The rapidly growing consumption of short-form content on social platforms caused Branded Content advertising budgets to skyrocket by 34% in 2018, making the total addressable market approximately $23B. Brands are discovering that the secret sauce is leveraging Publisher and Creator 1st party data and authenticity for the distribution of Social Branded Content. Learn how media companies are evolving their strategies and approach to help marketers boost relevancy, reach, and revenue.

Cut through the noise with tailored messaging at moments that matter. Leverage customer insights to identify opportune moments to deliver unique, customized experiences.

• What opportunities are there to deliver personalized messaging?
• Think small - translate larger brand narrative into specific messaging for smaller targeted.

Creative is no longer about creating commercials. Today’s brands need to tell engaging and emotive stories, that connect their brand to multiple audiences. In essence they need to think like a publisher and not a marketer. Learn how the modern marketer can create and distribute engaging content on an enterprise scale just like a publisher.

• Find or create engaging stories that are authentic to your product and brand.
• Embed brand identity into every piece of content.
• Break through the noise with content that connects, not just sells.

Emotions play an important role in advertising, from impacting brand affinity to driving consumer action: but measuring emotions has historically been an elusive and biased affair. Breaking the mould of traditional research, neuroscience has let us tap into the source and re-examine emotion as a quantifiable aspect of storytelling in advertising.

Learn how neuroscience informed one company’s shift from explanatory messaging to emotional storytelling, and how it would ultimately redefine its brand.

Two things will help make you successful with your digital marketing; a well-defined customer journey and a strategy that moves your prospects through each stage of the journey. Yet study after study indicate that most organizations do not have a documented content or digital marketing strategy or a well-defined customer journey. There is a strong correlation between not having a written strategy and failing at digital marketing. And, not aligning that strategy with your customer journey leaves a lot of opportunity on the table. This session will hone in on the importance of the Customer Journey – Awareness, Consideration, Decision and Advocacy. And, will give you the tools you need to start the process of creating a strategy, based on that customer journey, for your organization.

In this session we unpack the ‘fake news’ to explore what it really is, what it means for brands and their marketing teams, why it’s a concern and what you can do about it.

They may be crying at Cannes, but just how engaging was that tear jerking creative? How much revenue did it generate? And what affect did it have on your overall brand? Sometimes we need to know the hard numbers behind an emotional experience. Learn how to marry an imaginative mindset with a disciplined analytical one, to drive great storytelling and even better results.

• Key metrics and strategies for measuring success and engagement.
• Develop a comprehensive picture of storytelling returns.
• Use data to inspire future campaigns.

Group Nine Media is home to category-leading brands (NowThis, The Dodo, Thrillist, and Seeker) across multiple editorial categories, and reaches nearly 75% of Millennials ages 18-34 each month, primarily via mobile-first video. Much of the company’s video success is driven by a thorough insights process that focuses on creative detail, audience-specific content, and relying on the metrics that really matter. Hear from Bobby LaCivita, VP of Research and Measurement at Group Nine on how the company leverages TV-quality, mobile video to capture viewers' habitual attention.

For any brand or organization, content means something different, whether it is because every brand has its own set of stories to tell, or because every brand's customers are unique and rapidly changing, or in many cases, both. So it comes as no surprise that content for these changing customers, must also evolve. Brands understand the importance of strategic content and who should be creating it, it is now a matter of what the next iteration of content looks like. Hear from Paige Winburn, Global Head of Content Strategy, MetLife, on understanding ways to keep up with your evolving customer base and how to incorporate data and insights to develop a more customer-centric approach to content. She'll talk about the ways we can be smarter about storytelling, talking to customers, understanding the customer journey, and how personalizing content will manifest itself in the next few years.

The consumer demands of a restaurant to be considered for a meal is rapidly changing with accessibility and a digital first mind set at the forefront of creating loyalty. How is the 67 year old Church’s Chicken brand meeting these changing consumer behaviors with food on demand to stay relevant and drive new revenue.

Influencer marketing is great way to both amplify your reach and build brand relevancy but finding a charismatic or informative influencer isn’t enough to be successful. Ensure you are reaching the right demographics with a strategy driven by data and grounded in audience insight.

• Analyze audiences to identify influencers with the right balance of reach and relevancy for your brand.
• Influencer coaching – strategies to get the most out of the influencers you work with.

CMOs know Brand contributes significantly to the bottom line. Most, however, can’t prove it because attribution is a team sport and it has been impossible to credibly integrate marketing and non-marketing data. See how Brand Economics can demonstrate the undeniable link between brand and financial performance. Forget Marketing ROI. Think Brand ROI.

Brand Economics explains how typical brand measurement fails; how to integrate brand and organizational performance metrics; how to prove the financial outcome of a strategy; how to quantify whether business units enhance or impair brand’s revenue performance, and more.

For CMOs fighting to prove brand’s financial impact, Brand Economics is the ultimate weapon.

According to a MIT study, 90 percent of information transmitted to our brain is visual. In fact, the human brain processes images in just 13 milliseconds, which is 60,000 times faster than text. Since we are visual by nature, shouldn’t we be using this skill to understand emotion? Fast, instinctive and emotional feelings have the greatest impact on consumer behavior. Understanding people at this level gives you direction on how to forge a closer connection with your customers.

Todd Trautz, Chief Innovation Officer at global insights company, Maru/Matchbox, will share his latest thinking on the importance of building connections with consumers on an emotional level. He will showcase a patented visual semiotics methodology that helps understand:

• How an audience perceives your brand now and what it could be in the future.
• How your brand compares to key competitors.
• What your emotional signature says about your brand.

Following a traditional, cookie-cutter marketing approach is the best way for a brand to get left behind. Take a deep dive into the comprehensive, award-winning marketing effort to launch the rebranding of JennAir, a campaign that revolutionized the appliance category. Learn how to bring progress to the forefront of your own organization’s marketing efforts. The session will focus on:

• Brand Leadership (Bound By Nothing™) — A brand campaign that spurred a category revolution
• Product Leadership — Driving an organization forward without compromising values
• Experiential Shopping — Strategically defying convention to inspire an industry
• Digital Integration – Elevate customer experiences through seamless connectivity and personalization

Your consumer wants your brand to take a position to have a purpose. As many as 55% of consumers are willing to pay more to a brand that aligns with their beliefs. It doesn’t need to be Colin Kaepernick controversial, but your brand purpose and values need to be communicated authentically through everything you do.

• Utilize customer insights to craft a simple, shareable narrative.
• Connect your customers with something they believe in. Be the conduit between customers and cause.

More than 270B emails are sent each day. Gmail recently added support for dynamic content within email by using the fast and secure AMP framework, enabling emails to provide more engaging, interactive and actionable user experiences. AMP Email is a new innovation that allows email senders to create emails that deliver real-time information and allow consumers to take interactive actions directly within the email. Join Jon, a PM from Gmail, to learn how you can engage your audiences in a new way and about how major brands have already seen a 100% increase in clicks using this technology.