Social Media ROI

While many companies have achieved success with social media marketing, others struggle to measure the impact of their efforts. In such organizations, there is pressure to quantify the return on investments in social media. But traditional measures are poorly suited to the social media environment. How can we tell if our investments in social media are working? With a panel of social media experts and seasoned marketers, we will outline a new set of metrics for calculating the ROI on social media marketing. 

Mobile Marketing: What Marketers Need to Know

So what is a “check-in”, anyway? How can in-app ads, QR codes, and mobile commerce boost my company’s marketing efforts? How has mobile marketing changed the marketing and strategic landscape? Answering these and similar questions is the goal of this panel. In it, we will use real world examples to illustrate the various forms of mobile marketing, discuss its benefits and drawbacks, and find out what works and what doesn’t. 

Neuromarketing: Inside the Mind of the Consumer

Neuromarketing is a promising, though somewhat controversial, new field that involves the use of brain scanning techniques to understand and map the brain’s responses to marketing stimuli, such as product packaging and advertising, in order to identify the “buy button” – the precise area of the brain that tips the consumer’s decision making process in favor of the product or service being offered. Because much of this activity is unconscious to consumers, neuromarketing promises a deeper level of insight than traditional exploratory research techniques. The goal of this panel is to address the usefulness, efficacy, and ethics of applying neuroscience to marketing. 

Cause-Driven Marketing: The Mission & How It Resonates

You can hardly turn on the television or open a newspaper without witnessing a company's advertisements featuring its "green”, “sustainable”, or “cause" products or business practices.  In response to rapidly growing demand from consumers, the market for these products tripled between 2007 and 2008 with Nielsen predicting a marketplace of more than $400 billion in 2010.The need to be transparent and authentic in your business practices, in the new media age, is more vital than ever before. People do business with those they know, like and trust. They want to associate with those who have common interests and values. In this panel we explore what were the successes and lessons learned at major consumer product goods firms for cause driven marketing, how causes were selected and the results to their bottom lines. 

Brand Perception Turnaround: How to Do It, When to Do It, and Why

Brand perception is exactly that, perception. It is the last part of the brand equation and the one you least control. This panel explores companies that have had success in changing their brand perception, how to change it, how they managed the brand vision, and then the brand experiences that are generated from that vision -- then finally, when the brand perception started to follow. This panel will also discuss what stage they are at in the brand perception turnaround and where they are going from here.

Creating Dialogue with Consumers: Value-Co-Creation & Changing the Game

Communication and engagement are two key factors to successful marketing. The objective is to create a meaningful exchange with your customers. Today, the paradigm shift has gone from “command and control” to customer helping brands by “connecting and collaborating.” This panel explores how to stay relevant with their consumers exploring the methods and engagement they have gotten from their customers, how that has affected the brand and the way they do business.

MBA Update:
Creativity: The New Competitive Advantage
Andrew Razeghi 

All companies, in all categories, at some point, hit the wall. They stop growing and start harvesting. They don't intend to do it. It's certainly not written into their strategic plans. It just happens. Some blame success. Others blame human behavior. Regardless, complacency is Darwin's way of thinning the corporate herd. Market complacency is every innovator's advantage. But beyond complacency are a host of factors making it more and more difficult to compete. Among them: shrinking product life cycles, marketing noise, lower barriers to entry, and the emergence of global competition. As a result, it should come as no surprise that, in a recent CEO study,"creativity" ranked the #1 leadership skill of the future (source: IBM CEO Study). The question is: what does it mean to be creative? And can it be taught? In his inspiring presentation, Professor Razeghi sheds light on the cognitive and behavioral practices shared by the most creative people. If you've been tasked to "get creative" or to "innovate" but are lacking practical ways to do either, you won't want to miss this talk. 

MBA Update:
Lifestyle Branding and the Competition for Consumer Identity
Alexander Chernev 

Lifestyle brands—such as Ralph Lauren, Gucci, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Harley Davidson—play an important role in our lives by allowing us to express our values and define ourselves to the world. Lifestyle branding appeals to managers because it appears to offer a relatively easy way to address increasing product commoditization, sidestep competition, and connect with customers on a more personal level. As a result, an increasing number of traditionally functional brands, including Gillette, Dove, Puma, and even Coffee Mate, turn to lifestyle positioning. The competition for a share of consumer identity has become the new frontier of brand competition. In his presentation, Kellogg professor Alexander Chernev discusses the pros and cons of lifestyle branding. He explains why the open vistas of lifestyle branding are an illusion, and why by switching to lifestyle positioning, brands are often setting themselves up for fiercer and often much broader competition that includes not only their direct rivals but also lifestyle brands from unrelated categories.