Of course, everyone there will, without exception, say that it really is frivolous, the awards are meaningless (unless you win one) and insinuate that they are attending purely in an ironic way. Yet still they go.

I often wonder if the waste management and remediation industry behaves in a similar fashion. It is, after all, worth almost exactly the same as advertising to the economy – around $150 billion - so it is has similar impact on the population. A greater one if you consider the impact of them not doing their jobs and a copywriter not writing a direct mail pack.

Then again, they are probably more interested in actually shifting shit than rewarding it.

With this momentous step we are now fully equipped to take on the giant networks at their own game. Martin Sorrell – you will kick sand in our face at the Agency Big Wig Summer BBQ no more. Watch out Bruce Crawford of Omnicom: we now have a mere 724 fewer offices than you. And are you listening Vincente Bollore of Havas? Because we’ve just doubled our size, have you?

Big is plodding. Big runs at the speed of its slowest employees. Big is hard to maneuver. The economies of scale that big used to command are supplanted by the need for nimbleness and the ability to constantly re-adapt and re-focus. The way forward for the economy is based on millions of small businesses built to do specific tasks, not on a few big business that promises to do them all.

One can see a parallel in the production of technology itself. In the early 90s, software began to be built with a method called object oriented programming. Developers created individual modules that served a particular purpose – like, say a calculation function. These modules could then be joined to others to create a program: a new app was really just a bunch of pre-existing objects.

We already see businesses operating in this way: Google allows companies to port their map function to a plethora of devices. PayPal offers an easy way to introduce e-commerce to your site. Even on a Facebook page consumers can add functionality by introducing weather forecasts or show times. And outsourcing has been standard practice in the manufacturing industry for years.

This also provides a much-needed financial model for online businesses, too. After all, even though entrepreneurs are unable to charge consumers anything for their online services, someone, somewhere has to make money on something. In the object-oriented economy, new companies can be built by paying for and bundling the services created by a multitude of small existing ones.

Small is not only beautiful, it’s profitable. Big is neither.

Today a brand is the collaboration of a company and its consumers. It belongs to both in equal parts. The more you can do to foster that collaboration, the more successful you’ll be.