AirBnB one of the world’s most valuable hotel companies – but doesn’t own hotels. Uber is one of the world’s most valuable taxi services – but doesn’t own taxis. And Facebook is one of the world’s most valuable media companies – but doesn’t create content. Powerful forces are at work in the “sharing economy” and in this panel we will focus on the Media business, how it is evolving, and the implications for marketers. It is well known that marketers have seen significant declines in organic reach on Facebook and other social channels. What’s not as widely understood is that media companies have seen significant increases in the reach for their content. Our panelists will discuss how and why that is happening, and provide ideas for how you can adapt your social strategy to capitalize on these changes.
Pre-roll is dead. Banners dead. A very small percentage of people actually click or even see your display ads anymore. So what’s next for advertising and media? Solutions like native advertising and content marketing make marketing more palatable by serving the customer’s needs, rather than banging messaging over their heads. The latest opportunity is to think of your brand as software. Everybody is so instrumented with their mobile devices nowadays, giving brands data on location, interactions, and so on. A strong, meaningful, and useful mobile presence is key. Instead of paying $1 million on a giant publisher, creating an asset that your customer spends time and attention with is a smarter way to invest your dollars.
In this session, you’ll hear about brands that have invested in the design and development of software platforms, creating an opportunity for frequency of messaging and greater consumer touchpoints.
Fundamentally, the future of paid media is to create new and different kinds of media interactions rather than just traditional dollars for impressions that intersect mobile, social and native. Join us to hear how some brands are leveraging their brands as software to fulfill this need.
What is the role of content in the buyer’s path to purchase? Various research shows that before someone buys, 81-94% of people research online. This means that brands have the ability to influence a buyer’s path to purchase by decreasing trust barriers and offering relevant, valuable content to attract and retain customers. However, several trends are shaping the future of content marketing and have huge implications for brands. The constant pace of technology change causes the rules of engagement and preferences to change. Information is becoming more easily attainable than ever because our customers can access information on an infinitely increasing number of devices and platforms – and the content doesn’t just come from the brand. So how do we ultimately connect with our consumers? How do we combine technology with human interaction in ways that resonate?
In this session, experts will share how to leverage these future trends to deliver consistent, ongoing valuable information to buyers, who will ultimately reward you with their business and loyalty.
Native advertising is widely practiced by brands right now. In fact, according to eMarketer, spending on native ads is expected to increase by nearly 35% in 2015. However, there are some important questions still left unanswered for the controversial ad format. Most of these concerns revolve around one key concept: consumer trust. A 2014 Contently study shows that 54% of readers don’t trust sponsored content, and that two-thirds have felt “deceived” upon learning that a piece of content was brand-sponsored. Additionally, a recent CivicScience report suggests that consumers are ambivalent toward sponsored content; 48 percent of adults, are “very concerned” about preserving objective journalism.
So, how can brands ensure that their content will be well received by readers? Authenticity in the X Factor that’s needed in order to succeed. In addition, your content should help and educate readers, deliver on a pain point / communicate a return on investment for them, and be entertaining. If you perform on all of this you’ll gain brand advocates. The truth hurts – most brands, even large, established brands, are not fulfilling the authenticity parameter. Join us as we dig into examples.
It's crazy to talk about sharpest-edge new technologies, a dramatist who has been dead for 399 years, and the nature of creativity all in the same workshop. But at its core creativity requires the nutty combination of unlike things, so perhaps there's hope after all.
Business genius and creative genius are partners, not opponents. Both sorts of genius thrive in times of intense change, and 2015 is one of those times. Digital technologies are exploding out of our laptops, phones and tablets into the rest of our lives. You can see this across megatrends like robotics, 3D printing, wearable computers and the internet of things: new forms of and access to information create new products and industries while old ones experience rebirth under evolutionary pressure. (Netflix kills the corner video store, but then also served as a midwife to HBO Go.)
This has happened before, so it is illuminating to look back at another transformative time when literacy and access to books went through an exponential increase, the Renaissance, and then to dig into the environment that gave us one of history's most famous creative geniuses who is unknown as a business genius: William Shakespeare.
Most people think that Shakespeare’s business success was built on his skills as a dramatist, but what if it’s the other way around? What if Shakespeare was a playwriting genius, at least in part, because he was a business genius first? The Shakespeare brand is still going strong four centuries later, and there are surprising lessons to be learned from how Shakespeare built his business and brand-- and these lessons, in turn, can help business people in 2015 (and beyond) grapple with transformative new technologies.
In today's workshop, watch yesterday's Renaissance history smash into tomorrow's digital future as Dr. Brad Berens combines the Shakespeare Strategy with sharpest-edge technologies to show you where digital marketing is going, and how to get there.
