Last week Beth (our director of digital strategy and innovation), Paulo (our group account director on Honda and Brown Forman) and Marta (our PR manager) spent a day in Kings Cross peering into the future at Most Contagious 2013. Each year, Contagious Magazine run simultaneous events in London and New York as the year draws to a close, exploring the events, movements, innovations and people that shaped the past twelve months and how these ideas will weave their way into our lives in the coming months.  

Alongside insightful sessions on from the brains at Contagious, the day featured an impressive line-up of speakers.

Fernando Machado, vice-president of global brand development for Dove, gave the audience an inspiring insight into what drives an (undoubtedly very successful) marketing strategy when a brand is already the market leader. According to Machado, only 4% of women consider themselves to be beautiful, and Dove are on a mission to change the way women feel about themselves, not just which products they buy. He said, ‘Causing a positive social impact is part of our business model'. Hear hear. 

Ivan Poupryev, Principal Research Scientist at Disney Research, blew the audience’s minds by demonstrating how virtually anything can be made interactive. He spoke about using visual haptics such as touch and sound to tell engaging stories – think musical plants and touch sensitive water. We're pretty excited to see this technology take off. 

Toby Shapshak of Stuff Magazine argued that Africa is where the biggest innovation is happening today (and hilariously compared Amazon's delivery drones to 'clay pigeon shooting for the digital age'). Kenneth Cukier, data editor of The Economist parsed the immense topic of Big Data, and Rob Newlan of Facebook Creative Shop spoke about beards and the need to prioritise people over pixels in the age of users' finely tuned 'bullshit radars'. Eoghan Crawford, Senior Brand Manager of Cadbury Dairy Milk, talked about how it pays to be non-linear and – something we can certainly identify with here in our independent W+K global network – the importance of knowledge sharing amongst networks. 

One of the highlights of the day was a lunchtime session from entrepreneur Richard Noble, the man behind the ambitious Bloodhound SSC project – a bid to build the world’s first 1000mph car. Noble talked about the challenges facing such an ambitious project, from sourcing a jet engine to manually clearing loose stones from 12km of desert track, crowdsourcing innovation and the problem with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) industries in Britain today. We were a little stunned to learn that only 10% of women are professional engineers, and 50% of state schools have no girls taking A level physics. It makes advertising look positively advanced in comparison when it comes to equality. The good news is that the Bloodhound team are heavily involved in education, hoping to inspire the same interest in sciences as the golden age of manned space programme did. Read more about their efforts here: www.bloodhoundssc.com/education

A key theme of the day was ‘purpose’. Between Lifebuoy soaps’ adoption of an Indian village to Toyota’s relief efforts during Hurrcane Sandy, it's clear that the PR and advertising industries need to work harder to reach beyond attention-grabbing stunts and make a positive impact in the real world. Privacy was another recurring theme, and the willingness of consumers to trade their privacy for a more personalised experience from brands. This brings back the big question of what price consumers put on access to their data – would they give up their geolocation in exchange for a discount at nearby retail outlets? And if so, how big a discount will they exchange it for? 

A few more surprising things we learned during the day:

• 70% of all snapchat users are female 

• 'digital natives' switch between devices 27 times per hour

• Africa is not 'mobile-first', it’s mobile only

• things you read in Stuff Magazine and/or The Economist are definitely, positively, 100% almost always true

A few interesting tech companies and startups also exhibited at Kings Place during the event. Here’s Paulo, putting everything he's learned whilst running the Honda account into practice whilst racing The Stig (with the help of everyone's favourite new toy, the Oculus Rift):

We were rather happy to see a familiar set of hooves in the Most Contagious report's advertising category too:

If like us, you like to while away a Sunday morning leafing through the newspaper supplements, you may have spotted our latest Lurpak work nestled amongst the pages last weekend.

Our new print campaign announces the arrival of Slow Churned butter, the latest addition to the Lurpak product line, and celebrates the concept of truly savouring and embracing indulgent, 'this is the life' culinary moments.

Made from the finest quality cream, Lurpak® Slow Churned butter is churned in small batches over several hours to create a fuller rich and creamy flavour. It’s a natural culinary addition to those special down-time moments. 

The print campaign, shot by photographer Joss McKinley, captures the simple pleasure of slowing down and taking the time to indulge in tranquil moments. The soft-spoken tone of voice and pared back photographic style are a departure from the brand’s previous bold advertising imagery, letting the simple beauty of a peaceful moment shine through in an arrangement of ingredients that make up a perfect pause – crusty bread, coffee and Lurpak® Slow Churned butter. 

The launch is supported by a national print, social, digital and PR campaign, including an exclusive range of recipes that showcase the unique taste of Lurpak® Slow Churned by renowned French author, chef and baking supremo Richard Bertinet.