The conference engaged marketing professionals in rich discussion about the convergence of technology and media and its implications for modern business

After the CMO summit on Thursday, the main part of the conference began with Marty Homlish, Global Chief Marketing Officer, SAP, accepting the 2008 BRITE Jury Award for Big Thinker. Here were a few sound bites from his acceptance speech that struck me:

Marty said when SAP looked to “reposition the company after the promise of dot com,” the first step he and his colleagues took was to “stop everything we did…Everything was disconnected.” Marty and his colleagues knew, “this thing called the internet is actually pretty powerful… it requires that you have one truth, that you exceed expectations… Our big idea was: tell the truth… be proud of the heritage and make it very clear what value you bring to the customer.”

He went on to say that great businesses and marketers have a clear sense of how to connect product, brand and experience, to “move a product story to a brand story and a brand story to an experience story.”

I loved Marty’s speech because I think he touched on a key opportunity often missed by us as we move from one shiny new technology to another; The Web and new media is advancing our communication but at its core, it allows us to get back to basic pursuits of human and honest connection.

Other sound bites and concepts that struck me during the day were:

“Brand is the consumer’s view of the product…By having a mutual respect, you can create the brand way before people get to the shop to buy it…Brand is a place you prefer to be… if Nike was a country, a lot of people would move there…Find out what’s important to people and build that place.” Mike Hemignway, Global Managing Director, Ogilvy

We have “more opportunity to make consumption part of a community and public rather than private.” Paul Ingram, Kravis Professor of Business, Columbia

We have an opportunity to cut through the noise and flash and create “simple, relevant experiences.” Banz Ledi, Founder and General Manageer of Spotme.

The future is already here; It’s just not evenly distributed…” and “…Dove should take an ad out in a fashion magazine like Vogue and say, “this magazine is a lie.” Craig Newmark, Founder of Craigslist

“Marketing as we knew it at P&G was obsolete. We needed to think expansively about innovation. After five years, innovative ideas are obsolete.” Mark Peterson, Director of External Business Development at P&G. Mark went on to discuss a key and radical opportunity to “cooperate with competitors” to serve consumer needs and drive innovation.

Paal Smith-Meyer, head of the New Business Group at LEGO, described a new model for customer co-creation of products. He said LEGO’s development model went from “LEGO developed & LEGO published, to LEGO co-developed with customers & LEGO published, to User developed & LEGO published and finally to a model of “user enterprise & LEGO partnership.”

Cisco has created an internal wiki called I-Zone to drive “venture capital- like growth and business development.” David Hsieh, Senior Director, Solutinos Markting for Cisco Systems’ Emerging Technologies Group

Hsieh and the “Open Source Models of Innovation” session panelists described the need for the development of a program that incentivizes internal innovation.

I recorded the rest of the key sound bites that struck me on my Twitter feed here.

During the second day of the conference, I used my new Flip Video to record two really great sessions. The audio and video quality isn’t great because of my seat in the audience and my camera skills, but there is rich discussion here I’d recommend you watch.

The first is a session on, “Building Brands in Interactive Media: Engagement and ROI in Gaming, Mobile, and the Web” with Microsoft Massive’s Carol Koh Evans, Quattro Wireless’s Jeremy Arnon, Molecular’s Yuval Zukerman and moderator, Bernd H. Schmitt.

The second session focuses on “TV 2.0, Online Video, and the Future of User-Generated Content” with Pulver Media, Pulver TV and VON’s Jeff Pulver, Bolt.com’s Aaron Cohen, Magnify.net’s Steve Rosenbaum, EepyBird.com’s Stephen Voltz and moderator Yaron Samid.

There were so many ideas buzzing around the sessions at BRITE. I tried to capture most key parts of the discussion but I’d recommend checking out the other bloggers’ BRITE posts for a full perspective.

You can also check out the BRITE Flickr group here.