Picture This…An Ideas Event

Milton Keynes has long been thought of as a home of innovation, collaboration, and entrepreneurial savvy. So it was no surprise that a recent Picture This event included all three.

Held at the Sky Room at Milton Keynes Gallery, the event was the first of its kind in the city and came about through a collaboration between three city based agencies – Interdirect, Stratos and Wirebox.

An ideas event, it took visitors through the journey of producing a creative project and featured thought-provoking, expert speakers covering topics including Creative and Brand, Content and Film, Marketing, and PR and Online Comms.

The informal, social event attracted a number of like-minded individuals who all shared a passion for marketing, creativity and digital disciplines and the speakers balanced each other perfectly. It worked to give the audience a flavour of how collaboration can work perfectly and how integrating parts of each discipline into a business can help you push the boundaries and connect better with your customers.

The evening started with a talk on Creative & Brand from Stratos’ Marc Smiddy and Ryan Taylor from Wirebox. Marc started the evening off with an interesting talk on brand emotion – the importance of a brand creating a connection with its audience – which included a thought-provoking video about sportswear giants Nike (Have you ever seen Nike sell you their products by telling you anything other than how you’ll feel wearing them?) This was followed by a more technical discussion from Ryan who delved more into the ‘why’ of what a brand offers its customers.

Mat Finch, from Caffeine & Machine, then told the audience about the importance of clear and concise marketing strategies before Laura Alfred from Network Rail and Interdirect’s own Emma Scott gave an incredible insight into PR &Communications and the role of the leader in creating a brand consistency in vision.

The final speaker was Alex Lawrence from Clearhead, who spoke fantastically on the topic of producing content with a purpose that helps to tell a compelling story. The point of the evening was to show that individually, done well, these elements can drive a business forward but actually, we need to collaborate with others to be able to offer clients the ‘full package.’

It’s interesting to see how attitudes are changing in this space and how nowadays businesses aren’t seen as rivals but actually, fellow professionals that can be learned from and collaborated with. And actually, it’s OK not to be great at everything, as your specialism may be someone else’s weak point.

Interdirect is proud to announce that it will be working collaboratively with Stratos and Wirebox moving forwards and in the process offering customers a more complete business solution.

As for Picture This we’ll be eagerly awaiting the next instalment of this unique thought leadership event and hope that anyone reading this will be intrigued enough to sign up in the future.