Just over a decade ago Apple was nearly out of business. Today, thanks to the visionary leadership of founder and CEO Steve Jobs, Apple has become the hottest consumer electronics company in the world, its market valuation exceeded only by Exxon-Mobil. How did Apple do this? And what can your company learn from it? Newsweek Technology Editor Dan Lyons offers a unique vantage point on this remarkable comeback story. For four years Dan penned "The Secret Diary of Jobs" - a witty, entertaining and insightful blog that became a must-read in Silicon Valley and beyond. In the persona of "Fake Steve," Lyons produced hundreds of articles about Apple and developed a deep understanding of the company's success. The heart of the matter is simplicity. In a culture marked by overwhelming complexity and "feature creep," Apple succeeds by making every aspect of its business as simple as possible. In this talk, Lyons shares lessons from Apple about innovation, leadership and risk-taking; about delivering experiences, not products; about reducing clutter and increasing focus; about managing suppliers; about the intrinsic simplicity of great design, and the power of marketing; and about why being simple is, paradoxically, anything but simple. No matter what business you're in, from banking to biotech, from real estate to retailing, your organization can learn from Apple.

Learn how algorithms and other technology helped Sears target their shoppers in a competitive black Friday environment. With all the three-letter acronyms and new technologies popping up every day, Ian Gomar will talk about what was important to Sears in building a strategy that achieved reach, scale, and profitability while maintaining brand safety.

In 1986, Dockers khakis was launched by Levi Strauss and Company and changed the wayAmericans dress for work. More than 20 years later, despite being the go to staple for office workers, Dockers became the uniform of capitulation and the brand and business suffered. Jennifer's keynote will focus on the role of digital and engagement marketing in driving the reinvention of the Dockers brand and the re-engagement of a whole new generation of consumers. She will present case studies from Dockers and tell the story of a how the most traditional 'event' media - The Superbowl - was leveraged to create a digital firestorm for Dockers. In reintroducing the brand on the biggest stage possible, they initiated what would be only the beginning of true reappraisal through their digital approach to this event. She'll share how Dockers has turned their marketing approach upside down in the last two years prioritizing allaspects of digital - ecommerce, traditional digital and social - to continue to tackle the challenge of taking back this brand’s iconic status.

Everyone knows the Rock; it's an iconic American brand that has long stood for strength and stability. But Prudential has become to see as stodgy and dated - not a company with momentum into the future, with innovative new ways to help people and institutions secure their future. 2011 was an historic year for the Prudential brand. For the first time in 30 years, the company embarked on an integrated "master brand" campaign aimed at modernizing Prudential and elevating it to preferred-brand status across all businesses. We'll discuss how, at a time when an uncertain financial world was looking for smarter solutions, Prudential adopted core behaviors of dynamic brands to force reappraisal and communicate the vibrant, innovative company Prudential is today.

In celebration of the 25th Anniversary of the hotelier's signature chocolate chip cookie, DoubleTree by Hilton launched the nationwide "Cookie CAREavan Tour," a mobile food truck campaign in May 2011, that completed a 15,000-mile, 50-city tour that shared more than 265,000 of their legendary chocolate chip cookies. The nationwide tour was driven by a multi-platform social media campaign that included Twitter, TopGuest, Foursquare, YouTube and Facebook, which served as the hub for all tour related content. The DoubleTree by Hilton Facebook page featured a real-time map of where the truck was located, sweepstakes entry form for free hotel stays, photos, videos, and Twitter-stream with relevant tweets. As a result, the DoubleTree by Hilton Facebook page saw a 120% increase in new likes, more than 22 million total impressions on Twitter and a significant increase in comprehensive online engagement for the brand.

Jeff Smith, CMO & SVP of Client Services of Vizu will quickly show the results of original research that asked Brands, Agencies and Media nearly 70 questions about the future of online Brand advertising. Among them: What would lead Brands them to increase spending on online brand advertising? Which metrics do Brands, Agencies and Media each think are most appropriate to use to determine the effectiveness of online brand advertising? What changes are coming for various channels for brand advertising? To what extent will brands and agencies substitute online video advertising for television advertising in the year ahead? What are the three most important deliverables agencies are looking for from their media partners re their online brand advertising campaigns?

Aaron Fetters, Associate Director - Global Digital Strategy and Analytics for The Kellogg Company will discuss how he and his team are looking beyond simple publisher response metrics to in-market effectiveness using measures such as brand awareness, purchase interest, and message association in addition to direct response measures. Citing a shift in success metrics similar to what occurred in baseball's landmark Moneyball, Kellogg is combining insights with costs to answer: "How can we get the biggest bang for our buck?" Through case studies, Mr. Fetters will show why, at a campaign level Kellogg brands need to drive optimization decisions in near real-time and explain how publishers can get more of Kellogg's media budget by helping attract more of its consumers' media time.

In this highly interactive closing discussion, marketers and analysts explore the co-dependent relationships that have formed among Web Marketing and the three principle channels of consumer expression: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Are these channels true drivers of marketing excellence or money pits of experimentation? What's the real value of each? Brand Communication? Consumer Insights? CRM? And are the actions we're counting Followers, Likes, Views - even the right ones? Prepare for a spirited conversation that will begin on stage and then migrate to individual flash table discussions. This rousing session will be the ideal punctuation to your iMedia Brand experience.

Over its 160+ year history, American Express has transformed from a freight forward shipping company to a Travel Agency to present day... a payments company.

Although continually transforming, American Express has always supported its Cardmembers through many innovative initiatives. During 2007, American Express' Small Business unit, OPEN, launched their online community - OPEN Forum. OPEN Forum's mission was not only to help Small Business Owners learn how to grow their business but to also build a community and connect them.

Since its inception, OPEN Forum has shown continued success. In 2008, OPEN Forum proved its worth by helping Small Business Owners navigate the immense challenges that emerged during the financial crisis.

Two years later, Small Business Owners' issues evolved from surviving to growing, and OPEN has created more effective ways to help. Using digital learning from OPEN Forum's community, OPEN launched Small Business Saturday via Facebook and developed a variety of social, mobile and digital resources encouraging people to shop at local small businesses. The movement gained national coverage and resulted in over 100 million people shopping 'small' this past Small Business Saturday, including President Obama.

Join Scott and hear American Express OPEN's continued journey of discovery to find new ways of helping Small Businesses through a variety of digital media channels.

First, Yippy.com is a world-class, top rated consumer search engine that provides a conservative family friendly environment as it relates to search results and digital content. We are very proud of Yippy, and it is the primary search engine in hundreds of schools and libraries across North America, UK, AU and NZ.

Second, Yippy creates custom enterprise and consumer "topic" search engines at a level unmatched by any company in the world. We think the greatest search "topics" are about iconic brands themselves. Think of the possibilities of creating custom search indexes specifically about your iconic brand by aggregating ecommerce, blogs, social networks, web pages, news and information into an extremely organized and user friendly interface.

Yippy's software core Velocity was just ranked Number 1 in the world for topic and enterprise search (higher then Google, Microsoft and HP/Autonomy) by The Forrester Report - Sept. 2011. That makes us very happy indeed. You should come and hear what Yippy can do for your iconic brand, digital content and beyond. It's Amazing!

Welcome to our Home - South West Florida, and don't forget those flip flops!

There are deep flaws in the current methods being used by marketers to measure advertising effectiveness. Existing attribution solutions rely either on weights assigned to consumer interactions, or on complex computer driven algorithms that seek to discover the relationships between advertising and purchase events. Collective has discovered that while these approaches may be data rich, they are also knowledge poor, and are either too subjective or too complex to be reasonable industry standards. Further, these methods are unable to prove the causal link between the advertising expenditure and resulting purchase, and instead confuse correlation with causation, badly misleading Advertisers. Jeremy Stanley, SVP, Product and Data Sciences, Collective, will illustrate why causal attribution is a better industry standard for measuring the true ROI generated from display and video advertising.

What's holding back social advertising? Hint: It's not the social networks - it's all of us. The lack of coordination, understanding and sometimes all out conflict between social media stakeholders is preventing you from unlocking the power of your social graph. Facebook has unique complexities and opportunities that require us to push ourselves beyond tried-and-true digital media tactics.

Join Warren Pattison, Director of Digital Marketing and Innovation at Udi's Gluten Free Foods, and David Pollet, VP of Sales at GraphEffect, as they examine the following:

Unlike TV or print, digital media almost never has any kind of closing or air dates, commitments can end up being soft and ephemeral; forecasting can be a nightmare. Add to the out-of-whack buyer/seller power balance and the seller community's overactive sense of deference to “the relationship.” There’s little question that it's time for the lost art of "closing" to make a comeback. In this highly-interactive seller-only breakfast event, Upstream Group CEO and iMedia Senior Analyst Doug Weaver will explore the importance of closing and how to personalize the process. You'll learn how your team can start more effectively closing business tomorrow, and how you can help them do it. Seating will be limited, so come early.

Beer and sports. Sports and beer. For millions of Americans who settle down to watch their favorite sport in their living room or at their local bar, the two go hand in hand. But, Anheuser-Busch InBev’s products are just some of the choices available to consumers. So how do they differentiate themselves in order to build relationships with consumers for long-term success? Erin Matts, global director of digital connectionsat Anheuser-Busch InBev will share tactics on how they tackle sports marketing.