How do bad adverts make it to air, the three keys to social media success and why DJs make the best marketers and a racing driver coming off track were all featured at a madcap speaking event last night.

Sixteen speakers took to the stage at Ignite Sydney speaking for five minutes each on topics based around the future of advertising. Videos from the night will be up here on Friday.

Former Fairfax social media head and Twitter Australia senior account executive Marie Sornin said she’s looking forward to the reaction should a Justin Bieber sex tape ever hit the network, noting the three things which get celebs big followings are sex, drugs and rock and roll.

But for brands the watchwords are:

Entertainment: “Put something funny and unusual out there and people will share it.”

Value: “Create something that is so great and gives so much to the audience they actually want to share it.”

Utility: “Make your audience’s life easy, and they will thank you for it.”

Initiative’s Rob Pyne looked at just exactly how do bad adverts get picked? After all, companies are spending a lot of money to agencies to create them.

He pointed to four villains, people using gut feel – doing something because it just feels right; playing devil’s advocate – taking opposing views for the sake of it and digging your heels in;  man – solving the wrong problem; Carol Beer – the character from Little Britain who says “Computer says no”, an allegory for assuming data is the be all and end all for making decisions.

“You have to control the process. As leaders of decision making you have to be clear on what the objectives are,” said Pyne. Look for best and worst case scenarios together, listen to what the problems are, and “don’t get trapped in a world of bad decisions”.

Jonathan Crossfield told the audience of marketers they should be looking at nightclubs and DJs as the ultimate example of content marketing.

While a club’s business model is based around selling drinks people don’t come for the beer on sale, but for the type of music that’s being played. Learn from this by looking at your crowd and see what’s engaging them in your content and “provide them with the content they want”.

And always take requests.

Finally a special mention to Andrew Clarke, a part-time racing driver who relies on sponsorship to take part in his passion, and full-time content director at The Monkeys.

He was trying to tell the advertising-based audience why they should engage more with sponsorships, as “they bring brands and consumers together where they are most engaged”.