Traditional brand teams don't work in today's age. We live in a world where opportunities come without notice and brands have to compete with everything from an egg on Instagram to a 5-year-old YouTuber for attention. So, yeah...your traditional model needs an upgrade.

Leo Morejon (known for his work on Oreo and building large teams) will share an overview of what your team needs to look like today and most importantly why it needs to look different than ever before.

(Read Less)

One of the most common marketing investments is content marketing, and for good reason: Content is the currency of the internet, and it can find, attract, warm and convert prospects for all types of businesses. But as content marketing grows in marketer popularity, so do consumers’ expectations for the value that it drives in their lives. Through our research, we’ve found that projects borne from a commitment to audience service tend to develop stronger audience relationships and bring more value back to the organizations that fund them. Simply put, marketers who invest in editorial programs create assets that can develop into sub-brands that drive actual business value. In this session, we’ll show the attendees how to get started.

Attendees will learn:

• How to build the business case among your executive team
• How to build a unique editorial strategy for your brand
• How to create repeatable content types that drive ongoing value back to your business
• Lessons from major brand case studies, including MGM, Apple Leisure Group and Northwell Health

(Read Less)

Brands across industries are investing more in influencer marketing. What are the most strategic ways to ensure that time and money pays off for the long haul? Bette Ann Schlossberg, Director of Influencer Marketing for Lyft, and Mae Karwowski, Founder & CEO of Obviously, have years of experience in influencer marketing. During this fireside chat, they’ll talk about why influencer marketing is a must, the best practices for building great and authentic relationships with influencers, and why a network is essential for long-term success.

Bette Ann and Mae will discuss:

• Lyft's multi-tiered strategy (Nano/Micro, Mid-Tier, and Macro influencers)
• Lyft’s approach to developing strategic campaigns around cultural events (like SXSW and Coachella)
• Why influencer marketing and having strong relationships with influencers is effective across brand goals, from event activations to new product launches

(Read Less)

Landscape contractors and golf course superintendents can be some of the most notoriously difficult audiences to find, reach and engage on social media. There are very few usable interests that apply only these audiences that can also be used for social media targeting. And once you do figure out how to reach them, the threshold for relevant content is extremely high – this is an audience with a low tolerance for frivolity and a lot of expertise in their field.

SiteOne Landscape Supply is the nation’s largest and only national landscape supply company with over 500 branches in the U.S. and Canada. They wanted and needed a social media presence to match. Working together with the account team at Swanson Russell, the two companies have taken a brand from scratch to one of the most engaging brands on social media in the green industry. And we did it by bringing to life what could be considered some pretty dry topics – agronomic product applications, safety, and business tips.

Attendees will walk away from this session with:

• Examples of successful social strategies for B2B companies
• Actionable tactics in audience targeting and creative execution
• Ideas for how to bring challenging topics to life on social media to engage their audience

(Read Less)

Have you ever had to create a campaign about a subject matter that might be difficult to understand? Creativity can be rough when you need to create an external campaign about a complicated topic in a B2B industry that may be of interest to clients, scientists, researchers or academics. But once the surface is scratched, it can be discovered that although the topic is complicated, it matters to just about every human and now you need to break it down and explain why.  

Leveraging the IBM 5 in 5, in this session, we will discuss how to create consumer-friendly social content from topics that may be hard to understand by a non-expert, and how to build the human connection through your social and content strategy. You will also leave this session with learnings to bring these stories to life in a holistic digital experience that is not exclusive to social but also includes web, and digital media.

(Read Less)

• How do you create an Influencer Marketing program from scratch? 
• Run fast-and-lean when resources and support are scarce? 
• Plan for the future with a scale-proof strategy designed for long term success?

In this session, Megan Conley, CEO + Founder of Social Tribe, and Ursula Ringham, Head of Global Influencer Marketing at SAP, will pull from their joint experiences as innovators and practitioners in the influencer space to guide you through the process of creating successful influencer partnerships from the ground up.

(Read Less)

Learn how to do effective crisis communications planning from someone who ran social media on the world stage with the highest stakes possible. As digital director for OFA, President Obama's political advocacy group, Caleb Gardner managed the output of @BarackObama for more than three years -- without causing any international incidents via tweet.

He'll teach you:

• Common structural problems that leave companies vulnerable
• Effective process for preventing mistakes
• How to scenario plan for crises in a social media environment on edge

(Read Less)

In today’s world, we only have between 3-6 seconds to capture someone’s attention and tell a story. What message are you trying to convey? Are you promoting the premiere date of a new TV series or cast of a movie? Are you a brand offering a new product?

It’s not enough to simply post a 60- or 30-second movie trailer or other pieces of content directly to social media. It needs to be optimized for the social platform – think format and audience. When you have six seconds to convey your message, every second counts.

Creating “snackable content”, is no longer optional in our mobile-driven world and doing it successfully is an art. Not only does this new canvas appeal to shortened attention spans, but 6-second ads have implications beyond social.

In this session, Megan Toth, Sr. Social Media Lead at NBC, discusses why it’s important to adjust your marketing strategy to cater to shrinking attention spans, overcome distractions and get noticed.

Attend this session and learn:

• The secrets to creating “thumb-stopping” short-form social media content that stands out among the noise
• How social is influencing TV, and networks are straying from their standard 30-second ad formats to create 6-second ads
• How restrictions boost creativity, as creatives are tasked with rethinking how to condense a brand story in a shorter format
• Case examples of best-in-class short-form storytelling

(Read Less)

In a social media world filled with business page after business page, there must be another way to boost brand awareness and maintain your brand’s reputation! We must take advantage of our employees’ voices and personal brands and with Employee Advocacy, this is all possible. This session, led by Katelyn Brower, Dun & Bradstreet's head of Global Social Media & Employee Advocacy, will inspire you to develop a successful Employee Advocacy program with examples from their use of LinkedIn Elevate.

• How to develop an Employee Advocacy Program
• A list of dos and don’ts
• How to measure success
• How to keep your members motivated

(Read Less)

This panel will share insights on: 

• How to centralize social media in a decentralized multilingual international organization
• Using trending conversations to increase reach and engagement
• Effective influencer outreach to amplify your message
• Effectively harnessing social to convince people to care about issues that matter
• How to do more with less to grow support in a fiercely competitive and constantly evolving digital landscape
• Strategies for ensuring a “social first” approach in organizations with a more traditional mindset

(Read Less)

In this session, we’ll bridge the world of data and creativity to show how both can live harmoniously to create a better customer experience and drive your KPIs and performance. You’ll learn how to use data (no, you don’t need to be an Excel expert) to inform your creative and copy strategy, how social intelligence can be your new best friend, and to always keep your customer at the front of everything you do. Though we can’t promise you’ll be an expert in pivot tables, you’ll walk away with a different perspective on how numbers can really be the turning point for your creative and copy efforts.

Attend this session and learn:

• Examples of successful data-driven campaigns
• The value of understanding who your audience is
• How social intelligence can help you surprise and delight your audience

(Read Less)

What happens when a brand brings on an influencer agency? Does it have to be an all or nothing scenario? Or can the two compliment each other with the same goal in mind?

In this session, Danielle Wiley, CEO of Sway Group and Colleen Cleary, PR Director at OXO will use their working relationship as a case study on how brands and agencies can and should co-exist in the space. Each presenter brings years of experience in influencer marketing to the audience - one always on the brand-side, and one always on the agency. This session is perfect for attendees that want to optimize the way they plan, activate and measure influencer programs.

Highlights include:

• Creating a Cohesive Influencer Strategy
• Recruiting and Briefing Influencers
• How to find the right target influencer and audience for brands
• Ways for brands to stay involved
• Instituting Quality Assurance and FTC Compliance
• Negotiating and Paying Influencers
• Measuring the Impact of Influencer Programs
• Post-Campaign: Getting the Most from Your Influencer Content

(Read Less)

There is a fundamental -- and critical -- disconnect between the way brands try to engage their audience and the way their audience wants to be engaged.

As per a recent Business Wire report:⁣

• Consumers are 2.4x more likely to say user-generated content (UGC) is more authentic than branded content.⁣
• Marketers are 2.1x more likely to say branded content is more authentic than UGC⁣.

See the problem? If we want to make a more genuine connection, marketers need to do a better job of listening to their audience.

If you're leveraging the same tactics from 2018 that you did in 2019, you're in trouble. And things aren't looking any better for 2020 either.

So what can we do? During this workshop, we'll address the critical questions that must be answered in order for your audience to trust and engage with you. Leveraging best practices from design thinking, and insights gained from numerous interviews with top-performing brands, you'll walk away with a launch plan that will revolutionize your online marketing activities. You'll also discover best practices for audience research, which can be leveraged for marketing as well as product innovation.

(Read Less)

Yassss…we know content is King/Queen and YAAASSS…we know that video is the future of social. While those best practices are critical to success for brands, we also need to know how to show this success in a meaningful way to our leadership team. Data, metrics, and tools come together as critical ways to tell a story on how our work in the social media space is affecting ROI for organizations. 

In this talk, you can expect to learn the following:

• Real examples of using data to inform what works/what doesn't
• How to use data to help redefine your social strategy
• Free & not-free tools you can use, depending on your budget
• How data can increase your budget for social

(Read Less)

Traditional marketing has always has the challenge of trying to prove their spend on delivered results and let's be realistic, marketing as a whole has a trust problem. But your company has the assets to overcome this in your employees.

In this session, Glenn Gaudet, CEO and Founder of the Employee Advocacy solution GaggleAMP, will delve into how employee advocacy can amplify relationships. He'll show how an effective campaign can not only increase brand awareness, but demonstrate how Employee Advocacy is a component of an overall marketing strategy, not just a stand-alone project. Leveraging Employee Advocacy not only has a lasting impact on web traffic and lead flow, but also the ROI of your marketing campaigns.

(Read Less)

Many brands try to break through in social using humor. However, when it's not grounded in brand strategy and consumer insights, jokes and engagement can fall flat. In this session, you’ll learn about how the Jack Link’s brand found its comedic sweet spot that has led to double-digit engagement growth and organic fan acquisition.

In this session, you’ll learn the steps to take in identifying your brand’s funny bone and how to make your audience LOL.

Takeaways include:

• The importance of a consumer-centric approach
• How to effectively create a consistent brand voice and tone
• How to get scrappy, not crappy, content

(Read Less)

What are the most important social media products to launch this year? Learn the latest developments from the major social platforms while also getting a taste of which other platforms released products that marketers need to know about. Discover examples from pioneering brands, and come away with ideas that you'll be eager to try out yourself. 

(Read Less)

Social media channels are rapidly becoming media companies that are focusing on a “pay to play” principle. This means developing a paid social media strategy is extremely important. What does that mean for organic content?

In this session, Gaetan will explore:

• When you should be using an organic strategy to boost your paid efforts
• The importance of organically inserting your company and thought-leadership in the right conversations your target audience is paying attention
• Thoughts on the question everyone is asking: “Is organic social media execution dead?”

(Read Less)

For decades, good marketing was good marketing – whether or not the company behind the marketing had a soul. But GenZ is changing the game for brands, and this next generation of consumers is now every marketer’s top priority. GenZ wants brands to stand for something, even if it’s controversial. And 78% of them are willing to change their purchase decisions accordingly. And while brands value corporate responsibility, they’re missing the mark on reaching, engaging, and activating young people around their brand purpose.

In this session, you’ll learn how DoSomething.org (the largest org for young people and social good) infuses purpose into marketing in a way that activates millions of GenZers to support companies and causes by reaching them where they are. Mary Noel will share how the insights from activating DoSomething.org’s 5 million members for good now helps other brands build relationships with GenZ based on shared values. In this new era of brand loyalty, we’ll separate fact from fiction and ensure you have the tools to effectively engage a new generation.

Attend this session and learn:

• Why ‘purpose’ is more than a trend (and why does it matter?)
• How brands build authentic, purpose-driven engagement with GenZ consumers
• The data-backed motivational triggers that inspire young people to care about a particular brand, cause, or social issue
• What brand leaders should change about their approaches to connecting with a younger generation

(Read Less)

The social Story format has gained significant traction in recent years and continues to dominate consumer attention. The format incepted on Snapchat and has since been heavily adopted by competing platforms to increase usage. Trevor will unpack why Stories are winning with consumers, and how your brand can win over the consumers being sought.

In this session, Trevor will discuss:

• The evolution of Stories and where the format is headed from both a consumer and branded standpoint
• Best-in-class brand examples and nuances between differing platforms
• How to create a winning Story for your brand and the proper platforms to use

(Read Less)

Overwhelmed about the intricacies of Facebook targeting? Why do advertisers try to outsmart Facebook when they can let the platform do what it was made to do? When marketing campaigns are set to unrealistic targeting parameters, campaigns can tank and your metrics will suffer. This session will focus on your overall Facebook strategy, on best practices for the platform and on how to balance the need for scalable targeting with your client’s reporting expectations. Hear from Corey Teich at social and digital agency GLOW on how to maximize scalable results without getting in your own way.

Key Takeaways:

• Learn the ins and outs of the platform's greatest strengths.
• See examples of when simplified targeting leads to impressive results.
• How to educate the brand decision-makers (your client) on what Facebook can and cannot do.

(Read Less)

Every brand can have a niche in the social media space by knowing exactly who you’re targeting and how to talk to them. Content that resonates, is relevant, and provides values will generate the most engagement and in turn, grow interest in your brand. Instead of cold calling via social media, you can extend your brand guardrails outside of being completely product-driven. Leveraging brand traits, partnerships, history, and stories are entry points to have authentic conversations with current and prospective consumers. Nationwide has transformed its social business proposition to become a more culturally relevant brand that can interact with people and trends through defined permissions. Here’s how we did it.

Takeaways:

• How to prepare for and build a brand persona
• Leveraging a persona to foster engagement
• Growing your audience through relevance and connections

(Read Less)

Instagram has played a crucial role in the growth of S’well. In addition to S’well posting on Instagram itself, S’well customers often post pictures of their S’well bottle in their personal Instagram feeds. As a result, the brand has more than 261,000 Instagram followers. What really moved the needle for S’well however was when the brand integrated its Instagram presence with its e-commerce site. Now, S’well’s Instagram gallery takes users right to the product page of its website, making Instagram a revenue-driver, and user-generated photos of S’well bottles are highlighted on the brand’s site into addition to its social properties. S'well has seen an 8x in conversions and 4x increase in time on site from visitors interacting with user-generated content. 

In this session, Apu and Josh will discuss: 
• How to identify and leverage social influencers – especially micro-influencers (those with smaller followings) 
• How to fully leverage user-generated on platforms like Instagram to a brand’s website to email 
• How image-based marketing is helping consumers discover new products

(Read Less)

As communications experts, we know that paid media is vital to yielding ROI from your social strategy. Yet, this can get tricky. Social content marketing can take a longer time to show return, while fast-acting tactics like influencer marketing can often limit sales to a per post basis. Ryneska cuts through the noise with accessible, easy-to-execute methods to help level set and optimize paid performance. This session will provide solid value for all maturity levels in the social media space.

(Read Less)

Do you struggle to create thumb-stopping content? Do you have a limited budget or resources to generate high-quality and engaging content? After this inspiring, example-filled, keynote from Tyler Anderson, you'll leave with a step-by-step checklist to get your customers to create endless amounts of content for your brand or business. You'll discover why content created by your customers is so impactful, how to get your customers to create content that influences purchasing decisions, how to leverage user-generated content to fuel your marketing, and much more. 

(Read Less)