Presentation Abstracts

BrandSmart 2008 is poised to be one of the best conferences yet. BrandSmart is a unique combination of presentation, panel and workshop-style formats. Now in its sixth year, the 2008 conference focuses on "Thought Leadership from the Edge." The following abstracts outline the content-rich thought leadership that will delivered throughout the day.

TUCK SCHOOL OF BUSINESS, DARTMOUTH — OPENING KEYNOTE
Hitting the Branding Sweetspot: How to Best Manage Marketing's Tradeoffs

One of the major challenges in building and managing strong brands are the many strategic and tactical marketing trade-offs that exist. Successfully developing and implementing marketing programs and activities for brands often requires that marketers overcome conflicting objectives and realities in the marketplace. This presentation offers marketers concrete guidelines and suggestions as to how they can develop "win-win" competitive brand positions and integrated channel and communication strategies for enduring brand success.

Kevin Lane Keller
E.B. Osborn Professor of Marketing
Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth MILLER BREWING COMPANY
Brand Co-Creation: Are You Sharing Brand Management with Your Consumers?

The digital age is upon us. And while all the reports are about shifting spend, the REAL story is about shifting power. Are you in control of your Brands? Even if you’d like to think so, you’re not! Jackie Woodward will lead an interactive session on the learnings that the Miller Brewing Company has seen in wikipedia, social networking and other forward-looking digital media efforts.

Jackie Woodward
Vice President, Media and Marketing Services
Miller Brewing Company THINKTOPIA
Primal Branding: Sell It to Someone Who Cares

While it’s easy to explain how Coke has become a brand after 100 years of marketing, it’s inexplicable how brands like Starbucks or Google have become brands in a fraction of that time, without even advertising. In fact, why do we care about some products and services, but not about others? Patrick Hanlon explains how brands are belief systems that attract others who want to believe. Those who believe, belong and feel they are members of a grand (and often global) community. Primal Branding is not just descriptive, it is prescriptive and outlines how you can create such a community—call them your consumer loyalists, advocates or just your best customers—that prefers you above all others. This unique and revelatory approach is being applied all over the world, including in emerging markets like Russia and China.

Patrick Hanlon
CEO, Thinktopia
Author, Primal Branding

PANEL DISCUSSION
Real World Stories from the Trenches

Moderated by opening keynote, Dr. Kevin Lane Keller, this panel of marketing and branding thought leaders from United, Motorola, Nuveen Investments and Sara Lee will provide a "from the trenches" senior management perspective on how today’s trends and economic pressures impact current and future brand strategy. DIGITAS
The Age of Liquid Media

Being a brand marketer today is different than it was yesterday. We’re operating in a different media environment, with savvy, jaded customers, in a transparent world with endless choice and low transaction costs. Today, customers judge a brand by what it does, not by what it says it is. Digital has fundamentally and irrevocably changed the model.

This discussion will focus on how to succeed in this new world order with transformational marketing ideas that work with the customer to understand and define the brand, create real consumer-centered value, and spread the word one raving fan at a time.

Julie Fleischer
VP/Group Director Account Planning and Innovation
DIGITAS INTERBRAND – INTERACTIVE BRANDING WORKSHOP
Building Brand Connections

Considered a buzzword among marketers, brand engagement is an enduring topic because of its critical importance to delivering the brand experience. Brand engagement can either refer to engaging internal employees or engaging external customers. Tom Agan will conduct an interactive session diving more deeply into each of these plus how they intersect. This becomes especially important when employees directly interact with customers. Consumer facing employees are the front lines of every brand. They embody the brand’s vision, mission and values and translate it into a branded experience for consumers. We’ll discuss the ways in which marketers can ensure that the branded message remains intact through out the entire consumer experience by reinforcing key brand elements with internal and front–line employees.

Tom Agan
Executive Director, Head of Consulting
Interbrand GOOGLE – CLOSING KEYNOTE
Cloud Computing and its Impact on Brands

Without even realizing it, more and more people – most of whom don't know a byte from a bite - are living their lives in the computing "cloud". They communicate there, they shop there, they play games, listen to music, watch movies, do taxes, chat with friends, apply for jobs, get news...all through cloud computing. People are living more of their lives online - in the "cloud" - and it's not just for techies.

What does this mean for brands? Are they more important, or less so? When every other person on the planet has a mobile phone and 10 hours of video get uploaded to YouTube every minute, why is it so hard to reach people? Andy Berndt, the man tasked with stewardship over the Google brand, will discuss cloud computing, how it is unleashing innovation at a historic pace, and its impact on how we think about brands.

Andy Berndt
Managing Director, Creative Lab
Google

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