What Even is Marketing Today?

Personalization. Audience Engagement. Measuring conversions. Integrated funnels. Brand purpose. Customer Journey. Machine Learning. The list goes on.

All of these buzzwords are making us ask “What Even is Marketing Today?”

The Advertising Club of Edmonton and Digital Alberta are partnering for a one day conference to tackle today’s tough marketing questions.

Join us at NAIT on April 26th as we tackle purposed based branding, working with freelancers, multi-channel marketing, debunking AI, and experiential events.

This event features a keynote, 3 breakout sessions (with two different tracks) and our third annual Digital Roundtable.

The third annual Digital Roundtable features four industry experts who presents the upcoming trends in VR, AR, AI, digital marketing and social media. A panel follows to allow you to ask your most burning questions.

Breakfast and lunch will be provided.

Speakers and session titles will be added as confirmed. 

Schedule of events:

8:00AM Registration

9:00AM Breakfast Keynote

Who Can You Trust? – Dana DiTomaso, President & Partner at Kick Point

For years, those sneaky digital marketers have claimed that you can measure everything online, but it turns out that isn’t actually true. On top of that, the metrics that you’ve treated as rock solid beacons of truth are more like “truth”. What can you trust? Who can you trust? In this talk, Dana will go over the limitations and possibilities of analytics, and share ideas to improve how you collect data and use it to make decisions.

10:00AM ZGM Breakout

Track 1: Branding on Purpose – Dan King, President at ZGM and Kurt Beaudoin, Director of Storytelling at ZGM

Building brands around a core purpose is what all the cool kids are doing these days. But what does it actually mean? How do companies leverage purpose not just in the brand and marketing, but across the entire organization? And is it just for feels, or is it a long-term, sustainable business strategy that drives success? Join Dan King, President at ZGM and Kurt Beaudoin, Director of Storytelling at ZGM as they share their perspective and experience on what it means to build a truly purpose-driven brand.

Track 2: What makes a good video? – Cineflair

In this session, we’ll explore the critical (and often forgotten about) elements that drive the creation of impactful video content. Whether you are making a video with your friend who owns a great camera, in-house, or with a specialist, this session will arm you with the knowledge to make your video marketing strategy drive immediate results.

10:50 Break

11:00AM DDB Breakout

Track 1: How to Sell a Big Idea – Alana Williams, Senior Account Director at DDB 
Taking a risk on a big idea can be scary and, as champions of the process, agency par
tners are here to help clients along the journey. Learn some tips and tools to ease minds along the way.

Track 2: Machine Learning 101 – Geoff Kliza (MBA, B. Eng), Director of Amii Innovates

Heralded by many as the fourth industrial revolution, artificial intelligence has inspired countless news articles, novels, and films. With this deluge of information comes hopes and aspirations, fears and misconceptions – some justified and others not. How can we make sense of it all? Join Amii as we pull back the curtain on AI and lay a pragmatic foundation for what AI is, what it isn’t, and how you can begin to think about the place of AI in your business.

11:50AM Break

12:00PM LoKnow Breakout

Track 1: How Co-op (FCL) Leverages Data for Marketing their National Brand – Vic Huard, Executive Vice-President of FCL, and Vik Seth, President of LoKnow

Join Vic Huard, Executive Vice-President of FCL, and Vik Seth, President of LoKnow, to learn how a data-integrated marketing campaign creates higher impact for a 90 year-old organization.

Track 2: Everything is marketing is everything. – Rob Jennings, President at FKA

At some point in the last decade, marketing went meta: the story behind the campaign subsumed the campaign; the video case study about the event overtook the event. During this session, we’ll take a look at popular examples of this phenomenon and share some of our own case studies on the subject.

1:00PM Lunch

2:00PM Digital Roundtable

3:00PM Wrap up

Our venue is proudly sponsored by NAIT and our creative is provided by Studio Hazel. This event’s media sponsor is PostMedia.

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