As Facebook introduces consumers, developers and brands alike to a world of frictionless sharing, the focus of all media strategies will now more than ever pivot on engagement and clicks to action. Social media is forcing the evolution of paid, earned and owned media (POEM) to now include more interactive channels including shared and also promoted. In this session, Brian will review the new philosophies behind frictionless sharing and why customer expectations are forcing the evolution of a more diverse landscape of media products. More importantly, Brian will review what is needed to improve engagement, trigger sharing and lead customers through rewarding click paths.

Check out Brian speaking at our San Francisco event earlier this year:

Panellists:

• Oke Okaro, GM & Global Head of Mobile, Bloomberg

• Adam Graham, CEO, Weapon7

• James Davlouros, VP Mobile Business Development Europe, Mastercard

• Wayne Morris, UK General Manager, Maxymiser

Moderator:

• Alison Fennah, VP Research & Marketing, Internet Advertising Bureau

Advances in mobile technology and usage are changing the game for marketers. By 2014, mobile consumer usage is expected to eclipse desktop usage; mobile search has grown 3000% in just three years, with traffic peaking on weekends and evenings – in direct contrast to desktop usage. And 80-90% of mobile users watch TV with a device in hand. It means that increasingly, brands are having to develop mobile-first strategies that place the mobile channel at the forefront of their marketing efforts as they look to connect and engage with both existing and potential customers. But are brands ready for this shift? And what does it take to capitalise on the undoubted opportunities the mobile economy provides? This panel will reveal all.

Key takeaways:

• Understand how your business can capture the value of the emerging mobile economy by investing in solutions that deliver ROI and leverage disruptive consumer and technology trends

• Learn how organisations of all types can harness the power of mobile platforms to transform the way they respond to, interact with and shape the dialogue with their customers

• Understand why optimising the mobile user experience is critical to ensuring that customers continue to engage with your brand

• Improve the relevance of your offerings to key customer groups and individuals

User interactions and conversations about your brand play an essential part in your online visibility, but how can you effectively align your search and social efforts to maximise the return of your online marketing strategies?

This session aims to provide you with the essential tools in producing an effective synergy between SEO and social, producing increased search visibility and engagement for content not only placed on your site, but also for digital assets placed on third party sites.

With Facebook's IPO expected in the next few months, the scrutiny of the value of this media channel is becoming more intense. But that's only half the story. There's more to social networks than their media capabilities. There are other opportunities for brands to create value from closer connections with their consumers, including improved customer service, research and insight, innovation in retail and new product development. In this insight-filled session, Alistair Beattie and the Tribal DDB team offer a short strategic overview of the opportunities and a practical workshop to help brands prioritise and assess the longer-term role of social networks in their business.

The participants in this session will join the virtual Board of a fictitious company, VUDU Media, for 40 minutes to decide upon its strategy for expansion. This is a highly interactive session designed to expose the participants to the future digital landscape and form conclusions on what strategy they would deploy if they were on the Board. The groups will receive briefing packs and then debate and collectively agree the top priorities for expansion, listing the reasons for their selection.

Fun, dangerous and thought-provoking, all packed into a 40-minute session.

With traditional digital advertising increasingly delivering less value to brands, the key to ensuring brand messages are heard is to engage key target audiences through more interactive social advertising. Today’s digital consumer is driven by the ability to share, recommend and participate in conversations. Social video campaigns offer brands the chance to be endorsed by online communities, grow online share of voice and meet the evolving needs of consumers. But with Cisco predicting a whopping 90 percent of online traffic will be video-based by 2013, how do you ensure your content is seen, shared and recommended?

Key takeaways:

• What is so social about social video, and why do we need to focus on engagement rather than video views?

• Look at seeding strategies YouTube and the tipping point – how to supersize your video to make a viral hit

• Understand regional trends and cultural differences

How can a brand engage and empower consumers in the new digital era? The Make Your Own Burger programme, started in 2011 by McDonald's in Germany, is a great example. The campaign gave consumers the chance to create their own burger recipe online and design a personal digital campaign to promote their creation, with the chance of seeing their burger sold in restaurants across the country. As well as creating an impressive digital buzz, this campaign has been overwhelmingly positive in terms of brand image, media coverage and sales results. It has been the first real crowdsourcing experience for McDonald's, and has positioned the brand as a digital innovator that embraces social media and empowers its consumers.

Key takeaways:

• Learn how McDonald's drove innovation costs down, burger sales up, and generated huge online buzz - without a cent of marketing spend

• Discover how crowdsourcing harnessed the creativity and enthusiasm of the company's many brand advocates

Twitter is becoming a bigger and bigger part of everyday life in the UK – but brands might be confused about the value it can add to them. In this essential case study presentation, Bruce will talk about the lessons learned from early adopter brands on the platform, and will share some new examples of the most innovative uses of the platform.

Key takeaways:

• Understand what the purpose of Twitter really is – to connect people everywhere to what is most meaningful to them – and what that means for your organisation

• Learn how brands can structure conversations to effectively optimise their content on Twitter

• Discover why the hashtag is like a new URL, the @ is more personal and memorable than a phone number, and what this means for businesses of all sizes

TomTom's global strategy is rooted in a general belief that technology needs to be developed and shared in a dialogue with the user, and that the consumer’s experience should be enhanced and extended in all possible ways in order to drive brand advocacy and engagement. The firm’s digital strategy aims to achieve that by creating and fostering a permanent dialogue with its customers, and it recently unveiled a number of initiatives geared around driving engagement through social channels, apps, competitions and the promotion of user-generated content. Find out why such approaches have proved so successful – and understand the tools used to measure and analyse their effectiveness – in this fascinating case study.

Key takeaways:

• Learn how TomTom has established a digital framework and chose the most effective social media platform for each marketing message and target audience

• Hear how the company built an engagement loop with its consumers, through social and video

• Discover how TomTom rolled out a listening platform and extracted key consumer insights

When it comes to sharing content, the music industry has been notoriously resistant – some would say actively opposed – to the idea of opening its doors and inviting outsiders in. But inspired by new approaches such as hackathons and sandboxes, music industry giant EMI is doing exactly that through a new initiative that puts thousands of legendary songs and other music-related content such as video, photos and artwork in the hands of more than 10,000 application developers around the world. Called OpenEMI, it’s focused on digital innovation and improving and streamlining the music licensing process for new digital applications in a way that is flexible for developers. Want to know how open innovation can revolutionise your business? Then this case study is a must-attend session.

Key takeaways:

• Learn how EMI has opened up its content/IP to third-party developers, and the benefits of doing so (i.e. developing revenue-sharing deals, exposing content to new audiences, etc.)

• Understand how the lessons from EMI’s experience can be applied to your business

Join Wildfire CEO Victoria Ransom as she offers insights on the way social media is transforming marketing and how you can take full advantage of the possibilities of social. The growing number of social media options is requiring brands to become increasingly sophisticated in their approach to social marketing. Victoria will share case studies of brands that have successfully integrated social media across the scope of their marketing strategy and seen incredible results. Learn how to leverage ads, Timeline and mobile options to stay competitive in 2012 and explore ways to address an increasingly sophisticated user population through engaging content.

Today, it's not enough to have a mastery of your brand message and channel strategy. With changes in technology and consumer behaviour happening every minute that ticks by, brands need to move beyond simply marketing to create meaning in consumers' lives. How can we do this? By understanding and serving customer needs in context – and shifting our organisations accordingly.

In this session we'll uncover key insights about today's increasingly fluid consumers, and offer a progressive model to help you become a valuable resource in their life.

Key takeaways:

• Break the confines of the rigid, siloed 20th century go-to-market model with an introduction to the new six Ps of marketing

• Analyse the behavioural trends of today's consumer and how you can adapt to serve their channel-blind digital journey

• Discover how daily advances in digital technology can elevate rather than hinder your marketing execution

• Take away actionable advice and examples to refine the value of your brand in consumers' lives

The way we engage with customers and build relationships digitally is moving – literally. This masterclass session will look at the ways email marketers can capitalise on the opportunities created by mobile marketing and social media programmes that are tightly integrated with their email marketing efforts. We’ll focus on how today’s brands are integrating these channels, driving opt-ins for email programmes, creating differentiated, “humanised” content and increasing the ‘shareability’ of their email messages and creating broader reach in social media.

Key Takeaways:
• Integrating email, social and mobile marketing channels to drive maximum engagement and revenue
• Creating “humanised” content that engages with consumers and ensuring you are using the right tone in email and social channels
• Utilising the preference centre: offering alternatives to email such as social media, SMS or direct mail helps companies communicate with customers on their terms
• Increasing the reach of your email marketing efforts through social sharing and viral content

A new species has been discovered: the new influencer. With the rise of Twitter over the past two years, but also the adoption of sophisticated and mass communication on well-know social platforms, regular people have become incredibly influential. Brands and organisations, long behind the curve in social, have begun to embrace the new influencer. Klout disrupted the marketing and PR space three years ago by inviting these new influencers to gauge their impact in social, and by rewarding them for behavior that they already engaged in. The Klout Score became the standard measure of influence, a "page rank" for people. Hundreds of major brands, non-profits and organisations want to engage with these people in meaningful ways, whether through marketing or community engagement. At the same time, new analytics tools have been developed to let influencers track and discover their influence, impact and engagement on social platforms. Analytics have become personal.  

Garth recently completed a study, in partnership with Creative Artists Agency and their Intelligence Group, focused on the new influencers. They studied, surveyed and analysed the behavior and attributes of over 1000 new influencers with high Klout scores, and found that the new influencer is more highly engaged, by 10 to 1, on their own areas of interest, their own passions. They share, on average, 13 more times than the rest of us. They also consume traditional media more. They attend movies in theaters an average of 12 times per year versus four for average consumers. In short, they are more engaged than the rest of us – they are highly engaged on multiple platforms consistently. They are able to drive contributions, conversationand sales.

So what do the new influencer profiles look like? And how do you engage with them? This masterclass will show you.

LinkedIn has a unique role in social media marketing in that it is where business decision makers, as well as wealthy professionals, are active. This gives businesses, from both a B2B as well as a B2C perspective, an opportunity to not only generate new business, but also to build community and thought leadership. Sprinkled with case studies of successful businesses, this session will uncover the mysteries of LinkedIn with practical advice on how to maximise your company's presence on the site.

Key takeaways:

• Learn how to create a sales-oriented LinkedIn profile – and generate connections to help you drive business

• Realise the power of LinkedIn Groups and how they can be utilised for a variety of marketing objectives

• Multiple case studies of how businesses from a variety of industries have created business within LinkedIn

Social networks full of socially engaged consumers are changing the way that marketers engage with their customers. Smart marketers are not just looking to have a presence on the social networks, they're looking to build meaningful relationships with their consumers and, as a result, build their brand. A key challenge for Microsoft in brand building on the social networks – and one faced by many global brands today – is how to manage multiple brands, across many countries around the world; maintaing brand consistency but allowing individual brands and countries to build their own relationships. In discussion with Vitrue's Chad Estes, Microsoft's Simon Hughes will share the complexities of that challenge for Microsoft, and their global strategy for addressing it.

Key Takeaways:

• How to give a local feel to your social properties to build brand 

• How the maturity of social analytics means there is no longer any excuse for not being engaging/building meaningful relationships with your consumers.

• The value of social segmentation 

A practical guide to why you need to think about mobile as an increasingly important part of your advertising plan. From some key stats on the astronomical growth on mobile and research on how consumers are interacting with brands on mobile, to case studies and creative examples, and finishing with a Q&A to hear the agency point-of-view on the opportunities and challenges that mobile represents, this session promises to be a fascinating tour of why mobile is now an increasingly important part of the marketer’s arsenal.

Key takeaways:

• Learn how big brands have harnessed mobile to stunning effect with creative demos and case studies

• Engage in a live Q&A with Justin Taylor, MEC Interaction’s Managing Director, on why mobile is so compelling

• Understand how to successfully implement mobile into your own advertising plans

With the increasing volume of data available online, consumers have had to look to smart web services and content curation tools to help them find the right things that meet their needs and to discover new things that match their tastes. This level of personalisation has given rise to an increased expectation from consumers that their advertising experience online should be the same; to date only search has really met this need. The rise of data driven marketing online has given rise to a host of new technologies that allow marketers to offer the same level of relevance  in display advertising. Learn how brands can capitalise on this trend.

Key takeaways:

• Learn how advertiser customer and user data can be used more effectively in display advertising online

• Understand the implications for creativity and format choice

• See case studies of what works 

Most companies get social media wrong, focusing purely on likes and followers when they can add far more value to their customers and their business by building engaged communities around those with influence and interest in specific areas. In this case study presentation, Will McIntyre of Wolfstar will discuss how a strategic approach employing digital insight has helped clients such as Sony Mobile build their communications strategy to expand the value proposition of their products.

Key takeaways

• Learn more about the move towards owned channels to deliver business value

• Understand why the key metrics of social media should not be likes and followers

• Hear why social media should deliver value back into your business – and how to make it happen

In this live chat show-style session, Adam Burns – iStrategy MC and Editor-in-Chief of Meet The Boss TV – interviews some of the industry's leading players about today's most pressing social and digital issues, examines the secrets of their success and gets their thoughts on the key trends to emerge from Day 1 of the conference.

For a flavour of the session, check out the video:

The dividing line between content creator and brand has become ever more blurred in recent years, and no-one has embraced the change more than energy drink giant Red Bull. Launched in 2007, Red Bull Media House is the centre of the global Red Bull media network and offers a unique variety of media content centred around lifestyle, fun and sports. Today, it operates a TV station and one of the most innovative online consumer platforms. It prints one of the biggest magazines in the world and launches mobile operator services. It produces documentaries, movies and even music all around the world. And it has access to the whole Red Bull network, including more than 500 athletes, numerous artists and some of the most influential opinion leaders on the planet.

In this fascinating keynote session, Chief Commercial Officer Alexander Koppel outlines why content is no longer considered a loss leader, and how companies can embrace content creation to complement their brands and help drive the bottom line.

Panellists:

• Pete Blackshaw, Global Head of Digital & Social Media, Nestle

• Harry Davies, Head of Product and Solutions Strategy UK, Google

• Rebecca Powell, VP Global Marketing, Ebuzzing

• Phillippe Perreaux, CEO, rightclearing

Moderator:

• Christer Holloman, Author of Social Media MBA

This year has witnessed an explosion in the popularity of online video. But it has also seen a shift in the way we consume that content. According to a recent report from Unruly Media, one of the more notable trends of 2011 was a significant increase in shares compared to views. In 2011, the top 20 ads generated 25 million shares, a nearly five-fold increase from 2010 levels, while the ratio of shares to views changed, too – in 2010, only one in 39 people who viewed video content went on to share it online, whereas this year that figure was one in 10. So how can brands capitalise on this paradigm shift? And what potential does social video have to help companies build a high-impact, long-term emotional connection with their audience?

Key takeaways:

• Best practice: what are the panel’s top tips on creating a successful viral video?

• Virality versus views: is the number of times a video is passed on and shared a better metric than the total number of eyeballs reached?

• Connected TV: what challenges/opportunities does the convergence of TV, online and social channels present to marketing teams?

The way your customers find and use your digital entities is constantly changing – and will continue to do so as the digital industry evolves and grows. So how do you know what's working and how to spend in the correct channels? Using some pretty pictures and a case study from a large travel client, TagMan's Chief Revenue Officer and co-founder Jon Baron will show you how attribution can revolutionise the way you view and interpret the data that will help you achieve your digital marketing goals.

You've launched a social media campaign, and you've encouraged thousands of customer interactions – likes, follows, tweets, shares, whatever. And you've collected user-generated content such as reviews, photos, videos, questions, answers and product recommendations. Great work. You may feel like your job is done, you might even be pleasantly surprised by your success.

In actual fact, provoking social interactions with your brand is only the start; the secret is the "Multiplier Effect." Each time a piece of customer-created content is leveraged – externally or within your organisation – your return is multiplied. You simply need to understand how and where these interactions should be used.

See real-world examples of how top brands such as Domino's Pizza, Samsung and New Balance are squeezing more from what they already have: loyal and engaged customers willing to speak their mind.

In this hands-on workshop session, Laust Sondergaard invites attendees to roll-up their sleeves and plan digital campaigns for leading brands that begin to use behavioural targeting and respond to feedback provided by web visitors – to guide each individual online journey. Laust will explain the importance of attaching engagement value to each visitor interaction, to help brands focus more on digital activities that result in customer engagement and sales conversion. He will also demonstrate ‘live’ how digital marketing platforms are cutting out time and complexity to help marketers plan, manage and evaluate marketing campaigns.

Key takeaways:

• Understand how social media is changing the game for marketers, and why a personalized approach is proving more appealing to consumers

• Learn how to reap the benefits of loyal customers willing to act as advocates

Come and find out why gaming is now the number two online activity in terms of hours spent online, second only to time spent on social networks and surpassing time spent on emails.

Key takeaways:

• 50% of Facebook logins are to play social games

• The recent IAB research 'Gaming Britain: A nation united by Digital Play' states that 83% of the UK Population plays online games

• Social gaming ethos is essentially 'task and reward'. Advertising is delivered in exactly the same way

• Gaming is a truly immersive medium – delivering, according to the IAB research, unparalleled engagment levels versus other mainstream media

• Social gaming has something for everyone – from mums migrating their offline habits to games such as suduko to lads looking for a sport or shoot-em-up fix

The last 18 months have seen a revolution in how display media is traded online. Real-time bidding is now having an impact on the video world as well and, in an industry where demand is high and supply low, price is being dictated by how much competition there is for inventory rather than fixing a price.

As more and more people fast forward through ads on TV, sophisticated campaign tracking of view-through rates, the ability to overlay audience targeting and the flexibility of shifting budget in real-time is attracting more and more brand advertisers. Find out why in this fascinating workshop.

Key takeaways:

• Learn about the ‘TV-isation’ of online video

• Discover why apps are becoming the new TV, and why we are witnessing an audience shift as viewers become gamers

• Understand which video metrics deliver the highest success, as well as how to manage and optimise campaigns in real-time

What are the biggest challenges for marketers over the next 12 months? And more importantly, how should marketers respond? From the rise of big data to building and maintaining brand fidelity, from ensuring cross-channel consistency to marketing in the age of SoLoMo, marketers face a host of game-changing challenges over the coming year. Join Neolane's Martin Smith for a fascinating tour of today's most critical marketing pain points – as well as practical advice on how to address them, using case studies from some of the leading brands around.

Key takeaways:

• Addressing the Big Data challenge for marketers

• Exploiting next generation loyalty management

• SoLoMo: dealing with the convergence of social, local and mobile

• The rise of conversational marketing: from monologue to dialogue

• Content marketing: controlling real-time cross-channel message consistency

Video remains one of the most effective media for online brand building – and YouTube videos are a cheap, fun and effective way to market your business. Indeed, YouTube’s not just a forum for Star Wars parodists, finger-biting babies and skateboarding pets; it can also be a highly effective business tool – if used correctly. You can use it to show off your expertise, share knowledge, market your products and connect with customers, colleagues and prospects. But how do you do this effectively in a world awash with content?

Key takeaways:

• Learn how to use web videos to reach out to current and potential customers and build more engaged relationships with your client base

• Understand how to make your video stand out from the crowd

• Take advantage of the analytics and demographics information that YouTube offers

One of the main aims of companies using Facebook for business is generating awareness. The allure of Facebook is persuasive: direct connections with previously unreachable customers and prospects, meaning greater exposure and more business opportunities – all without the enormous costs of traditional marketing. But with a raft of recent changes and with more to come, staying abreast of which approaches will generate the best results for your business can be tough. This masterclass presentation will show you the route to success.

Key takeaways:

• Discover how to use Facebook to attract and engage quality customers, and quickly grow your business

• Learn how to grow a loyal Facebook following via news feed optimisation, creative promotions and Facebook advertising

• Hear how successful businesses in both B2B and B2C markets have built effective Facebook pages and communities – and how you can achieve similar results using new tools such as Timeline and Subscribe

As online video prepares to outpace all other media growth and content stretches over multiple connected screens in and out of the home, the ever-changing consumer platforms will cause a huge disruption to the advertising ecosystem. Shifts in viewing habits and interaction capabilities will fuel a cataclysmic change in buying, distributing, targeting and measuring premium video content that will cause all media stakeholders to rethink consumer engagement. Technology advancements such as automatic content recognition (ACR) may hold the key to a new breed of advertising effectiveness, but will equally drive change in cross-channel media strategy. In this interactive workshop, Dean Donaldson will explore the impact video will have – from industry challenges to business opportunities for marketers seeking to navigate the evolution of three screens and beyond.

Key takeaways:

• Understand how to capitalise on the disruption caused by the advent of multi-screen viewing, rather than be challenged by it

• Learn how to take a more focused approach to measuring the effectiveness of online video

• Discover how changes to the online video ecosystem are driving wider changes in cross-channel media strategies, and what opportunities this opens up for marketers

In this fascinating introduction to world-class interactive marketing communities, learn how some of the world’s leading brands – such as Heinz, Unilever and Heineken – are using communities to engage customers and transform their marketing strategies. Join Telligent's Jens Vang Lauridsen and Tom De Ruyck from InSites Consulting to discover the true value of customer engagement.

Key takeaways:

• Increase revenue by using online communities for reviews, recommendations and content that drives purchasing decisions

• Gain customer insights with market research online communities (MROCs) for a social twist on research that saves you time and money

• Build brand loyalty by creating fun, interactive online communities to engage fans and hosting private, members-only communities for VIPs

• Integrate marketing channels by interacting with customers on and off domain and driving conversations to a branded community that you own

• Rally brand advocates by empowering fans to share brand updates with friends directly to social networks like Twitter and Facebook, and identify influencers by listening to your customers’ online conversations and then rewarding them

Want to learn how to tap into your collaborators’ knowledge to improve customer loyalty and generate demand? During this session, you will discover how to cash in on your company’s expertise to engage with your audiences (on the web, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), develop brand preference, gather valuable data from your customers, manage your (e)-reputation, bring more traffic to your site and drive additional sales.

Key takeaways:

• Explore real-life business case studies of successful Expert Q&As

• Discover key success factors when putting your expertise forward, engaging with your audiences

• Take home easy-to-follow guidelines to implement your own ‘Ask the Experts’ operation

The session will elaborate on how to drive sales in display by leveraging real time advertising and next generation dynamic retargeting on ad exchanges. Bjorn will give insights and examples on how to best leverage the surge of ad exchanges and how to make display perform like search.

iPitch is an exciting session, new for 2012. Six participants have six minutes each to deliver a compelling presentation on a new technology, way of working or innovative idea to the entire delegation, using the most imaginative means possible – video, audio, technology, audience participation, props – after which they’ll be grilled by our panel of experts and take questions from the floor. The panel and audience is then asked to vote for their favourite.

Featuring:

• Bryan Tookey, COO, Brandwatch

• Richard Jones, CEO, EngageSciences

• Piotr Pawlak, Founder, Fun & Mobile

• Jeremy Radcliffe, Director, Kantar Media Compete

• Amy Lee, Creative Strategy Director, & Emmanuel Carraud, CEO, Magic Solver

• Tash Whitmey, CEO, EHS 4D

Panellists:

• Georgios Kolovos, European Marketing Director, GE Capital

• Joshua Graff, Director Marketing Solutions EMEA, Linkedin

• Delphine Remy-Boutang, WW Social Media Marketing Director, IBM

• Azeem Azar, CEO, Peer Index

• Marc Munier, Commercial Director, Pure360

Moderator:

• Thomas Brown, Head of Insights, Chartered Institute of Marketing

Marketing ROI has become so important that no one questions its validity. But the truth is, marketing will never produce an ROI – because ROI is not what most people think it is. People who use the term ROI see marketing as something to buy. But smart companies see marketing as an integral part of doing business – a necessity no less important than the company email system, their computers or their office lease. Marketing activity is not an investment; it is an expense. So is it time you embraced a new definition of marketing success? And what does this mean for your measurement, analysis and monetization strategies? In this compelling panel discussion, we’ll ask leading brands and experts what marketing success means for them – how they track it, how they analyse it, and what metrics (and terminology) they use to define it – and identify some practical strategies for measuring marketing value.

Social media is a global phenomenon and companies small and large are finding that they're being thrust into it, whether they want to or not. For companies that have a global presence, it can be difficult to gain trust, attention and remain consistent across borders. Ford Motor Company has been recognised as a leader with its social media efforts, but how has the automotive giant made it possible to keep a comprehensive strategy across the six continents on which it does business?

Key takeaways:

• Insights on some universal marketplace issues affecting brands today

• The framework for how Ford Motor Company has dealt with this at a global level

• Case studies of Ford's success with recent product launches