Top 5 reasons to attend the Digiday Brand Summit

Learn to think like a startup
We will kick off the Summit with a session revisiting last year’s theme — what brands can learn from startups. Dave Knox, the CMO of Razorfish, will sit with Percolate co-founder Noah Brier and a couple of brand marketers to explore which effective strategies have been borrowed from the startup community. James Cooper, head of creative for Betaworks, detailed five lessons he learned while working with five major startups. This was one of our favorites:

The case studies
Over two-and-a-half days, DBS attendees will be presented with case studies from the following top brands: Wellpoint, Cisco, General Mills, Hardee’s, Mondelez, AMEX, Betabrand, Hasbro, GE, Urban Outfitters and more. Katrina Craigwell, GE’s global manager of digital marketing, for example will share the story behind GE’s #6SecondScience Fair Vines, winner of “Best in Show” at Digiday’s 2014 Video Awards.

The brand workshop
After a morning of case studies, you will join your fellow DBS attendees to get beyond the headlines and turn insights into action. This session, hosted by Digiday’s editor-in-chief Brian Morrissey and industry leader Matt Spiegel, will be an interactive dialogue between attendees, speakers and hosts where the most important voices are yours. Brian and Matt will engage attendees by comparing brand strategies and discussing implementation at their own companies. 

The brand hack
DBS attendees who choose to participate will be broken into teams and presented with a brand business challenge to solve. On the afternoon of April 28, teams comprising creatives, strategists, technologists and brand marketers will collaborate to determine how their collective skills and technologies can solve the challenge. Teams will present in front of a panel of judges, and the best ideas will win. Brands got some great ideas out of the hack last time and even went home with some cool toys:

The 50/50 speaker gender split
In the all-too-male world of digital media, we’ve got more women than men speaking in editorial sessions at DBS. The speaker lineup includes: J. Kate Scott, social media manager for Overstock.com, Ginny McCormick, senior director of global marketing for Hasbro, Moira Gregonis, senior marketing manager for Urban Outfitters, Eliza Esquivel, VP Global Brand Strategy for Mondelez, Katrina Craigwell, global manager of digital marketing for GE, Karen Snell, digital content lead for Cisco, Mona Hamouly, vp of social media for AMEX and Kelly Colbert, Staff Vice President, Advertising & Social Media for WellPoint.

Need more reasons to attend the Digiday Brand Summit? For starters, it’s in Nashville. If that’s not enough, be sure to check out the site here and read attendee tweets from last year’s Summit here. We hope to see you there.

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