Less than one month to go before the Integrated Marketing Communication Conference jet-sets to Johannesburg

With an impressive line-up of speakers and a central theme of "Building a Truly Integrated Marketing Ecosystem: Internal, Partnerships and External Delivery"; the eight keynote speakers will be divided into the three spheres and will provide delegates with first-hand, case-study exposure on these trends, highlighting aspects of their most successful campaigns in order to give a practical view of how these techniques and tools are best implemented.

INTERNAL

HEIDI BRAUER - Hollard

Inside Out. Baking the Hollard brand cake

"The last time I spoke at the IMC, I spoke about the kulula.com brand story and suggested that you need to think about building a brand as if cooking or baking. First decide what cake you're baking (positioning), then choose the ingredients and method, add huge handfuls of relevance and integrate everything and everybody. This year, from the Hollard point of view, I want to focus on the inside part of rebranding and reactivating a brand in an organisation. And chocolate cake."

MIKE STOPFORTH - Cerebra

The Internal Customer - Why the employee is an ever-increasing consideration for effective brand communication?

In the social era of business companies experience increased pressure to deliver on their marketing promises, both internally and externally. Employees and customers are demanding higher levels of engagement and the modern corporation is grappling with the challenges of acknowledging the humanity and individuality of both parties. Mike Stopforth of Cerebra will provide you with a practical framework for better employee engagement with the intention of transforming the enterprise from the inside out.

PARTNERS

JONTY FISHER - Bletchley Park

Aligning client-agency relationships that solve problems, not briefs

With the client-side pressure of board accountability and budget cuts, and agencies' margin pressure from disintermediation and procurement, marketers and their agencies are frequently falling into 'creativity versus business' debate. But when client-agency relationships turn adversarial, the only victim is the brand.

The client-agency relationship is at its most powerful when its common goal is using creativity in solving the problems that keep the marketer up at night. And those are rarely found in the brief. We'll discuss how to redirect this relationship to gain more value - for the brand, for the client, and for the agency - to create more sustainable and profitable partnerships.

SIZAKELE MARUTLULLE - We are Bob

Building successful relationships in the creativity space

"This sentiment best encapsulates what I feel about what makes for successful relationships in the creativity space. It is a client who accepts that she/he knows all there is to know about their business, operating models and the other MBA sounding terminology.

It is the ad agency... (Ok, let's be fair and make the circle wider by referring to creative partners.) So here goes... it is the creative partner who accepts that she/he knows all there is to know about the consumer.

So together, these entities, each carrying half of a whole - must accept that if they run alone, they will be only half actualised. If they run in step and in union with each other, they are whole and unbeatable by the winds of change, the barrage of consumer tastes and/or the proliferation of communication channels.

Partnership, like the perfect tango, is arrived at through trust, openness and a willingness to take turns 'leading'. At times the business voice will ring louder and at other times the consumer voice - but in the end, magic happens at the intersection of client objective and brand ambition."

EXTERNAL

LANI CARSTENS - John Brown Media

Content marketing: What's your story?

Content marketing is the hottest buzzword in the media and marketing space right now. Previously (and perhaps more aptly) known as custom publishing, content marketing is a trend that most agencies are laying claim to. And they are not wrong to do so.
Lani will unpack what all the fuss is about, explore how brands should be adopting a new sensibility as to how they market themselves, and look at how a deeper connection with customers through authentic storytelling can lead to commercial success.

MIKE SILVER - Stretch Experiential

The Experiential Approach

For centuries, humans have relied on real life experience to form opinions and make decisions. As industrialisation took off though (along with a proliferation of electronic communication), brands and organisations have lost sight of the power of live engagement.

In this session, we will address the role of experience-lead communication in both B2C and internal corporate environments. Real world examples will be combined with global research studies to illustrate the potential impact that experiential communication can had on consumers and employees alike.

ANDY GILDER - Machine

Orchestrating instead of Integrating: Why giving digital an equal weighting creates better results for your other channels

In the age of the technologist consumer, digital executions should be included in virtually every marketing channel of the communication mix. BTL and shopper marketing, above the line media and even CRM initiatives benefit significantly from incorporating elements of digital into the final communication message.

"We hope to identify how brands can tap into the many benefits of digital to enhance their overall marketing efficiencies - from the emotional affinity of a great social campaign and its effect on the consumer at the till point to a cheaper and more efficient way of data collection and segmentation for events and activations."

AVUKILE MABOMBO - Brandhouse

The 17h00 - 09h00 of Marketing

A multi-dimensional ecosystem requires marketers that can think in a multi-dimensional way. The great brands of the future will not be built during working hours from head office ivory towers but rather in the streets, after hours by marketers who are genuinely connected with their audiences and able to seek out unique insights and apply them to game changing strategies in ways that their competitors have not identified.

In the streets there are no rules. Avukile Mabombo throws out the text book and speaks to how removing your consumer from the box can stimulate the imagination and foster meaningful and relevant connections with your brand.

Sponsors for the event include: VServ (Lead Sponsor) Phat (Silver Sponsor), Everlytic (Silver Sponsor), kulula.com (Travel Partner) as well as Oude Meester, Scheckter's Energy, Magnetic, BMW, Friends of Design, Ray-Ban and ReVite.

For more information on how to register, visit our website or contact 021 180 4111. You can also follow the IMC story on https://twitter.com/IMCConferenceTwitter and Facebook.