Festival of Marketing unveils the 2019 conference agenda

The Festival of Marketing is returning to Tobacco Dock on 10 and 11 October with a line-up that includes Marketing Week columnists Thomas Barta, Helen Edwards and Mark Ritson, as well as marketers from brands including Sainsbury’s, Diageo, KFC and TSB.

The agenda, which is now live, features more than 100 speakers from the world of marketing and beyond across 12 stages. Headliners that have been announced so far include Andrew Lippman, associate director at MIT Media Lab, and activist, writer and director Rose McGowan.

There are new stages for this year, including creative brand thinking, marketing intelligence, effectiveness and data, tech innovation lab, and social and influencer marketing.

Speaker highlights include TSB’s CMO Pete Markey, KFC’s UK and Ireland CMO Meghan Farren and Danielle Atkins, chief brand and marketing officer at Kodak, discussing how brands react to setbacks and GSK’s EMEA media director and digital and ecommerce director of consumer healthcare on effective personalisation.

Alice ter Haar, senior marketing manager at Deliveroo will talk “growing like a badass unicorn”, while Boots’s marketing boss Helen Normoyle, British Gas’s Cathryn Lodwidge and Vodafone’s Michelle Williams will discuss loyalty and customer rewards.

The return of the Marketing Week Strategy and Leadership stage

The Festival of Marketing will see the return of the Marketing Week Strategy and Leadership stage this year.

Our columnist Mark Ritson will make an appearance once again, unpicking the phases a marketer needs to go through when thinking strategy. He will do this by calling on a wealth of case studies from the world’s leading marketing organisations that demonstrate what good strategic thinking looks like.

There is also a panel discussion with The Co-operative Group’s customer director Alison Jones, Waitrose customer director Martin George and Sarah Warby, chief growth officer at HyperJar, discussing the changing name of the marketing boss and whether it reflects the changing nature of the job.

Attracting young people into marketing

This year, the Festival of Marketing has teamed up with the School of Marketing to provide an exciting opportunity for 20 students to take part in a fun, educational and unique marketing challenge. On 11 October we are opening up the Realising your Potential stage for a morning of activities set to inspire young people to learn more about marketing.

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Teams of students will go head-to-head to come up with a brand concept and present it back to a panel of judges. Each team will present ideas on the theme of sustainability and the future to align with the Festival’s theme of ‘What’s next’. The best concept will win the opportunity to do work experience at the Festival of Marketing and Marketing Week.

Ritchie Mehta, managing director of the School of Marketing, will lead the programme alongside the Founding 50 – a group of 50 marketers aged under 30 who are passionate about changing the perception of marketing among young people. The School of Marketing is an initiative supported by Marketing Week, education company Learn Et Al and Pearson College London that aims to solve the looming talent crisis in marketing by raising awareness of the profession as a desirable career option.

To find out more about the stages and speakers, as well as book tickets, visit www.festivalofmarketing.com