The Account Planning Group launched the Battle of Big Thinking last year for the first time because Malcolm White, its current chair, was fed up with half empty conferences, speakers with time to fill and CVs to finagle into their spiel, and programmes which meandered to a close without resolution.

So the APG take on Fight Club hit us for the first time in October last year, billed as a very different kind of event. There were 20 speakers instead of half a dozen, each with