Next week I will be on a panel with three distinguished industry professionals from Best Buy, Draftcb and imc2. The event is the Forrester Consumer Forum held by Forrester Research at the Fairmont hotel in Chicago. I get quite a few invitations to either speak or be on panels (not bragging, just a fact) but I’m very selective on where I spend my time. Forrester has an amazing track record on delivering great content and they have gotten their chops back on being provocative (full disclosure, I am on their Interactive Marketing Leadership Board). This year’s Consumer Forum theme is The Three-Dimensional Consumer: Creating Breakthrough Multichannel Relationships.
I will be on a panel discussing how to manage multichannel agency relationships. Today firms are tasked with managing a variety of online channels; web, e-mail, chat, social and mobile. No one person company or agency can be an expert in all of them, but our customers expect us to deliver a great experience and value at every touch point. I view this as an exciting challenge. The agency landscape has expanded to fill this gap. But adding more agency partners complicates things. Here are some of the questions that will likely be thrown at the panel.
- What is a digital agency’s role in today’s multi-dimensional landscape? Is it more important or roughly the same as it’s been?
- What makes a successful interactive agency-marketer relationship?
- What are the pros and cons of working with one consolidated agency vs. several specialist agencies?
- How has social media changed the landscape and what is the role of agencies in this space?
- What can marketers and/or agencies do better to improve relationships?
Looking forward to a lively discussion and voicing my opinion. Check back for a wrap-up after the event.
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what day are you going to be speaking steve?
I’m on for Wednesday, October 28 at 1:45pm in one of the track sessions.