Toby Barlow, CCO - Lafayette American

Chief Creative Officer of Lafayette American who has worked as a writer and creative director in San Francisco, NY, and Detroit. From 2006 to 2017 he was Global Chief Creative Officer on the Ford Motor Company account. Before that he worked on Kimberly Clark, DeBeers, Sun Microsystems, Barnes & Noble, See’s Candy, and Mirage Resorts. His writing has been featured in The New York Times, Salon, and The Paris Review.

What you’ll get out of this:

·      Learn what it takes to be “different” in advertising from two of the best in Metro Detroit. AdWeek just named Lafayette American as one of the breakthrough agencies of 2022!

·      Discussion on strategy, design, creative, and media approaches

·      What it’s like to work with ambitious brands and how to move them forward

Emily Siegel, President -Lafayette American

President of Lafayette American who started her marketing career as a media analyst at Nielsen in NYC. She jumped into content and influencer marketing at Federated Media in 2010, where she ran content strategy for American Express OPEN Forum, L’Oreal, and Citibank, then for General Motors and Ford Motor Company after her 2013 move to Detroit. Before joining the founding team at Lafayette American, Emily led the Content Studio at WPP, helping Ford find innovative ways to tell its most important brand stories. In 2015, Emily was named a “Woman to Watch” by AdAge.

What you’ll get out of this:

·      Learn what it takes to be “different” in advertising from two of the best in Metro Detroit. AdWeek just named Lafayette American as one of the breakthrough agencies of 2022!

·      Discussion on strategy, design, creative, and media approaches

·      What it’s like to work with ambitious brands and how to move them forward

Scott Slagel, Manager, Customer Research and Insights - DTE Energy

DTE established an aspirational future target that not only makes DTE one of the leading utility companies, but one of the leading companies across industries. This required DTE to look at its brand through a different lens in order to deliver better experiences for its customers.

To understand progress on this new journey, DTE moved away from a traditional utility approach to customer satisfaction measurement and applied metrics more commonly associated with customer-centric brands. DTE selected Net Promoter Score (NPS) on the Qualtrics platform to help it think differently about how it defines success in the future.

This session has three main goals:

-Provide an understanding of the path DTE took and how it supports Service Excellence

-Why the NPS system is important to DTE and how it guides decision making

-How DTE employees play a key role in creating Service Excellence for all customers

Additionally, DTE will share “why” behind its focus on Service Excellence. Scott loves solving complex and uncertain challenges. He is a skilled insights and marketing professional with senior level experience in consumer research, brand management, strategy development, and marketing communications. He has a creative approach to storytelling combining art with logic: producing a compelling customer narrative.

Tarun Gehani, Director of SEO - Pure Visibility

Experienced SEO Specialist with 12+ years in the digital marketing industry from building and leading a team, to business development, SEO strategy, content planning, and promotion. Demonstrated history of increasing organic visibility and website traffic, leads, and sales for sites of all sizes, industries, and technical makeup.

Three Takeaways:

-Understand the fundamental principles of SEO

-Learn from Google's evolution from keyword algorithms to AI-driven systems

-Know how shifts in AI and technology affect your industry

Kim Reedy, Manager of CX, Ford E, “1:1 Marketing: Balancing CX and Business Objectives”

15+ years of experience in omni-channel digital, CRM, and CX. Kim leads end-to-end connected 1:1 digital experience strategy to support electric vehicle customers throughout their journey with Ford. Previously, she led CRM strategy and analytics for other Ford business units and Stellantis (previously FCA), focusing on customer experience, overarching customer journey, technologies, business impact/sales and marketing transformation.

Three Takeaways:

-How to create a personalized customer experience journey that will yield better business results.

-Using automation and the right technology will allow more for an efficient, manageable program that can be optimized ongoing

-I’ll share a few strategies and tactics that are best in class to balance CX and business needs (often competing)

Sean Johnston, VP, Closed Loop, “Paid Social in the Era of AI and Automation”

The rise of automation and AI across paid social advertising channels should be prompting advertisers to rethink their strategies. In this conversation, we discuss the role that both play in strategy, targeting and campaign execution to make sure you work with, and not against, the trend.

Takeaways:

-Full-funnel strategies are more important now than ever before. Successful brands must build funnels that create a conversion “machine”

-Embrace AI and open targeting. Platforms have gotten exceptionally good at identifying intent and optimizing to your objectives

-Creative is key. Campaign automations are taking a lot of the decision-making out of ad campaign optimization, but creative remains one of the largest variables that you can directly influence.

Sean is a passionate and paid social media marketer with experience across a wide variety of products and verticals. With over 12 years of agency and client-side experience, he has a proven track record of building strategizing, building, executing and optimizing paid social media campaigns on Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn and more.

Roman Godlewski, Sales Industry Specialist, USPS

37 years of postal and direct mail experience Roman Godlewski started his career as an auditor in the Bulk Mail Entry division, Mail Piece Design Analyst, Mailing Standard Specialist, and finally into Direct Mail sales working with the Postal Service’s top mailers, marketers, vendors and accounts. In 2019 Roman spent a year in Wash DC at postal headquarters as an Industry Engagement Outreach Specialist providing legislative and industry background research to the Postmaster General, Board of Governors and facilitating the PMG’s Mailers Technical Advisory Committee (MTAC) as well as working with mailer’s associations and their lobbyists. 

When Roman is not opening his mail and judging the creatives and offers you can find him on Lake Huron on his sailboat. 

Cameron Neveu, Social Media Manager, Hagerty

How to cut through the noise, and cultivate likes, comments and overall engagement.