Ah it all seems so far away it almost feels that were it not for my unpacked bag it may have never really happened. So, after the delights of last week’s imaginatively titled ‘CJ at the A4U Expo Part 1′ here is the second installment. I believe I left you halfway through Tuesday, just before David Harding from Argos and Daniel Powel from Commission Junction did their session on Managing Success in a Downturn.

Blessedly for the sake of my feet, 5.30pm eventually came around which meant that we pretty much had to start drinking again. We hopped back to the hotel and then out on the town taking the extended CJ family out for a massive and lovely Indonesian Feast (the below image only represents the drinking aspect of the meal and doesn’t, if I’m honest, look that impressive). I refer you to this if you wish to witness the ghastly amount of food Jason ordered for us all.

After watching IHG’s Peter Norris (a Chelsea fan) literally squirming in his seat for half an hour, we took pity on him and went to watch the football. I am no expert on this but if you want my opinion it was a poor match and if it hadn’t been for the amateur dramatics on the pitch I would have found it very dull indeed (a career in sports writing??).

We then followed the crowd to the official Breakout Party which was at Escape. Wow – that was an odd place. For starters it is quite weird networking with the affiliate marketing industry at large to banging dance music. It is even weirder when you have random guys on podiums dressed in flourescent orange builders jackets experimenting in contemporary dance. It was incredible, it really was. I didn’t take any photos of the dancers so you will just have to trust me on this. A good, bizarre night was had!

Wednesday

Back to the RAI for more. You could tell it had been a late one from the eerie silence in the exhibition centre which didn’t really get busy until about 11am. The conference sessions were apparently still packed though.

Commission Junction had two speaker sessions that day: Cheryl was running a session called ‘Internationally Managing your Campaign from a Distance’ which featured two of our clients talking about how they handle their affiliate marketing across multple regions. Lena Huang from Marriott talking about their activities in the US and the UK and Peter Norris from IHG talked about their activities across Europe. It seems from the photo that it was so popular that Lena and Peter had to sign autographs afterwards.

Our second session was Albrecht Fisher who heads up the CJ team in Germany speaking on a panel entitled: ‘Transparency and Affiliates: Is there a benefit?’. He was speaking with representatives from Ogilvy, Kodak and Sony. This was the only session I actually managed to find time to attend and it was extremely interesting – looking at the role of transparency and communication from the aspect of advertiser, agency, affiliate and network. This is one of the hottest topics in the industry at the moment and it was very interesting to hear everyone’s perspective on it.

This was pretty close to the end of the day, the place started to quieten down as people went off to catch flights. We went outside to the newly opened ‘Urban Beach’ at the RAI centre to enjoy some beers and a BBQ.

After finding our crew for the night we headed out to central Amsterdam content in the knowledge that none of us had to man the stand/speak to vast quantities of people the next day. The town was full of party goers who were preparing for the next day’s Queen’s Day celebrations (apparently the biggest street party in the world). We all had a great night – meeting up with lots of affiliates, advertisers and agencies along the way. Upon checking my camera the next day it appears that the only photo I had taken of the night was this one (surely the sign of a good time?)

So all that is left to say is ‘thanks’. Thanks to everyone we met at the event, thanks to the CJ team for working so hard and a special big thank to all those at the A4U for yet another wonderful event. Only five months to go until the London expo

If you want any more information about any of the CJ sessions just email me at admin@cjblog.co.uk.