CONFERENCE RECAPS

In May 2014, I had the opportunity to attend the Creative Week conference. Maybe it was because it happened to be my first experience at a conference of this sort, but the atmosphere of the event and general energy of the crowd seemed like just the place to be as when starting a career in advertising. It’s a great networking opportunity and an easy and enjoyable place to learn something new and keep up with the latest innovations in the advertising world. So — highly recommended! I got a ticket for one day, which was relatively affordable. There were several panels on the day I attended, including RED talking about their fight against AIDS (the .hiv campaign & their collaboration with Bono ), Kat Gordon, the Founder of the 3% Conference , spreading the word about the problem of gender inequality in the creative world, and many more. There was one in particular that I found the most interesting — and unforgettable. Intel presented their new rebranding launch, i...

The Westchester Digital Summit 2015 #WDS3 “Where the tech world meets to discuss the future of advertising, marketing and sales” “Conferences that will keep you ahead of the marketing trends in 2015” The summit kicked off with a Keynote by Jeffrey Hayzlett, who presented his book ‘Running the Gauntlet’ about driving change in business, along with great real life examples, anecdotes and ice breaking humor. He stated that nowadays businesses need to adapt, change or die and change is never the way we think it will be. To be a leader you have to be a clock changer, you have to be ahead of what’s happening. The five big reasons we fail to change are: fear, tension avoidance, lack of transparency, risk avoidance and broken promises. And those five reasons can be explained this way: we need to overcome the fear of doing it wrong and accept the fact that we can be beginners; healthy debate that creates tension is good – as Jeffrey said: ‘no pain no game’; radical trans...

PRSA Conference NYC  Fang Guo When the PR industry was first pioneered, it was created as a way to communicate proactively with media rather than always being in crisis mode when the media got hold of a story. Over time it has become a powerful marketing tool, creating awareness and connecting audiences with brands through credible third-party endorsements. Thanks to social media and other tools, today PR is truly about relating to companies audiences and engaging with them indirectly and directly. Similarly, there was no effective way of measuring the success of a PR campaign in pre-social media era. Today the digital age helps create different measurement tools online and offline, enable companies to precisely monitor the effectiveness of their PR campaigns. The PRSA conference that I had the honor to attend was a three-day education forum where brilliant minds get together, teach and exchange ideas on how to sufficiently utilize PR in this day and age. The speaker...

How to be Funny & Filthy Rich* via Online Branded Comedy Videos by UCB Comedy From Adweek 2014 (AWXI) (*Perhaps this is a slight exaggeration) I'm a big fan of funny videos. Not only it carries entertainment but also branded content that can change your life!* (*Probably exaggerated too) Led by an internet guru of online branded videos Todd Bieber, the UCB Comedy's Creative Director shares his 10-step process for creating successful online branded comedy videos for both small and giant companies like Google, Doritos, KFC, Nestle', Excedrin, ESPN etc. In the fast-paced world we live in, people's behavior of receiving online content has been changing daily and the more content produced out there, the less patient and more selective people become. No one hates laughing. No one avoids funny content. Funny is good. Funny is happy, and above all, funny is memorable. According to a study, Bieber says funny content triggers the brain to release Endorphin ...

Last year during the spring semester, the creative track had night class over at DDB, where we met Matt Eastwood, DDB New York's Executive Creative Director. We had received a brief for the product Brawny, where Mr. Eastwood helped us and critiqued us on our executions. I asked him the very common question "what advice would you give to your younger self?" His answer, summarized in one word, "Passion." He went on to show us “Kenya Bucket List,” a documentary about a four-year-old Maasai boy named Nkaitole (pronounced Guytolie) and his adventure outside his village, checking things off his "bucket list" before his 5th birthday, which is about the age where young children pass away due to unsafe drinking water. No doubt you would not feel the gravity drop in the room. Everyone watched with a heavy heart and as the video ended, we looked for hope and felt inspired by Mr. Eastwood and his WaterIsLife movement. Mr. Eastwood started off his "SO, You...

  Griffin Farley Search for  Beautiful Minds Finalists The Griffin Farley Search for Beautiful Minds  program is a weekend boot-camp open to individuals looking to get their break into the brand strategy field. The planning world works like a mafia in New York city. It's very hard to get a position and it's run by the English immigrants (No lie. More than half of New York CSO are from England).  A carefully chosen group of 45 were selected from around the world to participate this year (Two girls came from Australia for the weekend). After working and presenting a brand strategy for KitchenSurfing (an online marketplace that connects personal chef with guests), My team got selected with two other teams to showcase their work on Google’s stage in front of the whole New York city planning industry. Not only we had the chance to walk on the Google's stage but we only took part in an auction where we got auction off to mentors. I now have the pleasure...

As a winner of the Social Media Week annual Scholarship Program, today I had the opportunity to attend Social Media Week, which runs from February 23rd to 27th 2015 at Highline Stages. My first session was "The ROI f WOM: A first look at "WOMMA's Return on WOM" Brand Data study.                            What is the true value of word-of-mouth (WOM), online and off, relative to other marketing and media? In 2014, the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) gathered some of the world's leading brands and researchers and launched "Return on Word of Moth," a landmark study to finally answer these questions:How much of a brand's sales are driven by WOM? Does WOM amplify marketing and, if so, by how much? How do the impacts of online and offline WOM compare? What are the best practices for including WOM in the marketing mix models? How do WOM and paid impression compare in their power to drive sales? Par...