David Lubars at ad:tech

After daring the long registration lines of ad:tech New York, the opening keynote with David Lubars, chairman and Chief Creative Officer at BBDO North America, began. The theme of the keynote, "From the Alley to the Avenue," could be summed up as, "New media is growing -- but don't forget the old ways."

The keynote was more of an interview, with ad:tech's Drew Iami asking the questions. Lubars stressed that ideas are what is most important, and that how they are delivered follows after, "Just have a brilliant insight." His mantra was that he was medium-agnostic, "I don't care about technology. I just want to reach people."

After a long discussion of the potential of marketing on mobile devices ("Mobile is going to be extremely important") and the future market of advertising in video games ("I hate product placement"), David Lubars also pushed the past: from simple caveats such as, "Traditional mediums are not going away," to observations, "TV isn't going away -- people still like passive entertainment,".

Citing that there are now more magazines than ever before, but also praising that interesting things were happening at MySpace, Lubars honored both old and new media. Will others agree? We shall see as I further explore the ad:tech conference.