Crowdsourcing is great, but it also has its shortcomings. This session explores the use of bloggers as a way of curating content and building momentum for your brand. Cotton Incorporated will also discuss its partnership with recognized fashion bloggers in the US to help launch this year’s #Cotton24Hours campaign.

In the world of social media, where friendships are always one click away, brands have to do more than just woo a consumer with a simple, "Like." Online relationships are just as important offline, and brands have a unique opportunity to share their stories and connect with users on a deeper human, emotional level. Andy Wiedlin, Chief Revenue Officer, BuzzFeed will share how to use data and creativity to create the kind of branded content that users want to discover and share over and over again. 

Larry Light, a leading global branding expert, was appointed Chief Brands Officer of InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) in March 2012. During Larry’s short tenure at the company, he has led a global marketing transformation within the organization. Learn how IHG has changed their corporation through the power and discipline of “Brand Leadership Marketing”, which is both a process and a mindset. This approach is galvanizing the company behind the goal of building first choice brands for their guests and their owners, as well as stakeholders and employees.

Frances Allen is a key member of the executive team brought in to transform the Denny's brand. Since joining, Denny’s has posted six straight quarters of positive same store sales growth and has revamped its marketing and brand strategy to reflect its new positioning as America’s Diner. Discover how Denny’s achieved this rapid turnaround, reconnected with its customers and established itself as a ‘brand on the move’ once again.

Seth Farbman joined Gap about two years ago with the mission of revitalizing the brand. Under his leadership, Gap has achieved strong sales growth due to changes which include refreshing their global marketing platform, the way they develop creative, and leveraging technology in-store and through social media. Discover how Gap is back in style with millennials, their target customers.

Lesya Lysyj was appointed CMO at HEINEKEN USA in February 2011. The leader in upscale imports is breaking from the traditional beer marketing codes and doing things differently, zigging where the competition zags. HEINEKEN USA is focused on leveraging its brands’ ‘engagement potential’ – a combination of category, brand and campaign engagement potential – to continue to drive engagement with compelling content across a variety of channels, including mobile. Learn more about how HEINEKEN USA is breaking the mold to engage with consumers like never before.

Tide, owned by The Procter & Gamble Company, has been very successful through innovation, social media, and leveraging real-time response to events to create brand relevance among their consumers.  Tide’s social media listening post, the “Tide Newsdesk”, helped the brand react quickly and stand out around last year’s fuel spill at Daytona 500 and this year’s blackout at the Super Bowl.  Learn how the Tide brand is thriving by listening and responding in a meaningful way to their customers.

USAA is a financial services company dedicated to serving the military community and their families.  They have grown to 9.3 Million members and 22.3 Billion in net worth by fostering a culture of member advocacy.  This session illustrates how USAA achieves its high Net Promoter and Best Place to Work ratings, differentiates from the competition, and uses Voice of The Member to innovate and optimize both experience and products.   

ADT has one of the most trusted and well-known brands in the security industry today, serving more than six million residential and small business customers.  Content marketing – also known as branded integration – has recently played a key role in driving business growth.  Content marketing has allowed ADT to seamlessly integrate messaging into story lines in a non-intrusive way, sparking shareable, talked-about content.  This session will detail how ADT has employed content marketing in a multi-platform way, paying off on the bottom line.

The truth is, only a small proportion of brand transformation efforts truly breakthrough. It’s not for lack of vision, creative thinking or strategic intent. It’s because the external brand promise conveyed to customers doesn’t emanate from a shared purpose internally. Infusing emotion into the customer experience, aligning the executive suite around a shared purpose and creating catalysts to mobilize your employee base – these are foundation of brand transformation. Drawing from case studies and 2013 BrandView data, this session will reveal the inside story of how to use marketing’s toolkit to pivot your organization internally in order to drive brand leadership externally.

The future is here! The Halo Group will give an instructive, interactive and educational dissertation on one of the most innovative new media opportunities for your brand. Human billboards. When you buy ad space on people, it’s permanent. 

Lincoln Financial has a unique approach to branding.  The company promoted their new campaign, “Chief Life Officer” to their employees first before launching in market to create internal advocates.  You will hear Lincoln Financial’s success story including how the “Chief Life Officer” campaign went viral, influenced their media buy, and extended within the organization beyond marketing to include external departments such as operations and human resources.

The global market in healthcare is highly competitive. So how do you build a global brand with a small ad budget and miniscule footprint? You go the content route and innovate. Learn how Cleveland Clinic’s aggressive content strategy is winning the hearts and minds of potential patients around the world.

Seth Goldman is co-founder and TeaEO of Honest Tea, the nation’s top-selling organic bottled tea company that he started in his kitchen 15 years ago, with a focus on authenticity, transparency and health. The brand was acquired by The Coca-Cola Company in 2011. Learn how an entrepreneurial team of true-believers leveraged innovative brand marketing and a socially-conscious vision to build a national brand.