Winning brand Strategy
Dr Carla Enslin – Co-founder & Head of Strategy: Vega School

Dr Carla Enslin is one of the founding members of Vega School and Heads up Strategy as well as New Business Development for the group. Carla’s interest and experience include everything from brand strategy, the design and implementation of brand identity systems and contact strategies. She serves on the Brand Africa Council, is a Research Associate at the University of Stellenbosch Business School and a Teaching Fellow at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business. Carla is riveting and perspective-bending in her approach to education. Her enthusiasm for branding is absolutely contagious.

Innovating for Africa
Preetesh Sewraj - CEO & Chief Innovation Analyst of Product of the Year

In this session we will discuss the importance of innovation throughout the value chain. We will discuss trends in brand innovation and how it can be used in marketing.
Preetesh Sewraj is the CEO & Chief Innovation Analyst of Product of the Year in South Africa and was instrumental in bringing this consumer-voted for award for innovation to this country. With a background in consumer products, having worked at Proctor & Gamble and Reckitt Benckiser, Sewraj became passionate about brand experimentation, and developed a lively curiosity about the origins of products. Sewraj has unique insights into the nexus between the South African consumer market and global trends in innovation.

Sewraj holds a Bachelor of Social Sciences from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and has augmented his qualifications with numerous marketing, communications and management courses.

What is Great Creative? 
Rita Doherty, Chief Strategy Office at FCB Africa

Marketers often have to create or evaluate creative work. But most of us don’t know how to evaluate creativity, and end up using gut feeling based on personal preferences, lowest-common-denominator-consensus or even deadlines to make the choice for us. Rita Doherty, Chief Strategy Officer for IPG South Africa, has made it her mission to demystify creative and make it easier for everyone, whether you work in the creative department or not, to recognise great creative work that maximises sales results. Her thinking is based on scientific evidence from neuroscience, behavioural economics and scientific marketing. Come and find out how to make choosing creative, not just easier, but more fun too.

Rita Doherty is Chief Strategic Officer for FCB Africa and the Strategic Director of FCB Johannesburg. She works across a vast array of brands, including SA’s no 1. and No. 2 most loved brands – KOO and Coke. She has won six Apex awards, and been part of the winning leadership team that has seen FCB win Sunday Times Brand Agency of the Year two years in a row. Rita majored in Literature and Philosophy, with a post-graduate degree in Literature and an MBA with cum laude dissertation. She is currently writing a marketing book called THE BIG EASY which brings together the marketing laws of Ehrenberg-Bass with the insights from Behavioural Economics, but in a way that is easy to understand and apply. Half the book is very obvious; and the other half is very heretical.

Lead Magnets 101 - How to create Lead Magnets that get results
Winston Nolan – Author & Sales Trainer
Marketing that does not generate leads is marketing that has failed! However, it has never been more difficult and more expensive to generate good leads like is today. Companies need to also balance quality Vs quality dynamics. All leads are not created equal. Enter the Lead Magnet.

The Lead Magnet is one of the most powerful tools a business can use to achieve growth, especially via digital platforms. If your company does not have at least one Lead Magnet you are far behind. The best companies have multiple. In this presentation Winston will explore the anatomy of a good Lead Magnet, the various types of Lead Magnets a business can deploy. He will also explore best practice approaches from the vantage point of working with dozens of clients in South Africa and abroad.  

Winston's passion is business growth and expansion. He has over 15 years' experience in sales and marketing and is the founder of The Sales Machine. Winston built his first multi-million-dollar business at the age 26. Now thirty four he has been instrumental in the growth of hundreds of companies - large and small by way of developing and implementing business growth plans. He is speaker, author, trainer and business growth expert.   

PR, brand and experiential marketing
Darren Sandras – Director of Marketing and Communications: One-eyed Jack Agency

Is there still a place for “traditional” PR in today’s marketing mix? In this presentation, Darren discusses the changing landscape of PR in brand and experiential marketing, social PR and the power of new media. We take a fresh look at earned media vs paid media and the role of the influencer in PR. Using real South African case studies, we demonstrate the challenges available to and opportunities facing the PR sector in SA and share tips, tricks and hard-won PR experience.

How to get daily quality leads from LinkedIn
Matt Clark
Many businesses are frustrated about the lack of predictable results and success when using social networking platforms such as LinkedIn. In this practical presentation, Matt reveals how to get 2-5 quality leads per day from LinkedIn without paying for ads.

Affiliate marketing as important component of the media mix
Jonathan Miller [jonathan@forgemedia.biz]

Affiliate Marketing is a component of the media mix, but most clients digital marketing strategies are far more comprehensive. Through a four pillar process leveraging Brand, Strategy, Technology, Media, Jonathan shows companies how to bring together these elements to create comprehensive, performance based digitally driven marketing strategies.

Delegates will learn how to win the battle for engagement & customer loyalty, creating different brand personas for different digital audiences, secrets for audience message segmentation and landing page design, how to build the perfect audience retargeting engine, strategies for creating sales through marketing automation and how to implement ROI measurement and performance based media buying.

Jonathan Miller is a business & marketing strategist, self-taught developer, a public speaker & an expert on Performance Marketing. He is a toolmaker, loves building software technologies and services for the performance marketing industry. His patents in the field have been incorporated into leading analytics and tracking products & he recently sold a performance marketing patent to Google. His focus is digital centered marketing and creating go-to-market strategies. He is the founder & CEO of Forge Media Investments.

The future of video content
Marcus von Geyso and Diogo Mendonca, Blacksmith Collective

Content has never been in more demand than it is today, with everyone and everything being inundated with information, it is important to cut through the clutter and make sure your message sticks. Add in low attention spans and consumer tech savvy, video content is not just about a good end product, but it needs to be something that is integrated into the consumer’s lifestyle and everyday life, for it to have meaning. Almost like it’s an extension or a utility that is used on a daily basis.

In this presentation Marcus and Diogo will focus on Video Production process, merge and integration of technology and content, using the correct platforms and what marketers can look forward to in the future.

Marcus von Geyso and Diogo Mendonca launched Blacksmith Collective, a creative collective specialising in media production, creative consulting and innovative tech applications.  The young dynamic duo has already racked up quite a CV having worked with an array of international clients. On this very special two year mark, Blacksmith Collective has expanded its presence across South Africa!

Social Media Strategy
Judith Ancketill - Comma Marketing

We know how much time and effort it takes to create content that is engaging and grabs the attention of your potential customer.  You want them to read or watch it, understand it and explore your product or service offering in more detail!  It’s fine to post on various channels such as Instagram and Facebook, but how do we turn our efforts into leads and conversions?  We will talk about how to maximise your content, in an effort to reach as many potential customers as possible.  And we will share some of our favourite tools to help you do this!

Comma marketing has worked with small and mid-market companies to guide them on how to grow their businesses from a strategic position that communicates their USP’s, elevates their brand and crafts their strategy to fit into the world of their customer. Business Owner, Judith Ancketill has worked in and with corporate companies and is passionate about creating the link between brand management, the customer and lead generation.

Social Media: Beyond the Content Plan
Mike Saunders – Author & Founder: Digitlab

Content plans definitely have their place in the eco-system of a social media strategy, however, for many it’s become the single essence of their online presence and this is concerning. Content plans push us towards distribution thinking. Distribution thinking does not build trust, which is the bedrock of good relationships. The power of social media is not in likes and comments. The power in social media is that it builds relationships. In this presentation Mike shares a few ways that we can break beyond the content plan in our social media strategy and start making the most of this incredible technology that our customers use every single day.

Mike Saunders is the CEO of DigitLab, a digital marketing and social media agency, as well as a author, change agent and keynote speaker. His interest lies in how people use technology, believing that technology is only useful if people use it to build value into their lives. As international keynote speaker, Mike has worked with some of the world’s most prestigious organisations including KPMG, Vodacom, IBM, Toyota and Mr Price. Along with his experience in business, Mike has also contributed to leadership programmes for Gordon’s Institute of Business (GIBS).

Return-on-Experience: Is ROE the new ROI?
Estelle Nagel: Vertical & Brand Marketing: Gumtree SA

There is a renewed focus on experience marketing, but are you being smart with your spending? ROE (Return-on-Experience) is a formula for quantifying the success of an experience, proving the direct impact of a brand experience on a customer.

Estelle is the vertical and brand marketing manager at Gumtree.co.za, an eBay company. She is a passionate and motivated professional marketer with 7+ years’ marketing and PR experience gained within an ever changing environment. She is a highly adaptable marketer, with an excellent eye for new business and thorough understanding of a variety of industries. She loves technology and the online space.

CX for Marketing
Sarah Dexter - CEO at MullenLowe SA

In this presentation we learn how experience design holistically integrates objectives with all brand touch points, including many that brands often forget about.  Examples will be used to demonstrate how to create the scaffolding on which great creative and communication is built to optimize consumer engagement.

Sarah Dexter was awarded ‘Most outstanding business graduate’ at the Nottingham Trent University of Business together with a First Class Honours Degree. The first fulltime job she took on was with Research International in the advertising and media division. Having performed exceptionally well she was sent to Durban to run the Unilever tracking studies. The successes of her pet project OIL, a brand and research consultancy within the MullenLowe Group, has earned her the title of CEO at MullenLowe SA. Sarah chairs the Education Portfolio of the ACA and speaks at regular industry forums.

Relevance and Efficacy of OOH within the marketing mix
Howard Lonstein - Marketing Manager: Outdoor Network and Global Out of Home Media (PMG)

Out of Home media is an important part of the marketing mix. In this presentation we discuss the relevance of OOH in a digital landscape and discuss the importance of audience, placement, frequency, message assimilation and ROI.

Howard Lonstein is the Marketing Manager at Outdoor Network and Global Out of Home Media (Africa), which are divisions of Provantage Media Group (PMG), one of the biggest OOH (Out of Home) Media companies in SA. His experience in marketing, advertising and promotional strategies and planning, makes him an expert in the out of home arena.