with a father who may have been a model for someone like Don Draper, the show is an inescapable reflection of just how great that era really was.

And this is why the end of Mad Men, which kicked off its final episodes—fittingly enough—on Easter Sunday, April 5 (in the Mad Men era, clothiers such as Robert Hall would have flooded the airwaves with enticements for fathers to take their sons shopping for a new suit, or two) is an indelible reminder of what we have lost along the way.

My father, Warren Pfaff, was the creative director at J. Walter Thompson, the world’s largest ad agency at the time, for most of the 1960s. It was his work that yielded many iconic slogans, lyrics and campaigns, from McDonald’s “You deserve a break today” to the Marines’ “We’re looking for a few good men” to Pan Am’s “Get out of this country … get out of this world. Pan Am makes the going great.”

Even as a small child, I was caught up in the excitement of the advertising revolution that was occurring. The sunroom study in the house where I grew up with my brother and sister was a mini-playback studio, with an Ampex quarter-track reel-to-reel deck, on which Dad’s demos and finished product were played. Dad’s return from Seattle in 1968, where he shot the original ads for the Boeing 747 that Pan Am debuted, was epic: Pan Am toy planes and other trinkets were major prizes for someone who would soon become obsessed with the Apollo missions to the moon (something captured beautifully in the previous season of Mad Men).

One of my first visits to New York City was to visit a cutout of the 747 plane that was in the Pan Am Building (now MetLife) just atop Grand Central Station (where we came into the city, from nearby Stamford, Conn.), and adjacent to the Graybar Building, where my father’s office at J. Walter Thompson was located. New York in 1968-69 was as Olympian as it could get for a small child. We were all “going places,” and it seemed that all that aggressively positive energy was somehow emanating from a place called home.

My father’s return from the Clio Awards ceremony in 1970 woke me from my sleep. I went downstairs, heard the gleeful good news of his winning an award. When he handed me the gilded trophy, I promptly dropped it on my big left toe. He spent the whole night with me, icing my toe and foot and eating Kellogg’s Corn Flakes while we listened to the radio. He had spent plenty of early mornings with me and my siblings having breakfast, after having spent the entire night working in a recording studio or making a client deadline.

Chris Pfaff, CEO, Chris Pfaff Tech/Media LLC

The Pan Am campaigns that epitomized the Madison Avenue 1960s era were a reflection of the creative power of the ad industry. Pan Am produced an album of Steve Allen’s arrangements of the “Pan Am Makes the Going Great” theme. Steve and Eydie did the song in their nightclub act, and even Sammy Davis Jr. did a hip version of the song. Advertising didn’t need to license music for ads back then. The music industry came to the ad world for its cool.

Like many in his profession at the time, my father came to advertising as a way to make a living when the theater and other creative arts proved far less lucrative. He acted with the likes of Zero Mostel and Burgess Meredith and was successful at greeting cards, but advertising was a noble endeavor with a steadier paycheck. And in the Mad Men era, advertising was a creative business, well captured in the TV show. (Although, no creative would be caught dead wearing a full suit at work. That tie was untied, if not taken off when at work, with shirtsleeves rolled up.)

My father was as much of a restless creative maverick as anyone. He left J. Walter Thompson to start Warren G. Pfaff, Inc. in 1971, launching his concept of an advertising “cartel” with a two-page ad in The New York Times on April 19, 1971, with $14,000 of his own money. He received 1,600 letters within two weeks (only one was negative). His friend and industry muse, The New York Times’ longtime ad columnist, Philip Dougherty, had given him major ink to help push that effort along.

Dad merged that firm with McCaffrey Ratner in 1990. His office at 505 Park Avenue—with a penthouse wraparound terrace—had the largest round oak conference room table I have ever seen, and standing ashtrays filled with butts were a mainstay image. He and his small band of creative and account men even built a screening room off the reception area that was state of the art. It was the scene of a company family holiday party in 1972 where the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup was screened.

My father’s last office was at 185 Madison Avenue, across from the old B. Altman Department Store. He had the last agency to have an actual Madison Avenue address, and he moved out just a few months after B. Altman had closed for good.

Dad died in 2004, a victim of lung cancer, but he was working on ads up until his death. I think that he would have loved the portrayal of the New York ad world Mad Men conjures so well (particularly the pre-1966 era).

It would be almost like going home.

This article was originally published by IndieReader.

Chris Pfaff (@pfaffchris) is CEO of Chris Pfaff Tech/Media LLC and a founder of the PGA New Media Council. 

Chris Pfaff CEO, Chris Pfaff Tech/Media LLC, is a technology strategist, new media producer and a founder of the PGA New Media Council

The latest augmented reality (AR) technology, and some of its leading producers, packed the house at the NYU Data Future Lab last night in SoHo, at Chris Pfaff’s ‘AR for Producers: Bending the Arc in Real Life’ event, presented with the VR/AR Association, New York Chapter. The event was held at the end of the first day of Advertising Week New York 2016, and brought together technologists and producers alike for demos and discussions regarding AR’s application to multiscreen content.

Ariff Quli, chief commercial officer, Americas for Blippar answers a question at ‘AR for Producers’ at the NYU Data Future Lab

A full house of more than 75 people crowded into the Think Tank at the lab, and witnessed a presentation of Provision’s Holovision holographic display unit, which is used by several leading consumer brands. Ted Iannuzzi, creative business technologist with design and development firm Ixonos detailed the product’s significance in the context of his long history in emerging technologies. Ixonos is currently working with Provision to design the next generation of the Holovision experience, which will incorporate the first ‘touchless’ touch screen.

Ted Iannuzzi, creative business technologist with Ixonos, demos the Provision Holovision holographic projection kiosk, and discusses past visions of AR

Blippar’s US director of commercial operations, Ariff Quli, led off the event, showing how the Blippar app drives interactive engagement for brands including Spotify (a playlist driven by Blippar from a Coca-Cola can) and others. Ariff even pulled an audience member aside to draw a picture, which was then rendered elegantly using Blippar’s recognition technology.

Ariff Quli demos Blippar; activated Spotify playlist, tagging physical objects, and bringing audience member’s drawing to life (a butterly!)

Diego Florentin, head of business development for Montevideo, Uruguay-based Squadability, showed some of his company’s industry-leading AR work for brands, including the Harry Potter exhibit at Universal Studios. He made a passionate pitch for producers to drive more content with AR tags and hooks, to enable greater development.

Diego Florentin, from Squadability, inspires the audience with demos of AR work for brands and media companies

Futurefly’s founder and chief product officer Ozz Hakkinen discussed his career as a successful game publisher, who wanted to move into game development, and how that spurred his latest work, the RAWR app, which applies contextual content hooks to an avatar-based experience that enables a new kind of chat.

Ozz Hakkinen, founder and chief product officer of Futurefly, demos the RAWR app, with contextual emojis for avatar chat

Much discussion ensued regarding the coming of Magic Leap’s platform; head-up displays (HUDs), including Osterhout Digital Group’s glasses, and the incredible impact that Pokémon Go has made on the AR industry. Much discussion took place around the latest developments in AR from the likes of Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon.

Chris Pfaff, CEO of Chris Pfaff Tech Media LLC, and Ted Iannuzzi, before the event

Paul Wilford (gesturing), research director at Bell Labs, talks about VR as a Service (VRaaS) before the event

Mina Salib, manager of the NYU Data Future Lab, welcomes the audience

On Wednesday, May 20th, in the middle of Internet Week New York 2016, CleverTap and Chris Pfaff Tech Media produced an event with some of the leading New York players in the mobile app space, including CleverTap’s own Arkady Fridman, as well as Al Jazeera Media Network’s Tian Chen; Cachette Group’s Ellie Cachette, and Rumble Fox’s Julie Andrews.

Julie Andrews, Arkady Fridman, Ellie Cachette, Tian Chen, and Chris Pfaff at ‘The Full Stack: Creating an App From Beginning to End’ at General Assembly, 05.18.16

Chris Pfaff joked that the crowd was gathered together to pay its respects, “with a 1.5 nanosecond moment of silence,” to Windows Phone, which had essentially been killed by Microsoft the day before.

Julie Andrews, from Rumble Fox, presents

‘The Full Stack: Creating an App from Beginning to End,’ assessed a wide range of issues connected with the design, development, maintenance and promotion of apps. Julie Andrews presented a case study that showed how Rumble Fox created a hybrid web-mobile app for the Health Management Academy that integrated with existing data systems and worked with an easily maintainable code base. Tian Chen showed the evolution of Al Jazeera America’s app, and discussed the decisions that forced design changes and overall structure of the app. Arkady Fridman showed the CleverTap dashboard and discussed the need for better app engagement with users.

Tian Chen, talks about Al Jazeera Media Network’s app

The crowd at General Assembly was comprised of 100 people, mainly tech and media professionals, many of whom were in the process of building an app, or planning an app. The panel discussion provided a range of topics, led by Chris Pfaff, that included forecasting an app’s performance; dealing with apps that never seem ready for primetime; the best tools to use for development and quality control (QC) and quality assurance (QA); how brands view apps and how developers and designers need to consider overall brand touchpoints, and how to communicate with app users without overwhelming or annoying them through notifications.

Julie Andrews answers an audience question

This was the third CleverTap-General Assembly event in New York, and there is clearly a growing community for this kind of forum.

Arkady Fridman; Julie Andrews; Chris Pfaff; Tian Chen, and Ellie Cachette, after the event

Julie Andrews, Tian Chen, and Arkady Fridman, prior to the event

Tian Chen with Ted Iannuzzi, from Ixonos, after the event

Chris Pfaff Tech Media LLC and CleverTap will present an all-star panel discussion, ‘The Full Stack: Creating An App From Beginning to End,’ on Wednesday, May 18th, from 7-9 pm at General Assembly, 902 Broadway, 4th Floor, NYC.

On a rainy Thursday in late-April, history was made in an institution that is dedicated to history, namely, the Five Freedoms of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment. The first Producers Guild of America (PGA) New Media Council East event at Newseum, entitled ‘Virtual Reality, Storytelling, and News,’ brought together the who’s who of virtual reality (VR) in the journalism industry, and sparked conversations that detailed the need for standards in virtual reality production.

Hosted at the Knight Conference Center at Newseum, with demos from the Knight Foundation; Washington Post; Associated Press, and Gannett Digital, the panel demonstrated the exceptional leadership in VR that journalists have exhibited. Knight Foundation’s Mitch Gelman; Washington Post’s Cam Blake; USA Today Networks’ Robert Padavick; Gannett Digital’s Ray Soto, and Associated Press’ Paul Cheung discussed a variety of topics, including the need to understand deadlines for VR (which, obviously, takes longer to produce); the need to understand how audiences perceive storytelling in VR, and the need to work on local levels for VR.

Watch the full video at https://youtu.be/iVOrFpJwfj8.

Moderated by Chris Pfaff, one of the founders of the PGA New Media Council, and a former vice-chairman of the PGA New Media Council, the discussion ranged from lessons learned in technology, including how to stitch images so that objects and crew members do not appear – or do appear – in the frame; what camera rigs are doing to help shape storytelling; how apps are enabling a more democratic approach to VR, and how this exploratory period of VR journalism will open up new opportunities for documentarians and reporters.

The audience of more than 80 people asked astute questions, including why Web 1.0 VR companies, and their technologies, took so long to re-enter the scene, and how the “new digital divide” might be addressed by the panel.

The event was produced by the Newseum team, including Jeffrey Herbst, Cathy Trost, John Maynard, Scott Wiliams, and Jonathan Thompson, along with the PGA’s Renee Rosenfeld and Chris Pfaff.

This will likely be the first in a series of PGA-Newseum events addressing the VR arena. Stay tuned.

Chris Pfaff, (left), moderates the panel at Newseum

Jeffrey Herbst, CEO of Newseum, welcomes the audience

Paul Cheung, director of interactive for Associated Press, and Jeffrey Herbst

Ray Soto, Gannett, demonstrates the Gannett AR/VR program

Jeffrey Herbst and Paul Jastrzebski, developer relations manager with Oculus

Brian Savoie, director of technology education and outreach, and David Layer, senior director, advanced engineering, NAB

The Knight Foundation’s VR demo area at the event

Jon Harmon, filmmaker, experiences VR at the event

The power of virtual reality (VR) platforms is now fully realized in the explosion of creative content that is being delivered to headsets, PCs and smartphones every day.

The producers who are delivering new experiences for VR comprise a profile that is part-pioneer, part inventor, and all storyteller. This encapsulates the panel that was convened at The New School’s Lang Auditorium on Tuesday, February 9th, as part of the Producers Guild of America (PGA) New Media Council (NMC) East salon series.

datavized’s Caitlin Burns and Deborah Anderson prepare demos for attendees

With the recent introduction of the $99.00 Samsung Gear VR headset, the announcement of the Oculus Rift CV-1 headset, and the innovative apps that are powered by low-cost (as low as $10) VR glasses and Google Cardboard, VR is creating a new market for production companies. With customized camera rigs, stereoscopic lenses, and streaming applications, producers are creating new experiences for brands (Tommy Hilfiger); news organizations (Associated Press, CNN, The New York Times), and media companies (HBO; 21st Century FOX, NBA), as audiences prepare to dive into content in ways not felt, or seen, before.
The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) estimates that 1.2 million VR headsets will be sold in the US in 2016, and estimates that, by 2020, the overall VR market will be somewhere between $50-150 billion. As VR content moves onto mobile devices and cost-effective headsets at an increasing pace, producers will be in greater demand for new forms of immersive storytelling.

Dennis Adamo (right), COO of daydream.io, demos his virtualizer platform for an attendee

Produced and moderated by Chris Pfaff, one of the founders of the PGA New Media Council, and a former national delegate to the PGA NMC board; former delegate to the PGA National Board of Directors, and head of consultancy Chris Pfaff Tech Media LLC, the panel featured Caitlin Burns, COO of datavized, a VR production company that has developed new forms of WebVR content; Shazna Nessa, director of journalism for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation; Marco Ricci, director of EdgeDNA, and Dennis Adamo, COO of daydream.io.

Chris Pfaff welcomes the audience at the PGA New Media Council ‘Virtual Reality for Producers’ event at The New School

Marco Ricci, director with EdgeDNA, prior to the event

The event featured a packed house of more than 180 people, mostly PGA members and guests, as well as many stalwarts of the New York 3D, VR, and immersive industry. Demos were provided for the audience, pre-show, by datavized and daydream.io.

Chris Pfaff leads discussion on the VR industry

Marco Ricci, from EdgeDNA, presents

Caitlin Burns discussed the need for VR workflow and post-production protocols for VR, detailing how difficult it is to pull frames to conform to Samsung Gear VR headsets. Together with Prime Focus Technologies, she and her team have created what is one of the first VR post-production workflows in the industry.

Caitlin Burns, from datavized, presents

Dennis Adamo showcased daydream.io’s virtualizer technology, which renders individual user’s smartphones as VR engines for their own content.

Dennis Adamo, from daydream.io, presents

Marco Ricci gave what amounted to a tutorial on how to prepare for VR shoots, and what to expect from VR clients. The proverbial “I want the world…for $5,000” conundrum was discussed amongst the panelists.

Shazna Nessa, from the Knight Foundation, presents

Shazna Nessa gave an in-depth look at how journalists are using VR, with an overview of how the Knight Foundation has nurtured storytelling from outlets that include the Des Moines Register, among others.

Marco Ricci during the Q&A session

The Q&A session, always a staple of PGA NMC East events, included questions regarding the challenge of overcoming user nausea with VR; the New York State Start-Up New York program (from which daydream.io has benfitted), and the growth of New York VR production.

The number of attendees who represent VR production companies, or are working on VR projects, comprised at least half of the audience. With the vast majority of media buyers; agencies; brands, and media outlets in New York, VR should reflect a New York attitude, if it doesn’t already.

The Radisson Blu Plaza Hotel’s Bling Bar, in the proud century-old structure located near the Helsinki train station, was the site for the 1st Launchpad USA event, at Slush 2015. Hosted by Mike Klyszeiko, director of AmCham Finland’s Launchpad USA program, which helps prepare Nordic/Baltic ventures for the US market, and Erika Sauer, director of AmCham Finland New York, the official Slush side event, ‘Slush Investor Ingenuity,’ featured a one-on-one with Chris Pfaff and Urmas Peiker, co-founder of Funderbeam, the Estonian venture that provides a dashboard for start-up insights and a blockchain trading platform.

Watch video of the first part of the conversation at https://youtu.be/xHz8DiYoQO0.

Urmas Peiker and Chris Pfaff at the Slush Investor Ingenuity event

More than 90 entrepreneurs and investors crowded the Bling Bar for food, drink, and conversation. And the conversation with Pfaff and Peiker included the following topics and threads:

• Funderbeam, as an Estonian venture, combines the fearlessness of the “Estopreneur” with an innovative way to disrupt existing markets
• Urmas Peiker’s background as a regulator with Estonian’s financial supervisory group helped prepare him for the creation of the 2 1/2-year-old Funderbeam
• Funderbeam was described as “what would happen if Bloomberg Angellist and NASDAQ had a baby”
• Urmas Peiker described the opportunity for investors to trade, using blockchain, in their start-up investments almost immediately, thereby creating a more vibrant investment ecosyst
• Funderbeam is looking carefully at the U.S. market, and examining the vagaries of the U.S. regulatory market to try and disrupt the venture community

Pfaff gave a major shout-out to Tarmo Virki, founder and publisher of Co-Founder magazine, which had its launch at Slush 2014. The quarterly publication’s 5th issue arrived at Slush on Tuesday, and features the Slush 100 start-ups. Virki had introduced Pfaff to Peiker.

Mike Klyszeiko, director of the Launchpad USA program, and Erika Sauer, director of AmCham Finland New York/Launchpad USA, welcome the audience at the Slush Investor Ingenuity event at the Radisson Blu Plaza, Helsinki

Pfaff, who had coined the term “Finntrepreneur” in 2011 (initially to market his firm’s ex-Nokian clients who had made the plunge into forced entrepreneurship) coined the term “Estopreneur” at Garage 48 in Tallinn in 2014. Both classes of entrepreneurs are adept at creating essential start-ups with highly innovative concepts, and doing this with few resources.

Chris Pfaff and Urmas Peiker discuss Funderbeam’s forthcoming launch at the Launchpad USA event at Slush 2015

The conversation with Peiker also touched on the co-founder’s passion for extreme athletics; Peiker has competed in the Ironman triathlon competition, in Hawaii. He compared the triathlon experience with start-up experience, stating that endurance and focus is required for both pursuits.

Funderbeam (www.funderbeam.com) will launch a beta soon.

The inaugural Launchpad USA event was attended by more than 90 people during Slush 2015

Chris Pfaff will host a one-on-one session, ‘Expanding EU Ventures into the US: Navigating Financial, Legal, and Intellectual Property Issues,’ with Urmas Peiker,

co-founder of Funderbeam (www.funderbeam.com), at the Slush Investor Ingenuity event, held on Wednesday, November 11th, from 7-9 pm, at the Radisson Blu Plaza, Mikonkatu 23, Helsinki, during Slush 2015.

Urmas Peiker, co-founder, Funderbeam

Produced by Launchpad USA, the Slush Investor Ingenuity event is an exclusive opportunity for Nordic companies to meet with US investors; a chance to sit down, one-on-one, and talk with the right connections about international investment possibilities that could help foster your company’s growth. If you are interested in having discussions with veterans of the global venture community about ways to scale your business, please make sure to register for the event today using the RSVP link at https://www.lyyti.fi/group/SLUSH_1115_5982

For more information, see the event page at http://amcham.fi/event/slush-investor-ingenuity

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Radisson Blu Plaza, Helsinki

I am producing and moderating a session at the inaugural StreamCon (http://www.streamconnyc.com) New York event, next Friday, October 30th, at 3:00 pm, at Javits Center. StreamCon, a New York version of Vidcon, features an Industry Summit on Friday, with fan days on the weekend.

Join me at my session, ‘Shooting from the Hip: Mobile Video for Producers,’ and my panelists, Gregory Strompolos (YouNow), Nick Cicero (Delmondo), Daniel Holmstrom (LiveRing), and Natan Edelsburg (Muck Rack/Shorty Awards). See more at http://bit.ly/1W11aFN