5 things you need to attend at Marketing Week Live

Marketing Week Live is back at Olympia Central on the 27 and 28 April with a line-up of industry leading speakers from brands including John Lewis, Telefonica and Game, as well as our very own columnist Mark Ritson.

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The event runs over two days with a free-to-attend conference and exhibition covering all aspects of marketing from marketing tech to brand engagement. It will run alongside the Insight event, which is dedicated to data, insight and analytics.

Here we pick out our top five talks to attend.

1. Eight marketing concepts – four stupid and four stupendous

Our columnist and marketing professor Mark Ritson will be at his controversial best at Marketing Live this year with a session focused on which concepts marketers should be paying attention to and which are distracting them from their core purpose. He believes the marketing world continues to focus too much effort on the wrong issues, ignoring those that offer the most value.

Topics up for discussion include customer journey mapping, digital marketing, CSR, brand tracking, brand purpose, zero base budgeting and virtual reality. You’ll have to attend the session to find out which areas fall into the value category and which are just a distraction.

Details
Stage: Centre
Date: Thursday, 28 April – Day 2
Time: 4.15pm

2. How Carphone Warehouse is building trust through customer experience

Since Dixons Retail merged with Carphone Warehouse the two brands have gone from strength to strength. The latest financial results show like-for-like sales were up by 5% over the Christmas trading period – the 10 weeks ended 9 January – a boost that boss Sebastian James has attributed in part to staff being incentivised based on customer satisfaction, not just sales.

At Marketing Week Live, the brand’s head of customer experience Katy Minson will talk through what customer experience means for Carphone Warehouse, the role of trust and how important it is to improving brand integrity. She will also share some thoughts on what the future holds.

Details
Stage: Marketing Week Live conference
Date: Wednesday, 27 April – Day 1
Time: Midday

3. The Game and insight success story

Game’s marketing and insight boss Fred Prego is just one of the high-profile speakers on the agenda over at the Insight conference. Here, he will discuss how data and analytics are crucial to picking the right strategic approach and correct platform for campaign success.

Prego will also speak to how to ensure you are developing your team and engaging stakeholders – from the CEO right through to store staff. And how to demonstrate ROI.

Details
Stage: Insight Excellence
Date: Thursday, 28 April – Day 2
Time: 4pm

MW Insight

You can’t conquer the world from behind your desk. Click here to register for Insight ’16 or here for more information.

4. The new face of loyalty in the era of the ‘Master Shopper’

Everyone loves a panel discussion so we’ve brought together John Lewis’ head of customer marketing Chris Bates and Anastasia Roumelioti, head of marketing at Hawes and Curtis, to discuss the current state of the loyalty industry. John Lewis launched its loyalty programme just a couple of years ago with a focus on providing exclusives and treats, rather than points, and already has more than 1.6 million members. Hawes and Curtis, meanwhile, is putting nearly 40% of its overall marketing budget this year into a new loyalty proposition that will rewards loyal customers with “an experience”.

Here, the two speakers will discuss how the industry is moving beyond the traditional loyalty card by using insight and data, new models and use of social data and the other side of loyalty – engagement.

Details
Stage: Centre Stage
Date: Wednesday, 27 April – Day 1
Time: 1.45pm

5. Bringing your insights to life – the wearables opportunity

Wearables are the talk of the marketing industry following the launch of Apple’s Watch and the growing popularity of devices from brands such as Fitbit. But what opportunity do they actually offer marketers and brands?

James Richards, head of digital services at Telefonica, will use his session to share his experience of wearables through a case study. He will talk about how brands can tap into the opportunity, managing the intimacy of wearables and how marketers can use data to deliver richer, more meaningful and more personalised customer journeys. All with the aim of answering the question: Are wearables the answer to closing the loop between physical and virtual marketing.

Details
Stage: Centre Stage
Date: Thursday, 28 April – Day 2
Time: 10.15am

MW Live

You can’t conquer the world from behind your desk. Click here to register for Marketing Week Live, or here for more information about the event.

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