Pete Blackshaw, Global Head of Digital & Social, Nestle
Innovation, ecommerce and digital leadership: Future-proofing Nestle
Life used to be simpler for the global FMCG but an exciting lies future ahead. “Everywhere ecommerce” and new technologies have the potential to drive growth and are disrupting the media plan. Blackshaw says that speed, agility, innovation and strong leadership are essential for Nestle to remain relevant – discover how you can be part of the world’s largest FMCGs’ transformation in 2016 and beyond
Ambarish Mitra, CEO, Blippar
AI, computer vision and the future of the brand experience
Like all the best businesses, Mitra founded augmented reality and search app Blippar in a pub after a joke about imagining the Queen of England coming to life on a £20 note. The latest evolution of computer vision and visual search has the potential to add a new richness to our window on the world and take a place in popular culture. Brands have an unprecedented opportunity to drive online sales and social engagement. By making every object ‘blippable’, Blippar can theoretically sell advertising space on anything. Hear Mitra’s big idea in this keynote from one of India’s celebrated technology entrepreneurs. 

 

John Roberts, CEO, ao.com
How can CEOs support marketing transformation?
ao.com is a British online retail success story in an intensively competitive market. Started by the charismatic Roberts in a Bolton pub for a £1 bet (another pub story at ad:tech this year!), the company was valued at £1.6 billion when it floated last year. Multiple-award winning customer experience, a slick ecommerce operation and innovative digital marketing underpin ao.com’s success. Don’t miss Roberts’ call to meet the challenges of a digital economy with a new relationship between the marketing department and boardroom.

Andrew Keen, Author, The Internet Is Not The Answer
Brands, ethics and Silicon Valley culture: Exploring the dark side of the digital economy
A seasoned Silicon Valley veteran, Keen believes that the “winnowing away” of 19th and 20th century industrial society is producing an “ever-more atomised, more fragmented, more individualised” world in which “we are all our own brands having to invent and reinvent ourselves because the old associations, the old identities are vanishing”.  The internet enables us to do this. We distribute our brands with the twist that we’re also the product. Social media creates the illusion that we want to be social; the reality is we’re selling ourselves. Or at least, we think we are: actually, it’s selling us. Are we all working for Facebook and Google now?

Thomas Malleschitz, CMO, Three in conversation with Helen McCrae, CEO, Mindshare
How are marketing and consumer trends conspiring to rewire the agency-client relationship?
Consumer, technology and media change has prompted an ongoing re-evaluation of how clients work with agencies. Today’s media plan looks significantly different to a typical one of three years ago. To quote Sir Martin Sorrell, new competitors like Google and Facebook have emerged as the agency’s ‘frenemy’. But for the foreseeable, agencies will continue to play a crucial, albeit different role. Join McCrae, Mindshare’s new CEO, and Three CMO Thomas Malleschitz talk digital disruption, future media planning and the blueprint for a new client-agency relationship.

Keith Weed, Chief Marketing Officer & Communications Officer, Unilever
Marketing for people in a multichannel world
Tech-driven marketing need not be creepy. Used in the right way, it can enable global brands to cut through the clutter of a multichannel marketing environment and drive innovative brand experiences. Led by Weed, Unilever is on a marketing transformation journey to ensure that its brands continue to connect with savvy consumers who demand personalisation, interaction and ethics. The one-to-many broadcast era is over, the age of engagement has just begun – learn how Unilever is adapting to a new marketing environment and discover its changing investment priorities.

Alex Kuhnel, COO – TGI, Kantar MediaProgrammatic direct: The next big win for agencies and publishers?‘Programmatic Direct’ will certainly rank amongst 2015’s buzz phrases but could it kick-start a spending spree? Analysts Kantar Media believe so. Alex Kuhnel, COO of Kantar’s TGI business will provide the data and rational behind the assertion that it will drive agency and publisher revenues by reducing the number of ‘mouths to feed’ in the programmatic media value chain.

Dean Aragon, CEO, Shell Brands International in conversation with Nigel Robinson, Managing Partner, MediaCom
Driving innovation on a global scale: embracing new tech and rewiring partnershipCan global corporations really innovate? Client and agency duo Dean Aragon, CEO, Shell Brands International and Nigel Robinson, Managing Partner, MediaCom, think so. This session will explore how Shell, one of the energy 6 “supermajors”, is integrating innovation and rolling it out on a global scale – a fantastic opportunity to learn how the world’s 4th largest company is evolving its investment in marketing, advertising and technology.