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Joe from airbnb shows us his real estate in NYC

Having spent a few hours at the excellent PSFK Conference on Friday, I couldn't help but be struck by the observation that we have new heroes in our business that are different to the heroes of old.

Rewind back 10 years and imagine yourself at the typical branding/marketing conference; there would be a bunch of talking heads taking credit for the things they had reportedly done.

There would be brand managers presenting case studies of how their campaign carved out a dominant share of the market and creative directors showing TV spots to wild acclaim.

At PSFK's conference, the audience, average age 26.2, had no interest in hearing such things.

They were looking for something else, they wanted the "Zuckerberg Mythology"; the story of the a couple of guys or girls working away at something they called their own and achieving business success.

This is why they were enthralled by the likes of Kickstarter, Thrillist and airbnb who all brought their personal stories to the crowd.

Instead of claiming they were geniuses and had all the answers, they talked about humility and perseverance in this face of some tough challenges and how their creativity helped them through it.

The airbnb story was the one that stood out because it had such a nice cadence to it and you could easily see yourself in these guy’s shoes.

Two industrial designers knowing they wanted to be entrepreneurs acted too fast and quit their jobs with no idea to go to. Desperate for a source of cash to pay their rent, they looked at the available floor space in their apartment and realized it could be turned into accommodation. Conveniently, the ISDA conference was coming to SF and the city's hotels were sold out. As a service, the guys told the leading design blogs about their space and that got coverage and their first three customers.

As the business developed, they looked for ways to attract attention- including the Democratic National Convention, another event in a town with sold-out hotels. Here they created their own cereal brand as a promotion- Obama O's were a big hit and became a national news story.

The story continues onto today where they now have expanded the concept beyond the airbed, to become what they describe as "The Ebay of available space".

The airbnb story sounds like a movie pitch, no wonder these twentysomethings want to create their own stories

These digital entrepreneurs are the new heroes.

The digital hero is living proof that the American dream is still alive, albeit faded into the background.

The most significant thing is that these stories show others that with guts, application, creativity and some skills, you can go along way and achieve something that you can be really proud of making and having been a part of.

The event made me think of just how challenging it is for Madison Avenue to compete with this kind of opportunity because today more young people would rather be Mark Zuckerberg, than Alex Bogusky 1.0, which perhaps explains why even Alex changed careers?

The ad business has got to learn from this world and it doesn’t mean encouraging people to build micro sites for clients, it’s about allowing them to access the values of the start-up; pride, teamwork, fun, creativity, accomplishment and reward.

This suggests the structure of agencies needs to change to embrace cross-departmental project teams, where all members are "creative". These teams courageously lead their clients to compelling business and communication ideas and get rewarded for doing so.

Maybe this is this work was a stepping-stone for people who could later be given the opportunity to create platforms and ideas that agencies can invest in and sell on, sharing the spoils with the teams that created them.

We have the opportunity to build an industry that attracts the best, but we’ve got to re-configure what we do and how we do it.

Maybe an ad agency needs to be an organized collection of start-ups.

Posted by Ed Cotton