Of course he’ll be at the sessions, the “brain dates” and the after-parties, but if you’re walking around C2 Montréal this week, don’t be surprised to find JF Bouchard sitting in a corner somewhere scribbling away in his notebook.
While the event promises to bring thousands to the city this week to discuss commerce, creativity and how the two blend together, the co-founder and CEO of Sid Lee said it was important participants take at least an hour out every day to soak in what they’ve experienced, and think about how to use it effectively.
“You have to leave your FOMO at the door,” Bouchard, referring to “fear of missing out,” told Marketing days before C2 officially got underway. “I think it’s okay to miss out on some of the stuff that’s happening. Some of the ideas you’ll hear will prove useful and practical and you need to get them down. Otherwise your brain just goes on overdrive.”
It’s a wonder that Bouchard’s hadn’t gone into overdrive long before the conference began. While the success of C2, which is celebrating its fifth anniversary this year, has no doubt contributed to his firm’s own reputation, putting on an event of this scale while managing an international ad agency would stretch the endurance of CMOs and business leaders in any firm.
“I guess I end up working a little harder,” Bouchard admitted, “but what it gives me in terms of fulfillment is so much more than I would have otherwise. Also, we now have a full-time president for C2 (Richard St.-Pierre), so my role is less operational now and really just pushing the vision forward.”
That vision was to bring together an event that would combine elements of TED with the World Economic Forum. However as Bouchard pointed out, some of those gatherings are now decades old. “I’m surprised at how quickly we’ve gotten the scale we have. When C2 launched it was 1,500 people. Now we’re more than three times that.”
Bouchard said C2 was also, in some respects, a reflection of the Sid Lee brand, where the agency described itself as a “collective” of partners rather than a typical corporate hierarchy. “For us, C2 acts as a bit of a proof point in our belief in collaboration,” he said. “Some of our best work has always been about some kind of collaboration between our staff and those working outside.”
This year, Bouchard said he hoped C2 would not only be helpful to those pursuing a particular business objective, but an exploration of how the forces of commerce and creativity play out in society as a whole. This will require a much bigger emphasis on having those coming to the event take an active role in the sessions, a movement that is already underway. In fact, Bouchard said requests for workshops had nearly tripled.
“People won’t want to be spectators,” he said.
C2 runs through Thursday.
