Notes To Supporters

Hello and welcome, especially to all those who've just joined our supporter group. You may be interested to know there are now over 330 in this group, globally.

This is to provide you with an update on the launch event being held in London at the RSA on 12th September - and to which many of you have bought tickets.

We now have a full agenda with reports from our workstream leaders, Michael Farmer, Jenny Biggam, Denise Turner, Crispin Reed and Ruben Schreurs on all the work they and their teams have been doing over the last few months. Many of you have been involved in these teams, so much thanks for your contributions!

We also have a keynote from Lucy Jameson, Founder of Uncommon Studio; a case study featuring Starling Bank (the client, Rachel Kerrone, her creative agency strategist, Jess Lovell from Wonderhood Studios and her media agency CEO, Pippa Glucklich from Electric Glue); before ending with a discussion on the next creative revolution featuring David Wheldon, ex CMO at RBS, and The Coca-Cola Company in conversation with Sir John Hegarty, Founder of BBH London. The whole event will be moderated by Stevie Spring, Chair at PRS for Music and ex CEO at Clear Channel and Future.

We've been selling tickets at cost and will be donating any surplus to the advertising charity, NABS. We are way ahead of schedule when it comes to sales and don't have many left so if you, or anyone you know wants a ticket now would be a very good time to buy.

The event will be recorded, video and audio and will in due course be made available in digestible chunks on our YouTube channel via our site: www.advertisingwhocares.org.

From this week, as many return from holiday we will be ramping up our social media presence. We have received video messages of support from two well-known faces: Bob Hoffman, aka the AdContrarian, and Jonathan Mildenhall CMO at Rocket Companies, and ex The Coca-Cola Company and Airbnb, which will feature in posts ahead of the event. Other messages from well-known supporters will feature at the event.

We will also be posting news from the workstream teams and highlighting elements from their findings and recommendations that will feature on the day.

One such is the Brands and Journalism thread being led by Ebiquity's Ruben Schreurs. The importance of professional journalism, and how it is funded in an era where so much budget is directed to platforms with no pretence to be publishers / creators of original content, cannot be overstated, especially given the dis-semination and promotion of fake news, and the lack of trust in established media forms.

Ruben has over many years compiled data on the value of the context of news to brands. He will share this work, and will be joined on stage by Hardeep Matharu, Founder Editor of Byline Times. We are delighted to have attracted Hardeep to our event. Not only does she edit an independent, investigative newspaper where she has broken stories first ignored and subsequently picked up by the national press and TV, she has also experienced first-hand the impact of ad budget shifts as a journalist on local newspapers.

Another, from the Recruitment and Well-Being workstream lead by Crispin Reed will feature results from original research amongst students on their views on the ad business, and what would attract them to a career in advertising.

It would be great if you could amplify these posts as much as you can.

Finally, it is worth stressing that the London event is a launch. It is not a one-off conference with no follow-ups or consequences. Nick and I are sure that there will be ideas and next steps emerging from the RSA. We, with you, have created an extraordinary momentum for change and progress. It would be crazy to predict which initiatives will fly, but we're sure some will and so we will certainly be keeping this supporter group together and doing what we can to expand it and its influence still further.

All the best.