Marketing Conference: BCAMA Vision 2012 in Review

I just got back from the BCAMA Vision Marketing Conference held at the Westin Bayshore in Vancouver. It was a great event and I thought I would share some of the highlights from it with you.

The day was broken down into talks given by successful marketers from across Canada and the US, including a panel discussion and a comedy break.

Shane Gibson (the event MC), Steve Kim and Lindsay Smith opened up the day with an introduction about the event and this year’s theme: Liquid Content.

Leonard Brody

Leonard is a VC, business executive and author. He gave a great talk looking at the Myth of Generations.

Some key points:

• 5 year plans suck. Most businesses should be focused on what’s happening within the next 365 days or less.
• More content is being created now each year than what was created in the last 3000 years combined.
• People say “humans haven’t changed”. Wrong. Human behaviour has changed.
• Don’t focus on just the “how” of social media and online activities. Consider the “why” in why are we doing this?
• The web allows millions to speak to millions at low to no cost.
• The web destroys the idea that we can “predict the future by looking at the past.”
• Marketers challenge is that time is shrinking.
• The next major economic/financial crash will be within 8 years of 2008.
• By 2015, 50% of all marriages will originate by meeting online.
• People are more trusting with their virual IDs than they are with their IDs in the physical vs. online world.
• The notion of ‘retirement’ is no longer valid. People are talking less and less about it.
• Education needs to shift. 36% of US students will drop out of school this year.
• Digging into the data organizations have is a big opportunity.
• Social media is not marketing, it is all about community.
• Customer service will take over sales as a high-paid job position.

Marketing is everything you do not see, it’s what you feel.”

Terry McBride

Terry is the CEO of Nettwerk Music and YYoga. He calmed the room down by dicussing the Fluidity of Music to Yoga and how emotions are connected to brands.

Some key points:

• The music business will grow 3-15% over the next decade.
• Music will all be streaming.
• YYoga = Why Yoga
• Being wrong is okay at all levels of the company.
• Follow your intuition, listen to your gut.
• Customer service is critical.
• Instead of adding more to your marketing, review what is wrong and see what you can take away.
• Know your customers culture code.

Fredrik Carlstrom

Fredrik is the CEO of C&CO and Hyper Island. He brought his experience in advertising and branding to the forefront and dicussed Building Brand Promises.

Companies that have a bigger purpose than making money actually make more money.”

Some key points:

• In the next decade 3/4 of companies will have to redifine their business to continue growing.
• To remain profitable, companies will need to shift their business.
• Brands face danger by an attack from a superior (company) model.
• Another danger is the evaporation of a company’s differentiation.
• Finding good talent and retaining them is still hard.
• Agencies need to provide more (R&D and Media).

Bruce Philip

Bruce has been a brand consultant to Fortune 500 companies across the world and is hte author of Consumer Republic – which was the subject of his presentation.

Some key points:

• The biggest issue CMOs face is managing their brand across platforms and vendors.
• The story of Levis jeans.
• Brands are a social language.
• Consumers give it meaning.
• Choise is empowering.
• Brands are judged by the pattern of their behaviour.
• Twitter is doing well, but has lots of room to grow (or fail). It’s currently at 9% of the US population. However, Beta Max was at 25% before it died.

A brand is not what it says, it is what it does.”

Panel Discussion

The panel discussion included Wayne Carrigan from Station X, Steve Johnston from Hootsuite, Mark Nicholson from ING Direct and Kory Klem from Movember.

Some key points:

• I missed some of this panel as I had to run out and get a boost of java to keep going and stay focused 🙂
• Lots of love for Pinterest.
• Discussion around the KPIs of social media. Each company will have different ones they use.
• Mobile traffic is definitely increasing.
• Microsoft is coming out with a new social network So.cl – keep an eye out.
• Google+ may not be taking off, but it has implications for orgranic and paid search.

In addition to several breaks and a great lunch provided, BCAMA also had Erica Sigurdson put on some comedy for the attendees. Some good laughs could be heard.

Jon Ferrara

Jon was the final speaker at Vision 2012. He founded Goldmine CRM which he sold many years ago. He did nicely on the sale and took 10 years off to raise his kinds. His latest project is Nimble, dubbed a social CRM.

Some key points:

• Discussed how he got Goldmine started and built the business.
• 60% of purchases these days are made without ever talking to a sales person.
• We need to educate, enchant, engage and embrace customers.
• Shared some tools to check out: Knowem, Tweetreach, Zite and Social Mention.
• The rest of Jon’s talk looked at his Nimble product.

A busy day indeed. The after party was a great place to connect with speakers and other marketers and business owners.

For more detalis, and likely more media about this year’s event check out the BCAMA website.