Digital Pulse Summit 2013: Highlights
Digital Clarity Group hosted the first-ever Digital Pulse Summit in Boston on October 16 – 17. Business leaders, digital marketers, customer experience champions, content marketing strategists, IT professionals, and marketing technologists came together for two days of workshops, inspirational keynotes, focused sessions and networking. Conference attendees sought a greater knowledge and understanding of the digital disruption that’s changing everything about attracting, engaging, and satisfying customers.
DCG’s team of analysts took the stage to discuss the Customer Experience Management (CEM) imperative, putting big data to work by thinking small, and the acceleration of consumer gratification (or was that zombification?).
Other highlights include:
Ray Velez, CTO of Razorfish discussed strategies for addressing the friction that naturally occurs when marketing, technology, and business converge.
Author Andrew Davis (Brandscaping: Unleashing the Power of Partnerships) described four stages of customer engagement using Domino’s Pizza as a case study.
In his special-guest appearance, movie director Lee Daniels threw away his presentation script and spoke warmly and movingly about storytelling and media.
Key takeaways for attendees included:
Effective CEM is a challenging, but worthwhile goal for today’s business leaders. It’s easy to become overwhelmed by the variety of tools and technologies that allow for greater insight into customers’ demographics, preferences and activities. But as many of the conference speakers noted, striving towards the “ultimate” customer experience will lead to increased loyalty, better service and a more engaged customer base.
The role of today’s customer experience professionals is being redefined by technology. As Jason Stewart of ANNUITAS pointed out, the CMO will spend more on IT than the CIO by 2017. Also, Mike Lundgren of VML noted that the next 2 billion people online will be mobile and that more people have access to smartphones than toothbrushes or toilets. These trends are giving birth to a new breed of customer experience professionals: the marketing technologist.
A special thanks to all speakers who joined us for this event and the great presentations they delivered (listed below):
Marketing is Commerce, Commerce is Marketing
Ray Velez, Global Chief Technology Officer, Razorfish
Once More Into the Breach: A Report From the Front Lines of CEM
Randy Woods, President and Co-founder, Non-Linear Creations
Marketing from the Box Back: Four Stages of Customer Engagement
Andrew Davis, Author of Brandscaping
People, Process, and Technology: The Rise of the Marketing Technologist
Jason Stewart, Content Strategist, ANNUITAS
Who’s Afraid of CEM? — A Panel Discussion
Cathy McKnight, Partner and Principal Analyst, Digital Clarity Group; Navin Nagiah, CEO, DNN, Martin Coady, Managing Director Technology, VML
Why CEM Makes Governance Even More Important
Lisa Welchman, Founding Partner, Welchman Pierpoint
What’s Next? The Forces Shaping the Web
Mike Lundgren, Director of Innovation Strategy, VML
How Top Brands Use Transmedia to Design Great Consumer Experiences — A 1-on-1 Conversation
Loie Maxwell, Former VP Global Creative, Starbucks and Allen Bonde, Digital Clarity Group
World War C: How to Survive and Thrive in a World of Fast Moving Consumers
Robert Rose, Partner and Senior Analyst and Tim Walters, Partner and Principal Analyst, Digital Clarity Group
Omnichannel Content Excellence: A 1-on-1 Conversation
Kevin Cochrane, CMO, OpenText and Scott Liewehr, Digital Clarity Group
COPEing Mechanisms: The Promise and Peril of “Create Once Publish Everywhere” in Practice
Deane Barker, Business Development Director, Blend Interactive
Generation Game: CIO and CMO Have to Get Their Act Together
Sonja Wraith, VP Marketing, Hippo
Marketing with Mobile in Mind: Its Effect on Social & Content Marketing
Troy Brown, Senior Vice President, MSL Group
Building the Right Processes for Marketing Operations
Seth Gottlieb, Chief Marketing Technologist, Lionbridge
Getting from Web Sites to Experience Strategy – The Role of Delight
Jeff Cram, Chief Strategy Officer, ISITE Design
Building Your Personal Brand Through Inbound Marketing
Dorie Clark, Marketing Strategist, Forbes Contributor, and HBR Author
Special thanks also to platinum sponsor OpenText, our gold sponsors and exhibitors, and media partners for their support.