8:00am

Breakfast & Registration hosted by Lenovo

8:45am

Welcome

Brandon Gutman, Co-Founder, Brand Innovators
Marc Sternberg, Co-Founder, Brand Innovators
Melissa McKinley, Vice President Community Operations, Brand Innovators

Host: Ted Rubin, Social Media Strategist, Acting CMO, Brand Innovators, author of Return on Relationship

Co-Host: Gavin O’Hara, Global Social Creative Lead, Lenovo

9:00am

Driving Growth with Digital Transformation

Technology is a game-changer, reinventing how Fortune 500 brands engage with their consumers, and stay out in front of their competitors. Learn first-hand how leading brands are using social media, content marketing, digital video advertising, marketing automation, and personalization, to build loyalty and long-term relationships with their consumers.

Moderated by: Praveen Sathyadev, VP, Global Delivery, Course5i

Beth Anne Ballance, Content Manager, Citrix
Jim Rabon, Senior Manager, Digital Marketing, Front-End & User Experience Development, NetApp
Renata Riechelmann, eCommerce Programs Manager, BISSELL Homecare

9:35am

Fireside Chat – Transformation from Product Centric to Customer Centric

Dilip Bhatia, Vice President, Global Marketing, User & Customer Experience, Lenovo
Paul Walsh, Chief Digital Officer, Lenovo

Moderated by: Gayatri Bhalla, Chief Evangelist, Advanced TV, Global Business Solutions, LiveRamp

10:15am

Fireside Chat – Celebrity Brand Impact

Barbara Sharnak, Director, Brand and Product Marketing, Republic Wireless/RELAY

Moderated by: Lauren Schroeder, Sales, East, Parsec Media

10:35am

Networking Break

10:55am

Navigating Social Media in the Age of Pay-to-Play

Marketers have known for some time that organic reach is increasingly limited on social media and that their brands have to pay up if they want to engage with their target audience. But is organic social reach really dead? How can brands avoid being crowded out of social platforms as algorithms give more and more priority to paid content? It’s the experience and the content that count. Affinity, advocacy and action – these outcomes cannot be bought, rather they are interactions that are earned. Hear perspectives from the experts as they debate the fundamental marketing challenges presented by social media, whether they’re changing in the age of pay-to-play, and the role organic content still plays in the evolving social ecosystem.

Moderated by: Jim Tobin, President, Carusele

Lauren Brommer, Omni-Channel Social Media Manager, Cisco
Stephen Clowes, Social Media Content Specialist, SAS
Sarah O’Grady, Head of Global Social Strategy, Lenovo
Dan Phelps, Social Media Lead, Wells Fargo

11:30am

Fireside Chat

Lauren Brommer, Omni-Channel Social Media Manager, Cisco

Moderated by: Casey Saran, CEO, Spaceback

11:50am

It Pays To Be Human

65% of consumers now make purchase decisions based on a brand’s values and beliefs, making it more important than ever for brands to know what they stand for, and behave in a way that proves it. This thought-provoking yet pragmatic presentation outlines the Five Human Traits brands can adopt in order to attract new audiences and strengthen engagement and advocacy.

Heidi Singleton, President + Chief Creative Officer, New Honor Society

12:05pm

Lunch hosted by Lenovo

1:00pm

Fireside Chat – Media Management

Matt Bereda, Vice President – Global Consumer Marketing, Lenovo

Moderated by: Andy Sanders, Account Director, Spotify

1:20pm

Content & Community…and Algorithms?

No form of content can directly drive product sales as powerfully as reviews, and no one is better at writing those reviews than industry experts, the brand’s own super-fans, and employees who work with the product day in, and day out.

In this discussion, we’ll look at how brands can take the traditionally high level and top of funnel of impact influencer marketing and employee advocacy programs down to the product level, leveraging the content created by experts internal and external to build communities, the challenges and opportunities therein, and how marketers can leverage intent data and algorithms to better understand the interests of their prospective customers, and which content to surface at any given time, to best address those needs.

Moderated by: Anees Merchant, Global Business Head – Digital and Insights, Course5i

Caroline Bell-Luehrs, Content Strategy Lead, Citrix
Kennedy Embree, Manager, Brand Engagement – Content, Burt’s Bees
Chris Hemedinger, Head of Online Communities, SAS
Gavin O’Hara, Global Social Creative Lead, Lenovo

1:55pm

Fireside Chat – When the Shiny Objects Go Dull: Keeping Employee Advocacy Alive at Your Organization

Kirsten Hamstra, Global Head of Social Media, SAS
Brandy Mann, Corporate Blog Manager & Social Media Specialist, SAS
Alli Soule, Employee Engagement & Training Specialist, SAS

Moderated by: Katie Rubak, Product Marketing, Dynamic Signal

2:15pm

Keynote – Art, Nature, People + Branding

Jed Gant, Brand Director, Myriad Media
Karlie Marlowe, Director of Marketing and Visitor Services, North Carolina Museum of Art

2:35pm

Networking Break

2:55pm

Fireside Chat – Navigating a New Consumer Reality

Jackie Woodward, recent CMO, Krispy Kreme

Moderated by: John Andrews, CEO, Photofy

3:15pm

Fireside Chat – Mobile App as a Marketing Channel

Matt Hudson, Mobile Delivery Manager, Belk

Moderated by: Francesca Ferrante, Client Strategy Manager, gen.video

3:35pm

Fireside Chat – The Power of Digital Storytelling

Javier Leiva, Associate Digital Creative Director, Digital Marketing, Red Hat

Moderated by: John Andrews, CEO, Photofy

3:55pm

Recap and Open Discussion

Gavin O’Hara, Global Social Creative Lead, Lenovo
Ted Rubin, Social Media Strategist, Acting CMO, Brand Innovators, author of Return on Relationship

4:15pm

It’s a wrap!