OTTAWA—It is an increasingly digital world we live in, and the challenges posed to marketing departments is changing faster than it ever has before. Tackling this is the MARCOM forum that will be held June 9–11 in Ottawa, aimed at professionals at all levels within their organizations in government and non-profit groups who are responsible for marketing and communications initiatives.
This year marks the 17th year of the professional development forum, and the theme is “Keeping Pace in a Digital World.” It’s all about providing decision-makers with the tools they need to move marketing forward in the increasingly complex digital age.
Through a combination of seminars, workshops, and peer-to-peer roundtables, the objective of the conference is to get results out of marketing efforts in a rapidly and dramatically changing digital world and to analyze and measure the impact of those efforts.
While MARCOM targets the public and non-profit sectors, the themes discussed apply as well to the private sector.
The opening keynote speaker on June 10 is Fab Dolan, head of large advertiser and agency marketing at Google Canada. Dolan teaches Fortune 500 business leaders how emerging technologies can redefine the way they grow their brands through marketing.
In his talk titled “The Marketer’s Code” at the forum, he'll present “the key trends that are emerging as technology and marketing combine, and his vision for how marketers should behave in this new digital age of advertising,” according to MARCOM’s website.
Dolan often speaks at universities as a guest lecturer and is a graduate of the Richard Ivey School of Business in London, Ontario.
He has often discussed where technology is heading and how marketers should think about it. Today, change is happening exponentially as opposed to linearly, and when marketers fail to realize this, they miss opportunities.
The future points to increased connectivity and not just between more computers. More of the things in our home are becoming “smart,” i.e. connected to the Internet. There is far more automation now and going forward than ever before.
Organizations have to think more externally as opposed to internally in order to solve their marketing problems.
And now, whether a consumer is subjected to advertising is becoming something of a choice, and advertising content needs to be almost as good as the subject-matter content taken in. It’s about a more personalized experience.
June 9 is a day of optional pre-forum workshops. June 10 begins with Mr. Dolan’s keynote presentation. June 11 has two keynote presentations: Queen’s University marketing professor Ken Wong’s “The Soul of Marketing,” and “Marketing Through the Power of Storytelling” by Scott Chisholm, founder of “The Collateral Damage Project.”
For details about the presentations, speakers, and registration, go to www.marcom.ca. MARCOM takes place June 9–11 at the Shaw Centre (formerly the Ottawa Convention Centre).
Epoch Times is a supporting sponsor of MARCOM 2015.
