My 10 Takeaways from the Digital Summit

1. Conferences = networking opportunity

Hundreds of students and professionals rubbed elbows at the Digital Summit, including participants from Laughlin Constable, Spotify, Google, Microsoft and more. Some Marquette students had the opportunity to get up close with speakers as student ambassadors by greeting them and introducing them. But anyone has the opportunity to network at a conference like the Digital Summit by sitting at a lunch table where you don’t know anyone, exchanging business cards and then following up with a LinkedIn connection or an email. You never know where it might lead.

2. Keep personality and character in brands

Laughlin Constable practices what they preach by keeping personality in brands. For example, they personalized the face of cancer in a campaign for Aurora, they’re proud of their local roots by transforming a concession stand into a mock super club, they’re unafraid to tell it like it is when it comes to beer, socializing and college student.

3. If You’re not on-demand, You’re outdated.

Spotify speaker Dan Williams nailed it when he said this. Millenials are changing the way we access things in real-time. Influential technology speaker Mary Meeker proves Dan’s statement by saying, “A major factor in the rise of these companies, is the arrival of the Millennials as the biggest generation in the workforce. Millennials’ attitudes toward work makes on-demand jobs attractive to them in a way they might not be to older workers.”

4. The future of branding= storytelling.

Susan Gunelius a contributor to forbes expands on this by saying, “Brand storytelling isn’t a new concept, but with the explosive growth of social media and content marketing, the opportunities to tell stories as part of direct and indirect brand marketing initiatives have become a strategic priority.” Laughlin and Constable uses brand story telling by keeping personality in their brands as I said above.

5. Customer Experience is Key. Don’t get kicked off the island.

Push notifcations are an extremely ineffective way to reach your customers. There is a very fine line between being useful and friendly, and completely spamming them. Customer experience is the key to success in today’s age. So, what is a good push notification? Something that is highly relevent and focused on the users needs.

6. Always be aware of what you are doing on the internet.

There is not one website that is not actively seeking what you are doing on their website. It is the basis of where they receive their data from to find out what is working and what is not working. Ever wonder why Facebook advertisements are everything you might have just previously searched on the internet? They are gearing their advertisements specific to you. Spotify can see every playlist you have ever made. This can also been known as cookie profiling. By knowing one’s habits on the internet, they can adjust advertisments to make them appealing. It is how marketers can increase their profit by further reaching their customer base.

7. Building Relationships Is the Most Important Step For Success

All content should be made with the user’s needs in the center of it! With amount of information that is out on the internet, it is nearly impossible to be the first line of contact and impact with customers and and prospects. By building relationships and having good customer experiences, there will be a lot more positive information out their for potential clients and customers to see. It is time to stop thinking like a marketer.

8. Collaborative Economy is the new norm.

Companies need to embrace the core innovations of the collaborative economy if they want to compete and thrive. The customers of startups like Car2Go, Airbnb and Etsy look a lot like the population at large — and that their reasons for using on demand and peer-to-peer services predicted long-term growth. The companies that thrive in this new world will be ones that not only recognize its risks, but embrace its opportunities.

9. Media shapes our lives. Sometimes we don’t even realize it.

Whether you realize or not, media is constantly shaping both your consumer behavior and daily routine. We have playlists for every single type of mood we are in or to match different tasks of our daily life. We form opinions on people and brands. It is bringing everyone closer together on a different level that has never been before. Is media a snippet of magic?