Ad Week takeaway: CMOs bullish on brand passionates

My takeaway for today from Advertising Week, based 100% on the event I attended — a roundtable of CMOs and top marketers from Best Buy, Chipotle, GE, Yahoo and IBM, organized by Fast Company:

CMOs still believe in the power of advertising (as Beth Comstock of GE said: “It works. We see it.”)…

… but they are defining advertising very broadly (it’s an eco-system, not a :30 spot)…

… and most impressive to me, very passionate on the subject of brand passionates…

… Barry Judge of Best Buy talked about their Twelpforce…

… And also about opening up a channel so all 150,000 Best Buy employees can chime in on marketing, many of them (via a widget) from the store floor…

… Beth Comstock of GE talked about its Open Innovation Forum, which has generated 3,000 ideas from 100s of countries…

… Mark Crumpacker of Chipotle talked about its amazing focus on listening to customers and enlisting brand passionates for a CSR initiative…

… Ben Edwards of IBM talked about IBM’s Smarter Planet initiative and its campaign to build the world’s largest supercomputer by enlisting 2M people in peopleforasmarterplanet.com…

… and Elisa Steele of Yahoo talked about investing in local communities through random acts of kindness that in turn get people engaged in Yahoo.