E3 AGM: 21-23 April 2022. When in Rome…

Gold and silver awards, personal branding, updates from the field, and a pasta masterclass

April saw the welcome return of physical E3 events with the staging of the E3 AGM in Rome. It was an opportunity to renew acquaintances but, more than that, a chance to learn from each other – and from our Roman hosts. Highlights included:

• Best Of International Awards: how did your agency do?
• Personal branding: California style
• Our man in Africa
• Pasta masterclass

With timings and technology managed as always by our president Michael Meier,
the event was broadcast live to E3 members from the Borghesiana Romana conference room.

Best Of International Awards: how did your agency do?

Nine awards were handed out: 8 silver, just one gold. This is high-quality work as you can see from the videos here, but it has to be special to win Gold. Well done BBC again, with special mention for David Weyn’s inimitable presentation style. Nonetheless, it is reassuring to see such great work coming from all agencies, and we will all go back armed with lots of ideas for copying inspiration.

See all entries here!

The California experience

If anyone is qualified to tell us how to present ourselves on screen, it is surely the Californians – and in our case, Sasha Strauss of Innovation Protocol. Although the agency is now spread across the US in an innovative, distributed working model, its heart remains on the West Coast. CEO Sasha led the keynote session with a detailed and fascinating presentation on how we should all maximise the impact of our online video selves.

However, this session went much further. The focus on presentation is important because the expected brand experience has changed since Covid. Our clients’ brands – and our own agencies – must now be “frontage-agnostic”. We need to ‘work like an impactor’ and ‘enterprise like a maker’. Find out what these terms mean, and what you should be thinking about by watching Sasha’s ground-breaking and thought-provoking keynote below.

Our man in Africa

A fascinating update was provided by Gabriel (aka Capt. Ghizo), CEO of NTL Africa, E3’s partner agency with offices in seven African countries. Africa is an economy with astonishing potential. By 2030, one in five of the world’s population with be African, and over two thirds will own smart phones. All sectors are growing rapidly, notably agritech (44% pa) and health & biotech (81%). If you have any clients with African customers or divisions, you need to know more about the potential here. Start with Gabriel’s slide deck as he shared with us in Rome.

Rome: the perfect venue

La Borghesiana Romana is a lovely but remote venue 10km outside Rome, where we enjoyed not just our conference sessions but also learned how to cook pasta Roman-style.

We also took the opportunity to visit the sights of Rome on Saturday, despite concerns over crowds, but we have always said that E3’s success is built on relationships between people.

We hope the friendships renewed and the knowledge gained over the three days will be of benefit to everyone.

And we look forward to more knowledge-sharing and relationship building at the next event in Madrid in the autumn. Put the dates of 20-22 October in your diaries now!