The CONNECT Steering Committee consists entirely of your contemporaries, meaning we tackle the themes that have profound significance to your performance as a marketer.
Many Marketing professionals understand their functions but have a hard time measuring and conveying results; this track will explore different tools and methods to quantify the role of the Marketer.
Gone are the days where a company can allow itself to interact with a customer on a singular platform, join this track to learn more about social media and other various channels, how to manage multiple platforms, and how to maximize each to the fullest.
It’s all about the personal touch, in today’s CX world, if you don’t have it then you’ll fall behind. This track will explore how to attain and implement predictive analytics to deliver a personalized and optimized Customer Experience.
It’s no secret that AI and Data are two keys to the future, this track will focus on these two transformative elements and how they are changing the world of CX.
Leadership, Teams and TransformationSurveyMonkey - Vice President, Product Marketing & Customer Advocacy
Marketers face aggressive growth targets, but to reach them they’ve got to break through the noise and earn the trust of their buyers—at scale. Join us to learn how you can leverage feedback to deliver marketing messages that are effective, authentic, accurate, and impactful.
Key Takeaways:
Listen to your customers and target buyers for more effective marketing
Embrace authenticity by leveraging the voice of your customer
Understand and deliver on your customers’ expectations
Enable your organization to take action by sharing feedback broadly
Leadership, Teams and TransformationPlantronics - Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer
In 2018, audio pioneer Plantronics acquired video conferencing company Polycom. The acquisition created one company with the largest set of communications “endpoints,” from headsets to video conferencing systems, uniquely positioned to help people collaborate anywhere, on any platform and in more meaningful ways.
As EVP and CMO of Plantronics, Amy Barzdukas was responsible for creating a cohesive brand identity, story and marketing strategy to pull the new combined company into the future.
Join Barzdukas as she discusses what it takes to lead marketing post-acquisition and how to honor two company legacies while creating one new brand for a new company.
Key Takeaways:
A high-level overview and understanding of marketing best practices to utilize following a merger and/or acquisition
Highlight how to collaborate to bring two separate cultures and expertise together into one storied legacy
Showcase how to navigate messaging and company culture nuances both internally and externally
Understand the importance of leading a clear vision of the future after the dust settles on a merger/acquisition
Speaker
Amy Barzdukas
Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing OfficerPlantronics
One critical component of a CX strategy is a sound CX vision. It provides direction to your organization, on the role you should be playing in your customer’s lives and how every interaction with your customer should feel. Developing a strong CX vision requires a clear brand promise and an in-depth knowledge of your customers’ needs and expectations. Once in place, the hard work of rallying the organization to activate your CX vision can begin.
Social Media and Multi-channel MarketingMicro Focus - Global Head of Influencer Marketing
Brand development is a complex process that increasingly requires the input of varying market influencers, including analysts, partners, thought leaders and the media. Learn how to align your messaging across various communications mediums, what levers are most effective with each key audience, and how to take an aggressive approach to building your brand by drawing the circle bigger on how you’ve defined and employed corporate communications in the past.
Key Takeaways:
Look at communications holistically, vs. in silos
Think like a startup, even if you’re a global multinational
Ladder up outreach to key, consistent themes
Don’t be afraid to repackage content around the globe
Leadership, Teams and TransformationNorthrop Grumman Corporation - Vice President of Communications, Technology Services
Now more than ever, marketing and communications is being invited to the table but there’s still a huge gap between leadership understanding the business strategy and the importance of marcomms being a part of that strategy to drive top line revenue. This interactive discussion will cover how to generate a behavior change with senior leaders and the c-suite to ensure marcomms is being engaged in the critical conversations of growing the business and developing those key relationships. Also, learn how to use data to effectively prove and tell an impactful story of your strategy to get buy-in and increased investment.
Key Takeaways:
Keys to cross-department communication and collaboration to position yourself as a trusted advisor – relationship building
Learn how to tell a compelling story of your strategy and how it ties back to the business
Tactics to break inertia, push boundaries and challenge “traditional” practices with forward-thinking – technology
How to successfully navigate the spectrum of strategic to tactical – execution and impactful performance
Speaker
Yolanda Murphy
Vice President of Communications, Technology ServicesNorthrop Grumman Corporation
AI and Data Driven ExperiencesSymantec - Head of Global Demand, PMO and Strategic Marketing
Awareness is the top goal for every organization. Imagine being on the TODAY’s show, 250+ TV channels and radio shows all by using the power of storytelling. Most companies have data. It is about how to leverage that data to tell a very compelling story that would have a mass appeal. Come attend this talk to learn:
– How not to have data without a story
– How not to have a story without data
– How this company made all of this possible by spending less than $200
Key Take-Aways
Power of storytelling
How to best use existing data and make it applicable to masses
Increase awareness for your company
Speaker
Varun Kohli
Head of Global Demand, PMO and Strategic MarketingSymantec
Predictive Analytics, Personalization and OptimizationAccent Technologies - CEO
Buyer engagement is the only reliable predictor of conversion throughout the entire buyer experience.
Many AI vendors have taken a data-focused predictive approach, or in other words, only look at historical data tracking the seller’s activities. But the problem with operationalizing a solution based on the requirement of cleansed, enriched data is the cost.
Examples of how cost manifests:
– 6+ months of resource spend incentivizing or mandating CRM adoption programs
– Time and resource spend developing /regulating a sales process
– Content production waste due to lack of true performance insight
– Selling time lost due to unexposed process inefficiencies or administrative hurdles
– Maintenance of unnecessary, ineffective or unintegrated selling tools
A truly effective analytics model needs to be trained to support every conversion point in order to get the value of the prediction. Or put simply, a solution should not solely evaluate the action of the seller, but include (and weight) the reaction of the buying team.
Attend this session to learn more about emerging technology in the sales and marketing AI space that can provide insight into your most effective content, sales plays and the deals most likely to close.
Key Takeaways:
An understanding of why measuring buyer engagement is a better predictor of conversion than sales activities
Knowledge of the flaws in logic for seller focused solutions
An introduction to new technologies ability to backfill and clean historical data for disparate systems
Connecting Strategy, Technology and ExecutionDMA l Digital Marketing Agency - CEO
The traditional marketing funnel accepts anyone and swallows whoever it can. Advanced marketers are starting to efficiently leverage content to target niche audiences and embrace personalization. Reaching out to people who are more likely to be interested in your brand is not only more cost-efficient; it’s also more sustainable and less time-consuming. Consumers do not want businesses to gloss over them; they seek legitimate trust and genuine relationships.
Key Take-Aways
How to combine consumer trends and customer expectations to execute marketing magic
How to keep up with emerging technologies and ever changing consumer behavior
Why the traditional sales funnel is not the solution in a mobile first generation
Tata Consultancy Services - Global Head of Industry Marketing
Marketers are waking up to a new reality. During the course of the last decade, there has been a tectonic shift in the way marketers communicate, advertise and promote themselves to their target audiences. Same holds true for us. While initially, marketing was regarded as only a support function we are now being offered a bigger seat at the table. Establishing marketing as an important strategic modern function in a IT Services/Consulting organization has been a transformational journey. The strategy we successfully adopted was to first work on messaging with superior impact across levers and channels. The outcome itself was the validation of our messaging, case in point: the vendor benchmarking positions achieved, the reception of offline and online content, digital amplification of thought leadership resources and impactful assets creation with HBR, MIT, CIO Review to name a few.
We used these proof points to successfully position our varied value propositions in the market place. The primary objective of our marketing strategy has been to elevate TCS Brand as ‘Growth and Transformation Partners’ for our customers and business partners through our AAA strategy. It is of utmost importance to be Aware of the great work that we are doing, to be in a position to Articulate the marquee stories we are working on and Amplify the impact of messaging to business stakeholders. Marketing has traditionally been defined by the Marketing Mix, or the Four P’s that have served as the quintessential four pillars of marketing strategy. As the industry has evolved over the past half-century, so have our strategic concepts. The Four P’s have now given way to the new marketing mix characterized by: Social Collaboration, Story telling, Blogs, Infographics, personalization and bespokes. This thoughtful leap into successful business group transformation will be focus of this speaking session. Also, selecting the right marketing channels is critical to any transformational journey because it can mean the success or failure of your offerings. Multi-channel strategy can provide many benefits by enhancing market reach, raising awareness by accessing audiences via multiple touch points. Highlights of multichannel branding to obtain tangible marketing value add will also be a point of discussion during the talk.
Key Take-Aways
Building a strategic marketing function aiding the “Growth and Transformation” journey of an organization.
Measuring the outcomes with strong focus towards metrics driven marketing.
Driving integrated value messaging through content marketing, digital media/PR, analyst relations, academia to name a few
Uplifting the Brand with strong drive towards AAA (elaborate) and RRR (elaborate) strategy.
Speaker
Raja Banerji
Global Head of Industry MarketingTata Consultancy Services
Leadership, Teams and TransformationWiden Enterprises - Consulting Manager
Digital transformations are stalled, and CMOs are taking the blame. The term “transformation” has become a misunderstood (and costly) buzzword. Drawing from his experiences with blue-chip brands, Widen Consulting’s Michael Shattuck identifies what transformations really are, why they stall, and how CMOs can turn them around.
Key Takeaways:
“Transformation” is not about digitizing a business – it is about changing the potential of the human beings in the business by addressing cultural, technological, and process barriers that no one wants to talk about.
The Porsche Problem: CMO spending on talent and technology has become equivalent to buying a sports car then pushing it around the block instead of driving it – the problem is not the people or tech, but rather their misuse.
The biggest deterrent to transformation is a lack of face-to-face conversation and organizational strategy. Transformation is merely an output of strategy and not something that is ever completed. Some companies actually have little to transform once they identify their strategy.
We need a new set of metrics to gauge the success of transformations. Of these, technology adoption is arguably the most important. Just because a CMO buys it, that doesn’t mean people will use it as intended.
Connecting Strategy, Technology and ExecutionClosed Loop - CEO
The advertising landscape has shifted dramatically in the last year. There have been massive updates and new features from Google and Facebook in the last year alone, in addition to explosive new growth opportunities from LinkedIn and even Bing, among others. But the data shows that most advertisers are still using tactics from 2016 or earlier, and wallowing in mediocrity as a result. In this engaging session, Lance will visually demonstrate the new ways of thinking and the specific steps that modern digital advertisers must take to achieve breakout success with their Digital Advertising campaigns.
Key Takeaways:
Learn the right mental model to use when talking about Digital Advertising
Discover the latest ways advanced advertisers are measuring campaign success
Uncover the new strategies for unlocking campaign potential in 2019
Find out how to easily run a diagnostic health check on your campaigns
Personalized Marketing and Data-Driven ExperiencesSunTrust Banks - Senior Vice President, Head of Digital Marketing
Learn how SunTrust is transforming its online user experience leveraging personalization, artificial intelligence and continuous testing and optimization to drive sales and get business leaders’ attention
Key Takeaways:
Leverage Artificial Intelligence to accelerate revenue growth
Continue to test, learn and optimize
Develop a concise story that gets business leaders’ attention
Speaker
Deborah Benard
Senior Vice President, Head of Digital MarketingSunTrust Banks
Leadership, Teams and TransformationApplebee's - Vice President, Marketing
Applebee’s Turnaround Story:
The Restaurant Industry’s comeback of the year in 2018
Applebee’s just had its best year since 1993, after years of slumping sales. Their success is a classic case of a brand getting back to its roots and embracing its essence.
The comeback began in 2017. John Cywinski was named President in March and he immediately shifted the paradigm of the business. He made strategic moves on his leadership team and established early trust and confidence with Franchise Partners in the turnaround plan.
The brand also resurrected their infamous ad slogan, “Eatin’ Good in the Neighborhood,” showcasing former, current and new menu items that fit the brand’s middle-market DNA. Additionally, they made operational improvements in restaurants to improve the guest experience.
But, it wasn’t until 2018 that Applebee’s proved that the success wasn’t a fluke.
Applebee’s US same-store sales grew 5% in 2018. “Eating good in the neighborhood” is alive and well, with inexpensive food that doesn’t try to be fancy. The Neighborhood Drink of the Month program has created a cheap-drinks revolution at Applebee’s, with new beverages rolling out every month.
And they aren’t done yet. The comeback is continuing in 2019.
Leadership, Teams and TransformationNu Skin Enterprises Inc. - Senior Vice President, Global Product & Brand
Product Development teams often wrestle with the twin mandates to develop high-quality, customer-driven products while constantly improving speed to market. While these two goals may seem mutually exclusive, cross-functional teams can be structured and led to ensure business objectives are met while also dotting all the I’s and crossing all the T’s. By helping teams correct their functional myopia and elevate their perspective to one of team outcomes ownership, your development teams will become fertile ground for innovative solutions that are both technically robust and get to market on time.
Key Takeaways:
How Empowerment Tiers Can Break Project Gridlock
Choosing the Right Communication & Workflow Platforms
How Project Management Teams Empower CFTs Instead of Constraining Them
Crystal Clear Roles & Responsibilities Increase Development Velocity
Speaker
Kevin Fuller
Senior Vice President, Global Product & BrandNu Skin Enterprises Inc.
AI and Data Driven ExperiencesKorn Ferry - Vice President and General Manager, Analytics Products
Most statistical techniques require that one or more assumptions be met, or, in the case that it has been proven that a technique is robust against a violation of an assumption, that the assumption is not violated too extremely. Given that the validity of any conclusion drawn from a statistical inference depends on the validity of the assumptions made, it is clearly important that those assumptions should be validated. Incorrect assumptions can generate wildly inaccurate conclusions.
The applied researcher, data scientist or data analyst who routinely adopt a traditional statistical procedure without giving thought to its associated assumptions may unwittingly produce misleading results.
Applying the statistical techniques when assumptions are not met is a serious problem when analyzing data.
Key Takeaways:
Assumptions of statistical methods
Impact of assumptions violations
Ways to overcome assumptions violations
Speaker
Samuel Berestizhevsky
Vice President and General Manager, Analytics ProductsKorn Ferry
AI and Data Driven ExperiencesMcGraw-Hill Education - Chief Product & Operating Officer
Millions of students have gotten better grades (yes we have the data to prove it) from the use of AI in the digital products created by McGraw-Hill Education and then used in colleges across the world. MHE creates and manages products used by instructors in classes; extensively leverage Data & AI to drive better learning outcomes. In this session you will learn how AI is used in the products to help the instructors and students. We will share lessons learned with our customer journeys and managing the customer experiences of these products.
Key Takeaways:
AI & data are being used in learning products today at scale
Use of AI & Data mean changes to user workflows, product design needs to account for this
Just because the data is there, does not mean users will use it
Rethink the customer experience when using AI & Data – continuously test, modify, and test/,modify more. Be prepared to share results with customers who want to understand the AI
Leadership, Teams and TransformationRoth Staffing Companies - SVP Corporate Communications Roth Staffing Companies - SVP & General Counsel
Your HR Department desperately needs you. They are often left to “brand” the company to employees. See examples of how a strong Employer Brand immediately and directly impacts the bottom line. One example shows the evolution of a Marketing Department that went from a project list compiled entirely of external campaigns to 50% internal and 50% external branding… revenue increased 12-16% year over year for 6 straight years and they ranked #1 on the Fortune list of Best Workplaces. You can create t dazzling social campaigns, but your company can’t be the best without attracting the best employees to work there. HR and Talent Engagement can’t recruit and retain employees in today’s candidate market without the help of Marketing.
Key Takeaways:
How to partner with HR to create your Employer Brand
Metrics that prove the involvement of Marketing in internal communications increases revenue
5 examples of how Marketing turned HR communication into an internal branding campaign
How Marketing can fit it all in and tackle both internal and external branding
Increasing brand awareness, affinity and recognition requires a robust cross-platform brand strategy. In an environment where brands are encouraged to over target their consumer, Maria will share best practices for how to break through the clutter using data and tactics, such as identifying people surrounding the consumer to influence the acquisition and identifying advertising channels that work using return on investment models.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
Generate creative ideas to position your brand
Tell your story directly to your target audience by using creative, messaging and brand voice
Quantifying the impact of your advertising with attribution, allowing marketers to analyze results throughout the purchase funnel
Speaker
Maria Weaver
Senior Vice President, Global MarketingComcast Cable Advertising
How do you attract, convert, and turn prospects into loyal advocates for your business? In this talk, Chandar will share why emotion is key to success in the B2B customer journey, from awareness in understanding how your prospect wants to feel, to engaging your buyer on an emotional level to drive acquisitions, scale the right advocacy program and create customers for life who feel an emotional connection and passion for their experience with your product and brand. Chandar will share examples from his experiences building the world’s best B2B brands, including a framework for building your own “Stairway to Heaven.”
Key Take-Aways
How to Drive Awareness: Marketing starts with an understanding of the customer persona.
How to Drive Acquisitions: Innovative technologies are providing a window into businesses’ ideal customer profile, making it easier to better understand customer sentiment. Attendees will learn how the acquisition is broken up into three separate areas: plays, parlance, and programs.
How to Drive Advocacy is key to brand authenticity. Attendees will learn how to identify the best advocates from their customer base
Leadership, Teams and TransformationInformatica - SVP Marketing
CMO’s clearly bring tremendous value to a company. So, why is it that a recent Forbes study suggests that the CMO continues to have the shortest tenure on the C-suite? Modern B2B challenges around engaging with increasingly sophisticated customers, trying to rise above the noise in a highly connected world, continuously differentiating a solution in a crowded marketplace, and looking for new ways to out-think competitors – is what has changed. This calls for deep market, competitive, ecosystem and product intelligence – i.e. a modern marketing strategy that is agile, pragmatic, aligned with GTM strategy, and ready for the bold new world. A few Modern CMO’s seem to have figured out how to be seen as some of the most strategic leaders in the organization.
Key Takeaways:
The role of the B2B CMO is rapidly changing – evolve or be left behind
Marketing must view itself as a service and profit center
The Modern CMO must have a “growth mindset”
Tight and on-going alignment with GTM strategy is key to success
Connecting Strategy, Technology and ExecutionMagnolia - General Manager, North America
There are nearly 7,000 marketing technologies on the market. Each one claims to help your marketing team do something better, whether it’s managing content or generating leads.
How do you decide which tools really deliver? More importantly, how do you bring these tools together to build a martech stack that increases your team’s efficiency and helps them create more engaging experiences for customers?
Find out during this presentation from Magnolia, content management system-provider for leading brands like New York Times, JetBlue and Avis.
Key Takeaways:
How to evaluate the effectiveness of your organization’s current martech stack
What to look for in new solutions to ensure they’ll work well with your existing technologies and on their own
Different ways to build out an integrated stack that achieves marketing goals
How to ensure your stack can scale with your organization
Predictive Analytics, Personalization and OptimizationUSAA - AVP, Digital Product Development
Shorter attention spans and higher cognitive load among digital users has necessitated a shift from providing just convenience solutions to providing assistance with making decisions. Therefore, Digital Providers must shift from convenience solutions only to information and insights.
Key Takeaways:
Insights is where companies will compete in addition to convenience and price.
Consumers demand Personalized Digital experiences in addition to Face-to-face experiences.
The only way to scale insights and personalization is though the use of data and AI/ML.
Predictive Analytics, Personalization and OptimizationAcuityAds - Chief Strategy Officer
The majority of a consumer’s digital interactions happen outside advertiser’s consideration. New decisioning technologies, when applied to real-time consumer behaviors, interests, and preferences can eliminate wasted impressions. Knowing who needs persuasion (if at all), when, and in what order can contribute to incremental value from existing marketing investments.
Key Take-Aways
Understand how decisioning technologies (e.g. machine learning) can shorten the consumer journey
Identify the gap between what an advertiser knows and doesn’t know about consumers, which contributes to wasted investments in digital advertisements
Learn how to eliminate impressions used to reach consumers who are either already loyal or would never consider buying from an advertiser
Overcoming perceptions of TV buying and creating a successful self-service customer journey
Join Maria Weaver, CMO, Comcast Advertising as she shares how Comcast Spotlight reinvented the small and medium sized business advertising journey by creating a self-service TV buying portal, TV Ad Planner. Maria led the effort starting with extensive market research, competitive analysis and product develop to launch a self-service TV ad buying portal, where businesses can buy, manage and execute a TV schedule independently. She will provide learnings from the market research, findings from the pilot and details of the customer experience.
Key Takeaways:
Customers want to dictate their when and how they engage with companies.
Overcoming the perception that TV advertising is only for agencies and large companies.
TV advertising is now in the hands of business owners- they can create, manage and execute a campaign.
How we provide a seamless experience that is simple, empowering and effective.
Speaker
Maria Weaver
Senior Vice President, Global MarketingComcast Cable Advertising
Leadership, Teams and TransformationWorkForce Software - CMO & COO
So much of our time as marketers is spent answering “what” questions. What’s our content strategy? What’s the CPC? What audiences are we targeting? What channels are driving highest conversion? The list goes on.
What if instead, we started by asking a harder, but more important question: Why?
Join this session for candid reflections and insights from Denise Broady, WorkForce Software CMO and COO, who will draw on her own experience creating a values-based marketing organization and become the trusted advisor to the business. You’ll hear the good, the bad, and the ugly and walk away with practical guidance and “use tomorrow” advice for building a set of organization-wide values that create alignment and improve engagement to support transformation from within.
Key Takeaways:
Develop and communicate your organization’s core values
Build credibility into each touchpoint
Integrate marketing into the business beyond the alignment with sales
Improve communications with your prospects/customers and the external partner community
Speaker
Denise Broady
CMO & COOWorkForce Software
TuesdayNetworking
Lunch
Executive Steering Committee
Experienced marketing leaders work with us to focus our program on the developments in marketing that will move the needle at your company.
Tony KempaManaging Director, Head of Marketing, Business Development, and Brand
ESD
Tracy WadeCOO, SVP
The Hartford
Trish LilleyStroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP
Chief Marketing & Business Development Officer
William LeichterVP of Marketing
Virsec
An Esteemed Audience
Over 80% of the Fortune 100 joins us each year for what has been voted the “most effective trade show” for over a decade. Use our tools to demonstrate ROI to your C-Suite.
CONNECT CMO is an invitation-only trade show for marketing executives that bridges you to the most profitable solutions and information for your crowning priorities.
Have Questions?
We’ve answered a few FAQs to get you started. For any other questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us!
The cost of producing CONNECT CMO is underwritten by our sponsors, who are more than willing to make the investment in such an exclusive audience. Your pass includes:
Personal concierge and custom schedule
Access to all programming and speakers
Overnight hotel accomodations
5 star onsite catering
$200 travel voucher
Personal meetings with leading solution providers of your choice
The most important thing you can do is take the time to complete your registration. Your registration is the basis for all of our methods of personalizing your experience. The more accurate and complete your registration is, the easier it is for us to select opportune sessions and schedule private meetings for you.
Flight reimbursement is limited to 2 attendees per company for those traveling over 100 miles to attend. A check is delivered to you personally at the end of the event, after you have completed your schedule of research meetings with exhibitors.
Based on the details of your registration, we carefully select up to 10 best-fit exhibitors for you to meet with. You’ll have the opportunity to approve both your sessions and meetings schedule before the event. Each meeting is 25 minutes long and focused on solving a specific priority you have a listed.
We are looking for executives with genuine needs for new solutions and buying influence or authority. Invitations are extended to Directors, VPs, SVPs and C-level Executives serving all key marketing functions.
Our Schaumburg hotel accommodations boast stylish design and luxurious comfort. Located in an accessible hub with a sophisticated collection of retail and culinary options such as Sam & Harry’s and Woodfield Mall, this Schaumburg, Illinois hotel serves as an indigenous ambassador for entire Chicagoland area…and a gateway for the entire Midwest.
Accommodations must be booked through the conference organizers and not through the venue directly. We cover the first night and offer a discounted rate. Spouses welcomed. For reservations please contact:
The nearest airport is Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD), which is less than 15 miles away. Alternatively, you may fly into Chicago Midway International Airport (MDW). This hotel does not provide shuttle service. Taxis are readily available at the airport.
View More
View More
View More
View More
View More
View More
View More
View More
View More
View More
View More
View More
View More
View More
View More
View More
View More
View More
View More
View More
View More
View More
View More
View More
View More
View More
