yesterday Mediation popped along to the PPA's Magazine Advertising Conference and Awards 2008, held at the IMAX.  media conferences really are a wonder to behold and the PPA's effort was no exception, with several key components of any decent conference on display (no pun intended)…

selective use of stats are out in force to make convoluted promotional statements about the channel… in 70% of product categories, for example, magazines drive more online sales than any other medium.  who knew?

awards are a must.  my best of the morning being 'The Industry's favourite Magazine Cover' (for the record it was the above Superman Returns effort by Empire).

fat words like 'relevant' and 'engaging' are compulsory in every sentence, and a host of industry heavyweights are rolled out to half inspire us and half self-promote they own pet agenda.  to be fair John Grant was on his usual excellent form, reminding us that the new media attack is centralised on distribution whilst actually supporting the creation and filtering of great content.

but the best and most compulsory part of any media conference is the plain, unabashed optimism that oozes from every syllable.  there are no challenges, only opportunities.  consumption never goes down, consumers just get more sophisticated.  but above all conditions are never bad.  this is really important.  our beloved western economy isn't teetering on the brink, it's just going thru an 'exciting and dynamic' phase.

and for all their flaws, this is what we love.  in an all-too-often cynical industry, it's quite right that a media channel can put on it's finest and sell it to the world…  it's a testament to the passion our industry has for what it does.  and besides, who wouldn't want to live in such exciting and dynamic times?