Join triathlete Suzanne Martin, a former BMA/Chicago president and CMO of Revenew, on an early-morning walk/run along Lake Michigan. No need to sign up—just assemble in the hotel lobby a little before 5:30 am. Suzanne will get you back to the hotel by 7:00 am in time for a shower and breakfast.

If you’re wondering how to make your products seem more exciting online, you’re asking the wrong question. If you sell something, you make a customer today, but if you genuinely help someone, you create a customer for life. Filled with dozens of real-world examples, this hilarious and powerful presentation will fundamentally change the way you think about your business. Is your marketing so useful that people would pay for it? That’s what it takes to become a Youtility….and you can get there.

GE has become a first mover in content, digital and social innovation, connecting with audiences in ways that are both unexpected and deeply authentic. This talk will focus on the specific media strategies, creative ideas and brand-activation formats that have sparked new-found passion for the 135-year-old brand.

Conventional wisdom attracts marketers to thought leadership. But thought leadership mainly teaches customers something they don’t already know or believe about their the world—often grounded in future trends. It rarely influences customers’ buying processes. Commercial Insight “unteaches” customers something they already know or believe about the way their business currently operates. Only this kind of mental disruption can reset the customer’s purchase criteria decisively in your favor. Learn how to use this approach to stand out in a noisy marketplace.

As data becomes more important and as marketer influence on IT grows, more and more engineers are being drawn into senior b2b marketing roles. Future b2b marketers also will be more likely to have coding and stronger IT and other technical skills, leading some to say b2b marketers of the future will be half technologists. Hear the Ad Age reporter who wrote a January 2014 article on this subject lead a panel of two engineers turned marketers and a leading marketing technology observer.

In the 24/7 world of digital/social engagement, b2b/b2c customer buying patterns have blended. A 2013 brand study found customers are more emotionally connected to b2b brands and named Cisco number one with emotionally connected customers. Learn how Cisco creates brand loyalty and how to use this dynamic in your business.

In this attention-challenged world, everyone hungers for brilliant ideas that can be briefly explained. Creative ideas don’t get buried in excessive detail; strategists avoid what easily confuses people and subject matter experts can just as easily give the two-minute as the two-hour version. Learn all about an essential new skill: profound brevity.

Before the digital revolution, marketers had a select few channels to reach b2b target audiences. Today, there’s a whole new world of ways to engage and converse. Far from being eradicated, traditional channels like exhibitions, email and old-school media brands (which used to include “magazines”), are increasingly reinventing themselves for the digital age and often look more compelling, powerful and effective than ever. Learn how these core channels have changed, what opportunities they present and how they can best be exploited.

We are in the midst of a mobile mind shift. Not just about "mobile first" or apps, it is the expectation that any desired information or service is available, on any appropriate device, in context, at your buyer’s moment of need. Learn how this consumer-first trend will play out in the b2b world.

The marketing paradigm has gone from being scheduled and prescriptive to being live, public and conversational. How can b2b marketers keep pace? Hear a top Twitter exec share their latest b2b cases, techniques and tips for identifying the moments that spark audience engagement and lead to positive business outcomes.

There are lessons for marketers of all stripes in Marketing the Moon, the best seller about arguably the most successful marketing program in history. How did space exploration, once the purview of rocket scientists, reach a larger audience than “Laugh-In”? Why did a government program whose SOP had been secrecy turn its greatest achievement into a communal experience? You will learn you can achieve audacious goals, too, using many of the same techniques that riveted the world 45 years ago.