Agenda

8:00 – 9:00 a.m.

Registration Opens

Creighton University’s Mike & Josie Harper Center | On the 4th floor
Continental Breakfast Provided

9:00 – 9:10 a.m.

Welcome/Logistics/Club Intros

9:10 – 10:00 a.m.

Keynote

Grow Your Creativity: It’s Not Just for Designers – Kathleen Riessen

Creativity is critical in your job but some days it can be tough to get your ideas to flow. A big myth about creativity is that if you aren’t a designer, you aren’t creative. In fact, how we define creativity in the marketing and advertising world doesn’t do the word justice. It’s time to redefine the word.

Creativity is seeing opportunities where others see obstacles, seeing possibility where others see problems and seeing solutions where others see challenges.
Come to this interactive experience and learn:

How to strengthen your creative muscle
The #1 thing you are doing that kills your creativity
Simple tools you can use to access your creativity whenever you want

Walk away with a refreshed sense of creative flow that you can use to rethink your client and (your own) business challenges.

10:00 – 10:10 a.m.

Networking Break

10:10 – 11:00 a.m.

Morning Breakout Speakers

Room 4067 – Authentic rebranding: Staying true in times of transition – Leanne Prewitt of Ervin & Smith and Jefferson Hillman of JDH.

The power of branding is undeniable. But with a marketing landscape that’s constantly in flux, how can you define a brand identity that holds true no matter what? In this session, you’ll hear the story of how Ervin & Smith partnered with JDH, a fifth-generation, family-owned ag company, to completely revamp their identity – without changing who they are. Learn what it takes to dig deep and own your truth while pushing a brand forward toward its greatest potential.

Room 3048 – Crisis Response Advertising: Key Strategies for Brand Communicators – Frauke Hachtmann, MBA, Ph.D., Professor and William H. Kearns Chair in Journalism at UNL – professor and author

In this breakout session you will learn on how some of the largest advertising agencies in the United States navigated the COVID-19 crisis, how they served their clients during an unprecedented crisis and what they learned along the way. Based on my book, Crisis Response Advertising: Insights & Implications from COVID-19, you will learn how complex crises can affect brand communication during different phases of crisis and how to develop response strategies based on a variety of factors in preparation for the next crisis.

Room 4068 – AI: Accelerating Intelligence – Noor Naseer, Basis Technologies

AI is showing up in big ways largely thanks to the debut of generative AI. As the digital ad industry confronts the exponential growth of data, increasingly complex media and marketing systems and a rising need for a competitive edge, AI has never been better positioned to revolutionize advertising.

This presentation will: Address critical questions to understanding what AI is and application opportunities.

Highlight use cases for advertisers including:

Audience Targeting
Creative Personalization
Campaign Performance
Areas of concern
Best practices for advertisers

Room 3047 – Interactive Storytelling: Engage, Entertain, and Educate Your Audience – Josefina Loza & Danelle Schlegelmilch-Maven Media Collaborative

Join Josefina Loza and Danelle Schlegelmilch from Maven Media Collaborative for an immersive session on Interactive Storytelling: Engage, Entertain, and Educate Your Audience. Dive into the world of interactive storytelling and discover how to captivate your audience with dynamic and engaging narratives. Key takeaways include:

Understanding the Interactive Storytelling Landscape
Exploring Digital Tools and Platforms
Learning the art of Crafting Interactive Stories
This session is designed for storytellers, marketers, and content creators looking to elevate their storytelling techniques and effectively engage their audience.

11:00 – 11:30 a.m.

Lunch/ Networking Break

11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Keynote

Fireside Chat with Pernell Cezar with BLK & Bold & Adam Feller from Avidity Creative

Join us for an engaging Fireside Chat featuring Pernell Cezar, co-founder and CEO of BLK & Bold, and Adam Feller, founder and creative director of Avidity Creative. This session will delve into the unique journeys and impactful work of these two visionary leaders.

Pernell Cezar is the co-founder of BLK & Bold, the first Black-owned nationally distributed coffee brand. With a background in retail merchandising, Cezar has successfully combined his passion for coffee with a commitment to social impact. BLK & Bold donates 5% of its profits to support youth initiatives across the United States, aiming to create positive change in underserved communities. Under Cezar’s leadership, BLK & Bold has become a leader in conscious consumerism, offering high-quality coffee and tea products while fostering community engagement and support

Adam Feller leads Avidity Creative, a branding agency specializing in the food and beverage industry. Avidity Creative helps emerging CPG (consumer packaged goods) brands connect with customers through strategic branding, packaging design, and market positioning. Feller’s expertise lies in crafting compelling brand identities that drive market success and elevate products on the shelves .

During this fireside chat, Cezar and Feller will discuss:

The importance of integrating social impact into business models.
Strategies for building and scaling a brand with purpose.
Insights into the creative process behind effective branding.
Overcoming challenges and barriers in entrepreneurship.

Attendees will gain valuable insights and practical advice on building brands that succeed both commercially and socially. This is a unique opportunity to learn from leaders who are making a significant impact through their work and vision.

1:00 – 1:10 p.m.

Networking Break

1:10 – 2:00 p.m.

Afternoon Breakout Speakers

Room 4068 – What do you want me to do?!?! Using Emotional Intelligence to get clear direction from your client or your boss. – Kathleen Riessen

Have you ever presented an idea knowing it was exactly what your client/boss asked for only to be told they wanted something different? Unclear vision is one of the biggest challenges causing misunderstanding, conflict, loss of productivity, and frustration in the workplace.

Room 3048 – Buyer Personas: The Science of Data and the Art of Storytelling – Jillian McNamee, Vice President, Marketing Network of Advanced Specialty Healthcare

My presentation, “Buyer Personas: The Science of Data and the Art of Storytelling,” offers an exploration into the creation and application of buyer personas in marketing. Covering the step-by-step process of developing detailed personas through demographic, psychographic, and behavioral data, it emphasizes the significance of deeply understanding the audience. It also illustrates how to effectively implement these personas in marketing campaigns with real-world case studies and discusses methods for measuring the impact on marketing ROI.

Room 3047 – What to Know Before You Prompt: The Ethical Trade-Offs of AI – Aaron Templer

In his 2021 seven-time award-winning book Leading in a Social World, Aaron used research to, as one book review put it, “turn our perception of social media marketing on its head.” In this presentation, as well as in his recent article published on MarketingProfs “How Marketers Are Getting AI All Wrong (And What To Do About It),” he’s at it again, this time with so-called generative AI.

While unions strike and artists file lawsuits over AI job- and value-displacement, marketers wring our hands about so-called AI threatening marketing jobs and making our marketing departments obsolete while we … wait for it … use AI to do marketing.

Operating under this strange dichotomy, marketers have fallen hard for unprecedented hype and are rushing to be the first to master AI tech, hell-bent on self-fulfilling a fate of our own making — all for a tool that, as one scientist puts it, is nothing more than algorithms that are “haphazardly stitching together sequences of linguistic forms … according to probabilistic information.” Or as a user on Mastodon put it, “mansplaining as a service: superficially plausible but totally fabricated nonsense presented with unflagging confidence.” Implausibly, we’ve decided to pay a steep ethical price for participating in this illusion:

We’re stealing content (content that we’ve created for our brands and clients, astonishingly). We’re publishing content from and giving juice to a biased system that causes real harm to many groups, a system using algorithms that one scholar calls “the civil rights issue of our time.”

We’re choosing not to accept the significant environmental impact of our actions during a climate and humanitarian crisis. There is another path. In this session, audiences will take away: An alternative view of generative AI, understanding how its technology is anything but intelligent, and how using it is commoditizing marketers’ hard-earned expertise. A clear-eyed and honest look at the ethical trade-offs marketers are making by using these tools. Four specific ways we as marketers can take an active role in creating an alternative, more ethical future for so-called AI that will better serve us and our craft.

Room 4067 – Using Branding to Destroy Barriers — Suzanne Petersen & Robin Barrett, Swanson Russell

How do you turn an overlooked, underrepresented audience into die-hard devotees of your brand? It starts with authenticity. In this session, Swanson Russell gives a behind-the-scenes breakdown of the campaign that helped Badlands Gear shatter industry norms with their line of for-women, by-women hunting apparel. Meticulous audience research, intentional branding, and comprehensive digital strategies helped Badlands go beyond surface-level awareness to build a strong, inclusive community of women hunters. This session is a must-attend for those who want to better understand niche marketing (and be inspired by powerful insights and top-notch work).

2:00 – 2:10 p.m.

Snack Break

2:10 – 3:00 p.m.

Keynote

Create New Things: A Sweet Journey with Tessa Porter

Ever been curious about the magic behind candy creation? Join millennial candy scientist Tessa Porter as she unveils the fun and innovation happening in her brand-new Nebraska candy factory. As the founder of Sprinkk, based in Omaha, Tessa has now expanded to her hometown of Albion, NE, where they just opened a candy factory that transforms sweet ideas into reality. She will speak about how she collaborates with global clients to bring imaginative concepts to life. Recently, Tessa tested her processes by launching her natural fruit snack brand, Norma’s. A passionate advocate for innovation, Tessa will inspire you to harness your unique talents and creativity to turn your dreams into sweet success.