Breakthrough: The Next Wave of Marketing October 26 - 28, 2014, Atlanta, GA

iMedia's Mobile Bootcamp is an intense 5 hour deep dive designed to empower marketers with the information they need to successfully incorporate mobile tactics into their overall marketing strategy. In this bootcamp, marketers will be divided into teams where they'll be asked to flex their marketing muscles to solve real-life mobile marketing challenges. We'll hit the ground running with an overview of mobile commerce, creative mobile strategies, marketing across devices, and measurement & analytics. You'll hear case studies on brands that successfully whipped their mobile strategy into shape, and you'll gain insights into how you can do it too.

iMedia's Mobile Bootcamp is an intense 5 hour deep dive designed to empower marketers with the information they need to successfully incorporate mobile tactics into their overall marketing strategy. In this bootcamp, marketers will be divided into teams where they'll be asked to flex their marketing muscles to solve real-life mobile marketing challenges. We'll hit the ground running with an overview of mobile commerce, creative mobile strategies, marketing across devices, and measurement & analytics. You'll hear case studies on brands that successfully whipped their mobile strategy into shape, and you'll gain insights into how you can do it too.

Mobility: The Game-Changer at AT&T Stadium

As the disruptive technology of our time, mobility gives brands the power to connect with consumers and partners in new and exciting ways. Recognizing this, AT&T has evolved from a telecom company into an innovation company that is seamlessly mobilizing how consumers live their lives, how business gets its work done, and now how fans engage with a stadium experience through the power of mobile. Hear from Gregg Heard, VP of brand design at AT&T, about how changing consumer expectations and mobile data consumptions impacted the development and design of AT&T Stadium in Dallas to create the ultimate, game-changing fan experience.

Using Experience Design to Create Highly Personalized Buying Experiences on Mobile in the Residential Home Industry

When residential homebuilder Edward Andrews wanted to improve its design specification process, the company decided to embrace digital and mobile technologies. Working with THINK, Edward Andrews examined its current process and where this process could be optimized. Using a background in experience design and digital innovation, THINK partnered with Edward Andrews to create a design selection process from first-touch mobile interactions to big-screen planning sessions in a design center.

This presentation will discuss how Edward Andrews and THINK used an understanding of the builder, designer, and client needs to construct a style personality framework and a design center meeting cadence that produced a better customer experience and measurable opportunities for continual optimization. Join Edwards Andrews SVP Caroline Simmel and THINK's managing partner William duPont to hear how they did it.

Key takeaways:

• How to create a seamless user experience, from mobile and tablets to computers and HD TVs.
• How to maximize persona development work to create real business value.
• How to understand complex business challenges using customer journey mapping.

What Happens When Mobile, Social & Loyalty Collide?

What happens when mobile, social, and loyalty collide? What happens is Waffle House Rewards, a mobile application designed in partnership with Smithfield Foods to reward loyal Waffle House patrons, as well as stock car race fans, with fun prizes for unique racing experiences.

This case study highlights partnership, loyalty, engagement, and contests via mobile, social, and in-store promotion. Through a partnership with the Waffle House, Race for Rewards mobile app engages loyal customers and race fans alike to win prizes, such as Waffle House and Smithfield branded merchandise, and unique outings, like winning a Richard Petty MotorSports driving experience at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Attendees will learn how to:

• Leverage partnerships between vendor and customer.
• Integrate mobile, social, and loyal to gamify the Waffle House experience.
• Test a loyalty-specific mobile application where both parties mutually benefit.

How Mobile Unlocks Long Term Customer Value

Unlocking long-term customer value begins with connecting the customer journey. Mobile marketing has become increasingly critical for establishing relationships with customers, creating opportunities to have a personalized conversations and complete actions in a streamlined process across various touchpoints. We'll examine a collection of current InterContinental Hotel Group initiatives that leverage mobile to engage consumers, bring them from consideration to purchase, make them advocates of the IHG family of brands, and increase their loyalty and long-term value.

YellaWood: Social Sharing & Content Virality

You want your content to be shared. You want it to go viral. But what is the key? Is there a single dominant approach, or is there a host of variables that needs to be optimized? And how does mobile factor into the mix? Brunner and client YellaWood will discuss their success in content marketing specifically in regards to content that is highly shared. In this session, attendees will be exposed to:

• Why people choose and share content.
• What types of content typically go viral.
• The importance of a "brand as publisher" approach with a succinct publishing mission and definitive content pillars in producing content that will get shared.
• The five ways to create content, the three modes of published content, and their relationship to content that gets shared.
• How real-time trending topics factor into brand content virality.
• How mobile is changing sharing and content virality.

Particular emphasis will be placed on the utility of YellaWood content.

The Universal Orlando Resort Mobile Experience: Make Having Fun Easy

As a way to enhance the in-park experience, Universal set out to create a new mobile experience to assist visitors in their pre-planning and visits to the resort. From the start, the guiding principle was "make having fun easy."

The experience, available for both IOS and Android platforms, offers access to over 200 points of interest across the resort. Key features include current event information, such as concerts and holiday festivities, as well as attraction wait times, hotel information, restaurant details, and an interactive map with custom step-by-step street view navigation.

In this session, Universal and AKQA will discuss the background, process, and key learnings from the creation and launch of the Official Universal Orlando mobile application. Attendees will be exposed to:

• The connection between business objectives and mobile prioritization.
• The value of customer-centered design and testing for mobile.
• Key considerations of deploying mobile with an eye to future capabilities.

Arc of Mobility: A Perspective on a New Era of Consumer Expectation & Opportunity

Mobile is no longer new and is, in fact, so integrated into our lives we rarely acknowledge it. We are in a transition, moving from a focus on mobile devices to enabling "mobility." No longer focused solely on the device or assumed channels of communication, the power of mobility takes our everyday journeys and blurs them into orchestrated events - that ultimately change how we think, act, and connect with one another. This evolution challenges marketers to stay relevant and connect with consumers and data in new ways.

This talk will explore what is working in this new age of expectation and highlight some examples of what brands are doing to embrace this change. Key takeaways will include tangible highlights, inspiration for innovation, and emerging trends.

Special Event: Stone Mountain Park's  Lasershow

Interested in a Sales Channel Where Prospects Come to You?

You have something incredible to sell, but your email will be one of a hundred your prospect receives - this morning. Gaining access to decision makers within brands and agencies is difficult. It's a constant struggle to connect with the right people to educate them about your company's offerings.

All too often, it requires drastic measures just to impart the earliest stages of awareness, because there are hundreds of outstanding competitors vying for your prospect's attention.

We've also heard from many decision makers inside of brands and agencies that they find it difficult to sift through all the offerings in order to determine which companies it makes sense to dedicate extended time to learning about, let alone to exploring the possibility of working together. Due to the practical limits of time and resources, most feel as though they are aware of and knowledgeable about a small subset of the offerings available. And yet, the channels you must rely on to reach them - phone calls, emails, and meeting requests - are met with closed doors.

In this session, you'll learn how to break through to prospects and present your company's offerings in a way they will be receptive to hearing. Glassnetic is also here to discuss a new sales channel whereby prospects actually open their doors to you.

Create Your Future

To stay ahead of the game in today's rapidly evolving and uncertain marketplace, it is no longer sufficient to be able to anticipate the future - you have to create it. In this compelling keynote, Lina Yang, director, futurist, advanced technology lab at The Hershey Company, will talk about emerging trends and technology shaping the future, how YOU should be the disruptor within your own organization, and the need for rapid prototyping to bring your preferred future to life.

Driving Corporate Innovation from the Inside (The Story of Coca-Cola's Social HUB)

Technology is fast. Big companies are slow. How is it possible for enterprise-level marketers to keep pace with consumers' ever-changing digital media habits? Coca-Cola is making it happen. In this session, we sit down with a small, nimble, innovative agency and one of the largest and most well-known brands in the world to break it down. Kevin Planovsky, co-founder of Vert, will guide a fireside chat with Coca-Cola's Doug Busk, global group director of digital and social media. We will get a peek inside Coca-Cola's new internal social media HUB and deconstruct the ideation and launch process of other recent big moves in nascent digital tactics and strategies from the brand.

Turning Social Listening Into Innovation

At Fisher-Price, we built an online social listening platform to provide our loyal consumers a place to share their thoughts and ideas with each other, as well as with the brand. We wanted them to see that Fisher-Price cares deeply about what they think. And the site has successfully worked as intended. Along the way, we discovered an additional benefit to Fisher-Price: the ability to source innovations from the newly assembled community. This case study will discuss the details.

iMedia Summit attendees will learn:

• How to use the crowd-generated content to drive innovation.
• How being in touch with your customers could provide unexpected benefits.

A: The Future of the Impartial Media Buyer

Big players like Google and FB are partitioning themselves off from one another and making strides to own the entire marketing stack. As large companies build up their "walled gardens," there are important questions that beg to be asked: What is the future for an open ecosystem? How do neutral parties add value as big players erect walls? AdRoll's Adam Berke will lead a discussion with top agency executives and explore how the battle between walled gardens and the desire for an open ecosystem will play out.

C: Programmatic Buying: Nightmare or Dream Come True?

Programmatic buying is here to make your life easier, not cause you nightmares. There's a lot of talk about programmatic buying and RTB (Real Time Bidding, not to be confused with "reason to believe"), but what does this mean for marketers, and how do we benefit from it?

This presentation aims to provide a fundamental understanding of programmatic buying that is truly relevant to marketers. By understanding the new way of buying, marketers can build one-to-one consumer engagements at scale and ultimately break down the existing silos in the marketplace. Marketers need to stay up to date with trends in the marketplace and be aware of the changes happening in order to stay ahead of the competition.

This presentation is built in a way that is relevant to the audience and easy to understand. It breaks down this complex topic of programmatic buying into simplified key pillars in order to build the fundamentals for learning more about programmatic buying and eventually utilizing it.

The session will be comprised of an overview of programmatic, demonstrate that we shouldn't be uncomfortable with the "newness" of this technology, as it has been proven out in other industries, and will include case-study examples to bring to life how the technology is utilized by others.

Key takeaways and learnings:

• Understand the importance of programmatic and why it's an essential part of today's marketing toolbox.
• Understand how to connect with consumers on a one-to-one basis through programmatic buying.
• Feel more comfortable about embracing programmatic and taking the initiative to learn more - great brand stories and ideas can't be optimized if you don't understand the new capabilities around execution.

Reimagining Marketing Innovation

From audience targeting to advertising, shopper marketing, loyalty, and other parts of the value chain, marketing is being transformed. The transformation is being driven by innovative brands and vendors engaging with start-ups to reimagine current practices. In this talk, Dr. Phil Hendrix, founder and director of immr, will identify challenges that make it difficult for companies to engage customers and provide evidence suggesting that the "delivery gap" is widening. Hendrix will use a series of cases to illustrate how leading companies and partners are leveraging technology to deliver compelling experiences, reduce waste, and build lasting relationships.

2014 iMedia Next Wave Roundtables

This year, we're transforming the Next Wave model into a mentorship program for innovative companies that are just getting started. We've invited young start-ups to join us for roundtable discussions where attendees can poke holes, ask questions, and offer general guidance. This is a way for iMedia attendees to give back to the community, and to be enthused with young talent whose ideas and perspectives may spark imaginations and inspire change.

Re-Imagined Retail: The Convergence of Physical & Digital Shopping

As the retail landscape changes and consumer shopping behaviors and expectations continue to evolve with the ubiquity of digital technologies, retailers must reimagine what they offer - and how they offer it. Kevin McKenzie, global chief digital officer at Westfield Labs, an entity of Westfield Corporation focused on innovating for the retail ecosystem, will discuss how Westfield is thinking differently about building products for its retailers, the new customer shopping journey, and how its offerings can expand its walls beyond its physical presence.

Why The Weather Channel is the Coolest Technology Company in Atlanta

The Weather Channel has quietly yet steadily acted as a force of tech and innovation in Atlanta.

Starting with the early adoption of the web and weather.com to apps and more, The Weather Channel paved the way for others who would follow, staying well ahead of the curve by making innovation more than a side project. It is infused in the culture. Its people are champions of cool technology, and are laser focused on delivering the best experience in the industry.

This session will be a brief study into what has made The Weather Channel a leading digital content provider over the last several years. In this intimate conversation, Proving Ground's Danny Davis will challenge The Weather Channel's Matthew Eby with questions that will help marketers:

• Understand how a culture of innovation is built.
• Determine the role technology plays in driving brand experiences.
• Learn how to take a second look at marketing objectives to drive more sustainable lifetime value
• Push the envelope of disruption with a structured marketing environment

Upper Deck Learns to 'Think Different' Thanks to iMedia

Marketing in the past has been all about putting your brand everywhere your potential consumers are. Is there a better way to market though because potential customers tune out a lot of this traditional marketing? Upper Deck's Chris Carlin will share the story of how they took learnings from the iMedia Summit and used them to change the way the company looks at marketing. This fundamental paradigm shift has created more positive conversations happening about the Upper Deck brand in the social space. Carlin will be joined by Denis Murphy of the Friends of Jaclyn Foundation who will briefly share how Upper Deck has been working with them to improve the quality of lives for children suffering from pediatric brain cancer.

Not Impossible: How Brands Will Change the World

In 2009, Mick Ebeling met a paralyzed graffiti artist and decided to create a cheap pair of glasses that would allow the artist to create his art again for the first time in seven years. That device - called the Eyewriter - went on to become one of Time Magazine's Top 50 inventions, a TED Talk, and launched an obsessive pursuit around making technology that helps people.

In 2013, Ebeling went to Sudan equipped with nothing but a 3D printer, some spools of filament, and a few tools. In Sudan, he 3D-printed prosthetic limbs for a boy named Daniel. That project - called Project Daniel - won two Pencils, two Tellys, two AICP awards, and five Lions at Cannes, including the Titanium Lion. But more importantly, the project proved that doing good is good branding.

Join this session as Ebeling, CEO and founder of Not Impossible, discusses his role in advanced technology, corporate responsibility, and how radical collaboration can lead to new innovations and unconventional partnerships.