My OMR takeaway: “Do you speak Animal?”

Many people are currently asking me what impressions I took away from #OMR. Of course, one highlight was the wonderful visit with our partners at Frontify (many thanks again to Anneke Matsis in that context).

And elsewhere on the exhibition grounds? It was crowded, it was loud, and somehow the sword of Damocles—Gen AI—seemed to be hanging over everyone’s heads. Especially in online marketing, the changes over the next 12 months will likely be radical.

This year again, Philipp Klöckner delivered a true tour de force with his format “Beyond the AI hype,” driving the packed audience breathlessly through his roughly 170 (yes, really!) slides. Very well-founded. Very detailed. With glimmers of hope—such as the outlook that open source will eventually prevail even in the field of AI. But also with the already familiar shockers for the industry (farewell asset production, farewell code production, bye bye to the production of pretty much everything that has been and still is value-creating).

In the end, Philipp had to pay tribute to his tightly packed schedule—time was running out, Steven Gätjen stepped from the wings into the spotlight—only 2 minutes left for 20 slides. But those were packed with substance! Curtain up for the “Science” section:

“By 2030, the number of vegetarians will double. Worldwide.”

Thanks to AI, we are already capable (see also: documentary “Talking Pigs”) of decoding the “language” of animals. In the future, this may raise a fundamental question: Do we really want to continue with the industrial processing of living beings that we can understand linguistically—beings who, through that understanding, gain a personality?

I discussed this question with a friend last week. She’s active in the animal rights movement and was rather pessimistic about the above idea: “People already turn a blind eye to the horrors in factory farms. And no one gets in there anyway. The video of a pig begging for help and going viral—it’s not going to happen.”

But what if it does happen? What if it becomes a task for all the marketing experts at #OMR to craft exactly this kind of campaign—and to spread the question far and wide:

“Do you speak Animal?”