CONFERENCE RECAPS

I fully anticipated attending ADWeek 2018 as soon as I moved to New York. I did not expect AD Week 2018 to come to me. I was living on West 70th Street and AD Week 2018 was a short 3 minute walk from my bedroom, so I had the privilege of attending multiple sessions and dropping in and out as I saw fit, able to return home with ease. I attended sessions each day of ADWeek, but attended the majority on opening day. I wanted to get a wide perspective of the industry at that very moment, and was not disappointed. The first session I attended was hosted by Fer Machado, CMO of Burger King. I was sure to live tweet his session, as his focus was on the power of creativity for brands that are not the leader in their category. I left with a refreshed understanding and appreciation of risk, and the necessity of risk with regards to creativity, you cannot be a cautious creative. If your brand wants to stand out, you have to be willing to take creative risks, to get the attention your brand needs, ...

 This week DXsummit hosted their quarterly virtual conference series, aimed at conquering the digital chaos and delivering game-changing customer experiences.  I was lucky enough to attend the event hosted by Rich Hein, the editor-in-chief of CMSwire and Simpler Media. As an Experience Researcher, this conference is important to me because all of the keynotes are centered around improving the customer’s experience with brands.  I must say DXsummit’s virtual conference is genuinely one of the best UI experiences I’ve had since the world transfered over to virtual conferences. There was so much to do, from networking in their personal slack page to visiting the virtual sponsors’ booth, and of course tuning in for the Keynote speakers, having all these activities placed on one simple to use dashboard was helpful.    As I traveled through the dashboard three Keynote speakers really grabbed my attention. The first was Telisa Yancy, the chief operating officer of Amer...

“The sun’ll come out tomorrow!” a famous line sung by one of the most popular Broadway shows, Annie.  A perfect way to describe the virtual conference, The Business of Broadway, held on April 21, 2020.  Hosted by the Center of Communication, a non-profit organization that connects students to creative opportunities, I excitedly grabbed the chance to join through my overworked laptop.  Lead by Willie Reale, the Executive Producer of the 52nd Street Project, he interviewed four reputable panelists: Julia Levy, Executive Director of the Roundabout Theatre Company, Vivek Tiwary, Founder and CEO of Tiwary Entertainment Group, Aaliytha Stevens, COO of SpotCo, and Eva Price, Founder and CEO of Maximum Entertainment. The first topic to take front and center of the virtual stage, was no other than the infamous COVID-19.  When asked to compare the average daily routine in the world of Broadway then and what it is now, award-winning Vivek Tiwary explained that his job has and w...

Retail Innovation week was all about what’s important in innovation and how to implement it in the day-to-day retail environment. Some of the experts on the day I attended were Judy Bersten from The Yes, Ben K from Camp, Megan Higgins from Avalara, Ranjan Roy from Adore Me, Ram Iyer from Microsoft and etc.      One of the speakers I really enjoyed was Ben K from Camp. I enjoyed it because prior to the pandemic, Scott took our Brand Experience class to visit Camp in Hudson Yards. We had such a good time just being adult kids in a playful environment. The thing I questioned the most is how does a retail store sustain that is heavily experience based like Camp, when stores can’t have people in them to intake those experiences. Ben had a fascinating and creative way he embraced this change. When covid-19 hit, he decided he would take the Camp experience online. They created online birthday parties for quarantine. They celebrated 10,000 kid’s birthdays. They did so with gifts ...

 The year 2020 has definitely been a game changer for our society and as a result of these changes, the 2020 Brand Film Awards and Workshop were broadcasted through a webinar event. The awards were transmitted live on May 7, 2020, by Campaign US and PRWeek US. The event highlighted the best brand films and showed three significant workshops with distinctive professionals from the production, communication, advertising and marketing industry.   Building Brand Love into Organic Creativity was the first workshop presented. The workshop was hosted by James Gregson, Head of Lego Social Studio and moderated by Lindsay Stain U.S. Editor for Campaign US. James spoke about how Lego has transitioned from the physical product and store to a more digital world that aligns with the changes that we are experiencing nowadays. He explained that Lego wanted to support their consumers who were facing the stress of lockdown by providing them with content that will inspire them to create at home....

 The End of Marketing Humanizing Your Brand in the Age of Social Media and AI   Speaker: Carlos Gill This was a very enlightening lecture because it provides an answer to a question that I had personally struggled with for a long time. Why is there low engagement on social media, and how do I make people care? Carlos Gill makes it a point on several occasions to mention times when he had brought up ideas to CEOs about better engaging with customers and how important the human psychology behind it is. He was of course shut down in many of those instances, however, his predictions seemed to be right on target for today’s market and we can now see examples of those tactics from a few select “brave” brands that have seensucces from this less conservative type of brand action. “People are brands. People buy from people. People want to be engaged, not sold to” This was a very interesting quote because when you see it, it’s one of those “Duh” moments, but ironically it isn’t so obvio...