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The first day of the Spring summit was a dynamo. In addition to a terrific kick-off keynote delivered by Chris Trimble, co-author of Reverse Innovation – Implications for Nations, Companies and Individuals, the day featured some terrific presentations including some exciting “firsts” for the Club.
Notably, a new CMO Club Labs session was introduced where attending CMOs heard a series of five-minute presentations from some amazing start-up companies with game-changing technologies and platforms. Then, they voted for the best start-up based on marketing applicability, level of innovation, ease of deployment and ROI. VideoGenie won a close race with appboy as number two, and now they will get a chance to attend two CMO Club city dinners. Other featured companies included Hootsuite, DoubleVerify, iSocket and sonar. Special appreciation to Alex Romanovich, CMO of EuroSpaClub and long-standing member of The CMO Club, and Bruce Taragin, partner at Blumberg Capital, for putting together such an excellent showcase of new technologies.
Equally captivating was a panel session entitled “Innovations in NASCAR – Insiders View” energetically led by Kim Feil, recent CMO of Walgreens. Michael Waltrip, former race car driver and owner, and Steve Phelps, CMO of NASCAR, provided a terrific bird’s eye view to the business of NASCAR and exciting plans for the future, especially with regard to expanded social media capacity at the races.
Picking up on the sports theme, “From Player to Personality – Putting a Face on Brands” featured Michael Strahan, All-Pro (Giants) and Fox sports analyst – an entirely entertaining session which closed the day’s formal presentations.
Another highlight of the day was a brief session on “standing” – an important CMO health tip – delivered by Jane Payfer, CMO of Ergotron. Jane spoke to “sitting disease” caused by sitting so much which leads our bodies to break down and is a real danger to our lives. Think of two hours of standing a day like “an apple a day”.
So many other important topics were discussed during the day including digital transformation, innovation in search, delivering with digital, innovation in mobile, customer engagement, leading a high-performance marketing team, engaging SMBs and so much more!
Of course the piece de resistance was the after-dinner entertainment provided by The CMO Club’s own musical members together with the Rock N Roll Fantasy Camp. What an awesome performance!