MUISS: Digital Marketing + Advertising

On March 19th, 2014 the Marquette University Diederich College of Communication worked together with Laughlin Constable to put on the second annual Digital Marketing + Advertising Summit as a part of the Insight Summit Series. The other events include PR + Social Media and Corporate Communications (coming up in April).

I was lucky enough to attend as well as be a part of this event. I went in representing Marquette University as a student and Keystone Click as a marketing (pseudo-)professional.

There were 14 total presentations throughout the day as well as a panel discussion targeted to undergraduate students or recent grads to give career advice. There were at least two presentations going at once in adjacent rooms at all times. Attendees had to pick and choose between presentations all day, not an easy feat when each one has invaluable information. You can find the full schedule on the MUISS website.

I was able to attend 5 of those 15 presentations.

Keynote: The Digital Divide

We started off the event with a Keynote by Paul Brienza and Sean Barry from Laughlin Constable, discussing the connection between marketing, technology, and mankind and the fact that there is a gap that needs bridging. Only time will tell what the secret to building that bridge will be. Marketing, technology, and humankind are constantly evolving, both separately and together. Their keynote presentation was deep, inspiring, and humorous, a great way to kick off the day.

Omnichannel Retail Experience

Next was a presentation by Harley-Davidson Motor Company eCommerce and Mobile geniuses, Chris Nelson and Britt Beck speaking on building an omnichannel retail experience, using examples from their own work with Harley-Davidson. I was fortunate enough to be able to introduce these two and make a (hopefully lasting) connection. Both Britt and Chris talked about the transition from Bricks to Clicks and then back again. The goal was to get in-store customers to go online and to bring online customers in-store. Their Project Rushmore initiative showed great results and it was very interesting to get a peek at the behind the scenes efforts there.

User Experience

During the next session, I was able to hear from Brady Pierzchalski from Laughlin Constable. Pierzchalski fired us all up with a presentation on User Experience (UX). As a User Experience Strategist, Pierzchalski was able to tell us that UX isn’t all about making things easy on the consumer. It is about meeting the needs of the people and solving a problem. If there was one thing take away from this presentation it would be that context is key when it comes to UX. Context will give you the who, why, where, and what, it is up to you to come up with the how. Understanding context helps create needs for meeting the overall goal.

Media: Separating Fact from Fiction

The next presentation I attended was from Tom Cattapan from Turner Broadcasting. Cattapan separated media facts from fiction in a fun trivia like presentation. In a room full of media professionals and students, Cattapan challenged our knowledge of ourselves and our target markets. We dove into social TV, Netflix, and media consumption. As it turns out, Tweets do NOT equal ratings. Only a select few shows are “live tweeted” and that is mostly the younger generation. A majority of TV watchers are elderly and/or retired, and are not the ones glued to their phones during a TV program. Cattapan also cleared up the common misconception that media people do not predict trends. His exact quote was “media people are not normal”, a sentiment we all agreed with. As those who create and track media, we let consumers decide the trends and create content and messages to feed into those trends.

Tinder: Funification=Gamification

Following lunch, a majority of the college students present piled into one room to hear Jonathan Badeen, co-founder of hot commodity app Tinder. While never having been on Tinder myself (I somehow feel the need to disclose that) I have had friends who have enjoyed the benefits and have read countless amusing articles about Tinder dates gone wrong, Tinder catfishing, etc. Badeen, as could be predicted, spoke very positively about the Tinder app and spent a large majority of the time defending the intentions of the app. His main point was that “Funification = Gamification”, the goal of Tinder is to feel like you are playing a game, if something more comes out of it, a few dates or even a relationship, great!

I sadly was not able to attend the rest of the event. I would love to hear from those who were able to attend any of the final 6 presentations! Comment below with any insight or questions. And DON’T miss MUISS in the future!

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