Google Firestarters

Google Firestarters is an ongoing series of conversations, talks and provocations designed for the planning, advertising and media community hosted by Think with Google and curated by me, Neil Perkin. They are designed to feature some of the best thinking in the industry and to facilitate debate around some of the more interesting areas of challenge and opportunity. From 2011–2020 we ran them as a quarterly series of live events but then pivoted these to a series of video and podcast conversations with some of the most interested and interesting people in our industry. This page acts as a hub for all the content related to Google Firestarters. You can listen to/ watch our most recent conversations over on the Firestarters YouTube playlist and listen/subscribe to the podcast via the links to your favourite platform here. Enjoy.

And here are the write ups for the live events that we ran:

Google Firestarters 33: Thinking Differently

Google Firestarters 32: AI and Algorithms, Efficiency and Effectiveness

Google Firestarters 31: Ever Changing Marketing

Google Firestarters 30: The Brilliance and Brutalisation of Insight

Google Firestarters 20th Anniversary: Planning and Performance

Google Firestarters 28: Learning From The Innovators

Google Firestarters 27 – Crossing the River By Feeling the Stones

Google Firestarters 26: Change and Complexity

Google Firestarters 25: Patterns of Behaviour

Google Firestarters 24: Deciphering Digital Transformation

Google Firestarters 23: The Future Strategist/Planner 

Google Firestarters 22: The Power and Perils of Fast in Planning

Google Firestarters 21: The Future of Digital Advertising

Google Firestarters 20: AI (Artificial Intelligence) or IA (Intelligence Augmentation)?

Google Firestarters 19: Consultants, Customer Experience and Convergence

Google Firestarters 18: Mobile UX is Eating the World

Google Firestarters 17: Content Marketing and Complexity

Google Firestarters 16: The Magnificent Seven

Google Firestarters 15: How to Think Differently About Advertising

Google Firestarters 14: Big Data or Big Mistake?

Google Firestarters 13: Agencies and Product Innovation

Google Firestarters 12: Designing for the Future

Google Firestarters 11: The Strategy is Delivery

Google Firestarters 10: Planning For Good

Google Firestarters 9 (Curated by Squared Alumni): Creativity is Not a Department

Google Firestarters 8: The Agency Innovation Conundrum

Google Firestarters 7: Remix Culture

Google Firestarters 6: Digital Storytelling and Video

Google Firestarters 5: Cory Doctorow – The Coming War on General Computation

Google Firestarters 3: The New Operating System for Agencies

Google Firestarters 4: Entrepreneurship

Google Firestarters 2: Design Thinking in Planning

Google Firestarters 1: Agile Planning

And we have also extended out the Firestarters franchise and run specific events for the performance and search marketing community:

Google Performance Firestarters: Secrets of Data Management

Google Performance Firestarters: Secrets of Growth

Google Performance Firestarters: The Future of Search

Google Performance Firestarters: Is Your Mobile Site Losing You Money?

Google Performance Firestarters: Will Last Click Attribution Ever Die?

Google Performance Firestarters: Performance vs Brand Marketing

Google Performance Firestarters: Marketing in a Post-Mobile World

Google Performance Firestarters: The Future of Programmatic

Google Performance Firestarters: The Future of Performance Marketing Agencies

Google Performance Firestarters: The Power of Feeds 

Google Performance Firestarters: Real-time Creative

Google Performance Firestarters: The Profit-Driven Marketer

Google Performance Firestarters: Data

Google Search Firestarters: Search Marketing That Wins Awards

Google Search Firestarters: The Mobile Future

Google SearchFirestarters: Attribution

…and we also ran a couple of Google Firestarters events in New York:

Google Firestarters NYC 2: Creativity in a Constrained World

Google Firestarters NYC: The New Operating System for Agencies

…in Cannes:

Google Firestarters: The New Culture Makers

…and in Sydney, Melbourne and Auckland:

Google Firestarters Australia – Adapting Strategy for an Adaptive Age

Google Firestarters Auckland and Sydney – Digital Storytelling

…and we have also run one in Austin during SWSWi:

Google Firestarters Austin: Engineering Strategy