Covering topics ranging from AI and VR to winning new business and diversity, and with every possible topic in between, the annual Vision gathering returned this week.
Staged by Bristol Media, it again brought together as many creatives as possible, tightly packed into one space to be inspired, educated and enthused about a whole host of subjects. 
This year’s event was held at Bristol University’s Anson Rooms across a single day instead of the usual two days, as in previous years.
The event kicked off with an inspiring keynote from founding director of agency TH_NK, Tarek Nseir.
He looked at the changing landscape for creative agency businesses, highlighting the incredible rate of independent agency acquisition in the last 10 years – with only one independent agency left from the top 50 of 10 years ago.
The threat of management consultancy firms is also on the horizon and Nseir looked at the impact and the likely effects on indie businesses when competing against the monolithic firms such as Accenture and McKinsey.
His outtake was that independent agencies need to ‘fiercely collaborate’ and preserve creativity from being diluted by processes at all costs.
Anna Rafferty, BBC Worldwide’s global director of digital marketing, showcased the BBC’s approach to curating and promoting its TV content to online audiences, identifying different approaches which need to be adopted in order to capture and then hold the attention of online audiences.
Blair Enns, new business guru and author of several business books including the best-selling Win Without Pitching, described his ‘five constraints’ when growing businesses with practical ‘what to do’ advice including dumping your exit plan; sticking to one-page proposals and only having ten clients.
Other subjects covered included ‘AI for beginners’, a discussion on diversity in the creative sector and the need to take action.
One of the many highlights of the day was an awe-inspiring talk from 21-year-old Timothy Armoo, founder of Fanbytes and the ‘advertainment’ concept which helps major global brands reach youth and digital savvy audiences using anything but traditional style advertising.
The day closed with a networking supper punctuated with chatter and enthusiasm for so many of the topics discussed.
A day out of the office can sometimes be hard to justify but Vision has certainly secured its place as a must-go-to event in the South West creative calendar.
