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900lbs Attends Digital Fight Club to Watch Local Ad Agency Execs Spar

by 900lbs of Creative

900lbs Attends Digital Fight Club to Watch Local Ad Agency Execs Spar

On Wednesday, February 26th, we attended Digital Fight Club’s Marketing 2020 event at Granada Theater in Dallas, along with our Advisor, Jim Keyes
.
We had a blast at the event, networking with other agencies and Fortune 500 brands.(Check out the trailer for the event here.)

The event allowed “Ten of the sharpest ad agency minds in North Texas [to] spar in five “fights” on pressing marketing topics selected by top DFW brand CMOs.”

Fight 1: Agency Business Model of the Future

Fight 2: Creative & Media: Integrated Agencies or Separate?

Fight 3: Data & Personalization: Too much, too far?

Fight 4: Experiential Marketing

Fight 5: Local Marketing: Start from the Top or Bottom?

Fight 6: Biggest CMO Challenge: Inside/Outside of the Brand?

These events are always so energizing! As an agency that aspires to be one of the top places to work in Dallas and THE most innovative agency in Texas, we MUST always have a pulse on what Chief Marketing Officers are looking for in agencies. We heard the tensions of agency / brand relationships, and CMO’s outside pressure to generate revenue from all angles, everything from “agencies must dedicate your senior leadership to ensure your best work quality” to “the onus is on agencies to demonstrate ROI”. There was definitely a tongue-in-cheek vibe, a nod and a wink from the professionals who understood that they are two sides of the same marketing industry coin, that ultimate are able to empathize with each other.
(ex: more data capture and personalization to the customer is always better, right??)

After shaking off all the laughs from the evening, we agreed that the biggest take-away for our team is the role of experiential marketing.

Pagogh Cho from Adcetera argued in Fight 4 that experiences are unique moments that create emotion to build brand loyalty. Whereas Brian Hubbard from Accenture Interactive argued that Customer moments need to be consistent and frictionless, reflecting customers’ unique interests with data-driven personalization. The key difference, apparently, was whether CMO’s key KPI with experiential marketing should be Brand Loyalty or Revenue. They both seemed aligned that Experiential Marketing is necessary and must be data-driven, regardless.

Our reflection on this – as an interactive design agency and special forces unit leveraging emerging technologies to solve the most complex brand challenges and empower Fortune 500 internal innovators – is that this fight did not take a strong stance for WHY experiential marketing matters, or to what degree large brands should embrace experiential marketing.