Digiday Brand Summit Recap by Account Director Kelsey
Kristen and I had the pleasure of attending the Digiday Brand Summit “The Rise of Content” in late April. At the summit, we learned how brands are interacting with their audiences in a more authentic way through their content creators. IZEA is excited to continue to work with this digital editorial because it is a great way to reach many brands and agencies that are regular readers. In fact, we’ve already published two sponsored articles on Digiday (shameless plug).
Anyways, back to the conference. The venue was the Omni Nashville, which is connected to the Country Music Hall of Fame! I’m a huge fan of country music, so I was basically in heaven. Kristen was probably embarrassed of my constant singing, but she joined in with the songs she knew. I could get “discovered” while singing here in Nashville so…sorry I’m not sorry! #highhopes
During the first day of the conference, we heard from Shoe Carnival and Nissan. We loved both of the presentations because Kristen and I work on these brands at IZEA. It was great to see what the brands had been up to and where they are looking to be in the near future.
We got an awesome dinner suggestion from Erich Marx, the Director of Social Media Marketing at Nissan. We wanted something that would be “local” and not necessarily “touristy.” He suggested that we go to Merchants on Broadway and we couldn’t have enjoyed it more! The ambiance was awesome because we were in one of the oldest buildings in Nashville. Since we were only in Nashville for a short while, we decided to “YOLO” and order the risotto (which was prepared with scallops and squid ink). It was delicious, although these photos totally don’t do it justice.
We learned a lot from this conference. Here are a few key points that were made:
- Humans have shorter attention spans than goldfish.
- Mobile has a cookie problem.
- Someday Google+ will matter.
- Big brands need to act more like startups.
- Real-time is great, but don’t force it.
We can’t wait for another opportunity to connect with great brand marketers in such a fun and informational setting. Thanks for setting it up, Digiday!
-Kelsey