STIMA’s annual two-day International Marketing Congress, for top-level marketers, kicked off on December 5th in Gent, Belgium. It was chock-full of innovative keynote presentations and inspiring Lunch & Learn sessions to dive deep into relevant marketing topics.

Engagor sponsored this event and tapped into the buzz to bring you 3 exciting, new insights for the upcoming year to ensure marketers are on trend in 2015.

1. Make Smarter Business Decisions With Big Data

Josh Partridge, Director EMEA at Shazam, gave an exciting speech on how marketers should leverage big data to make smarter business decisions, especially with the connected, mobile customer in mind. In 2014, we’ve seen the tides turn, and this year has proven to be a huge tipping point for mobile communication. Across the world, people have spent more time on their mobile phones than on any other device.

The absolute tip of the iceberg was Shazam’s recent, revolutionary campaign working with US singer, Demi Levato. Each time a fan heard one of her songs, they had to ‘shazam’ the song to help the fans get closer to their teen idol. Demi Levato would then decide to host a concert to promote her new album in the areas across Europe that had the highest amounts of Shazam engagement.

Why is this important for marketers? In 2015, big data will become the main point of focus in any type of marketing campaign to strive for relevancy. By leveraging this huge pool of information about your target audience, Shazam not only managed to successfully boost user engagement, they also were able to leverage extremely valuable data.

2. Stop Doing “Digital Marketing” and Try Marketing in A Digital World!

Senior Vice President of Marketing at Unilever, Marc Mathieu, has a very clear and distinct view of what the multinational consumer goods brand’s next steps should be. The brand has 3 core values and missions it wants to achieve with all of its brands: putting people first, building brand love, and unlocking the magic.

With its UK ‘All Things Hair’ campaign, Unilever translates these values by collaborating with vloggers and creating content that is entirely customer-focused. Unilever identified the most important keywords women google when finding solutions to hair care problems.

The user-generated YouTube videos feature key bloggers who provide viewers with relevant content to discover the right tips and concrete solutions to their problems. With a personalized interface, people can select their type of hair to only see the content that applies to them. At the bottom of each video, Unilever suggest a range of hair care products relevant to that type of video.

Why is this important for marketers? Digital marketing, social media marketing, channel marketing, etc. no longer exists. Marketing should no longer be put into separate boxes or departments but integrated cross-departmentally with the overall company strategy. Marketing is never a stand-alone, one-off campaign. Address the needs of your customers and provide content on their terms.

3. The Future (of Marketing) is Co-Created: Unique Ideas Work Better Together

Nilofer Merchant, writer and author based in Silicon Valley, has helped launch more than 100 products. At #STIMAimc 2014, she gave an aspirational speech on how “social” is much more than “media”. In this social era, we should move more towards smart companies that integrate social into the backbone of organizations’ business models, and pursue openness, transparency, and fluidity. She likened these companies to a herd of gazelles that move together across a savannah, and consequently, outrun the competition.

She highly believes in these 5 important principles:

• Claim your onlyness. Every individual looks at the world in a unique way. As a result, we all have unique ideas that can make a difference in both your work and private life.
• Find your community. Find people with common interests, and elaborate on your ideas.
• Chase purpose together. Work on these ideas together, and don’t lose track of your purpose.
• Be powerful with one another. Don’t get discouraged.
• Make the difference. Stand up for what you believe in, and be persistent.

Why is this important for marketers? Ideas can never be realized if you are working alone and in silos. Apply the term “social” in every situation and in every activity of your business. Especially within a social media team, encourage your employees to share new ideas, embrace them, and follow up on them.

Will we see you at #STIMAimc in 2015?

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