Day 3-Tuesday, June 21st
Tuesday was another super busy yet awesome day at the festival.
10:30 am: The NFT Revolution & What it Means for Brands
VaynerX
This talk was given by Gary Vaynerchuk, Chairman and CEO of VaynerX and VaynerMedia, Paris Hilton, CEO of 11:11 Media, and Swan Sit. Gary began explaining NFTs in the sense that "ownership" will become the new identification of a consumer when it comes to marketing. The "wallet" is used as a marketing tool—brands can see all anonymous wallets, letting them know who to market to for what. An example of this would be Nike seeing that a wallet owns 12 pairs of rare Jordans, so they know to market to them.
Personally, I was interested in going to this talk because the world of NFTs is still beyond me. As an artist, it confuses me that these digital art pieces anyone can see or screenshot are selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars just so someone can say they "own" it. Gary explained that while many are still confused by NFTs, they are the future whether we like it or not. He compared it to people being confused by the internet 20 years ago, and now the internet is a key component to our every day lives. I was excited to see. Paris Hilton, though she didn't do much talking on NFTs, mostly just advertising her brand in the metaverse and talking about how she puts on concerts and meets with fans in the metaverse. Overall it was very interesting, though I'm still not sure I can get behind the idea of NFTs completely.
12:00 pm: Question Everything
Disney Advertising and Hyundai
This talk was given by Rita Ferro, the President of Disney Advertising, Angela Zepeda, Chief Marketing Officer of Hyundai America, Tori Fernandes, Vice President of Communications for the Walt Disney Company, and Elizabeth Olsen, renowned actress. The problem at hand was that they needed to relaunch the Hyundai Tuscon in a way that would do it justice and get people excited.
Disney had a unique position here, because not only is it a creative powerhouse, but it's also its own media brand. They discussed how the pandemic gave them the opportunity to double down on creativity because the parks and everything were closed, so the media is what they had to put all of their effort towards. Hyundai was going to launch the Tuscon during the Super Bowl, but didn't think it would be big enough—they needed Disney. This was difficult because Marvel is separate from the Disney franchise + sports, but they decided to execute it with a commercial that featured Loki. I honestly was a little underwhelmed by the commercial they went with but that's definitely because I'm just not a Marvel fan and have never seen any of the movies (maybe I should!). Elizabeth Olsen stated that questioning everything helps you be more empathetic, and protects curiosity.
They all gave one piece of advice to close out...
Hyundai:Be bold and take risks
Disney: step out of your comfort zone, the less comfortable you feel the better
Elizabeth: always be a leader and be kind
This talk was interesting and it was cool to see Elizabeth but the big idea behind the campaign wasn't as groundbreaking to me as they believed it to be.
1:00 pm: How Did a Beauty Bar Become a Multi-Billion Dollar Superbrand?
Dove & Ogilvy
This conversation was lead by Jo Bacon, Global Client Lead for WPP Unilever Ogilvy, Dan Fisher, Global Executive Creative Director for Unilever Ogilvy, Alessandro Manfredi, Chief Marketing Officer of Dove, and Sonoo Singh, Co-Founder of Creative Salon. The discussion focused on how Dove has been able to use the power of creativity to make a positive beauty experience accessible for everyone. Since launching the Campaign for Real Beauty in 2004, they have an unparalleled voice in showing girls the toxicity of some beauty trends and social media standards. Through the Dove Self Esteem Project, Dove has been able to help millions of girls and become the world's largest provider of self-esteem education.
They discussed the critical role creativity plays when working with such a large platform like this, and showcased their most recent campaign that uses AI technology to show little girls their mom giving the toxic advice that internet beauty influencers give. This idea was amazing because it makes perfect sense—your mom would never be giving you this advice, so why take it from random people online? It's the definition of one of those ideas that you're like wow, I wish I thought of that. Overall this talk was really cool and only heightened my respect for Dove.
2:30 pm: 75 Years Young-Engaging a New Generation of NBA Fans
National Basketball Association (NBA)
This talk was lead by Kate Jhaveri, Chief Marketing Officer for the NBA, Zach Lavine, player for the Chicago Bulls, and Seth Matlins, Managing Director for Forbes CMO Network. I was super excited for this one because I'm a huge sports fan, and love basketball. They showed us their campaign video for NBA: 75 Years Young in which the concept was "NBA lane", a street where legends of the past and stars of today all live and play together every day. I loved the video and thought it was iconic. Videos like this definitely excite me and inspire me to be able to direct something like that one day. They also talked about how a big marketing strategy of theirs is just showcasing the players being themselves, because players doing things authentic to them excites us fans. Zach talked about how the concept is cool because even being one of today's biggest stars, playing with icons is still exhilarating for them because they're the guys they grew up watching on TV. Zach said current NBA players are some of the biggest NBA fans out there, you never grow out of that. He also appreciates being able to connect with fans on social media.
The NBA CMO talked about how there are "so many ways to be an NBA fan" and the differences in generational marketing for the NBA. Content for tiktok is very different than TV, especially because they're geared towards totally different generations. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this discussion and left feeling very inspired.
3:30 pm: Twitter Beach - The Future of Shopping/eComm
We got to the start of this discussion a few minutes late, but it was very interesting nonetheless. It focused on the future of shopping and e-commerce in light of the revolutionary digital age we are living in. Whether it be tiktok, the metaverse, or NFTs, the entire landscape of marketing is changing. It is interesting how platforms like Instagram and Facebook are now primarily shopping sites: they've dedicated their algorithms to promoting e-commerce rather than promoting people's personal content that they are sharing with their followers, which is honestly pretty sad. Twitter does a good job of making the algorithm customizable to you during this new age of online shopping and e-commerce, letting you decide what you want to see. Targeted advertising is also a huge part of this new world.
After the discussion we hung around Twitter beach and got some free food & merch—the food was literally so good and now I get to go home with a cute little Twitter hat!
