Originally created by a marine biologist, SpongeBob SquarePants has always had a deep love for the ocean at its heart.

Today, 11M tonnes of plastic enter the ocean annually, harming the marine species who call it home. It is our duty to preserve the ocean, not just for ourselves but for generations to come.

That’s why Paramount Consumer Products and Nickelodeon are launching SpongeBob SquarePants: Operation Sea Change to help protect the home of our beloved sponge. This multi-year global initiative will spark a sea change by funding global clean-up work, promoting sustainable products, and educating millions of fans on how they can help protect the undersea home of all creatures—including a certain silly sea star, sourpuss octopus, and optimistic yellow sponge.

We’re just getting started and look forward to turning the tide together.

There is no question that trusted brands go further. Trust drives loyalty, engagement, and brand exclusivity, as well as helping to build lasting customer relationships. Whilst it has always been a hot topic, the question remains – how do we gain it, nurture it, and what are the consequences of losing it?

In order to reflect a consumer’s expectation that a brand’s product aligns with the promises the company has made, trust needs to be embedded in a company culture. According to research by Microsoft, brands that are inclusive in their marketing are viewed as more authentic & trustworthy. This may create opportunities to respond to external movements and spark conversations, but the challenge lies in genuine execution and avoiding a tokenistic & reactive approach.

Join this panel discussion to explore what role emotion & culture plays in marketing, and how brands can ensure they retain that trust & authenticity to drive consumer loyalty.

With the tectonic shifts the last few years have presented, organizations are rethinking why they exist and how they can make an impact beyond maximising profits, and ensuring consumer expectations are aligned with this.

Brand purpose touches every part of our business: from customer loyalty to product engagement to driving revenue. So, how can we capitalize on purpose and ensure it delivers?

According to a Deloitte survey, the primary drivers of purchase decisions are pricing and quality. However, in the modern consumer journey, sustainability, data privacy, and action in social inequity all factor in and are valuable in sustaining growth and developing deeper relationships with customers.

Join in to discuss the following areas:
• What does it take for brands to be purpose-centric?
• How can organizations translate purpose into action?
• How are you aligning brand purpose with loyalty?
• How can we communicate and measure the success of purpose-led strategies?
• How can brands use purpose to anticipate customer demand?
• How do you speak to environmental and social issues in a way that's credible and authentic, and stay true to promises made?

Consumers are bombarded with more content, messaging and adverts than ever before. Therefore, what we serve to our customers, or prospective ones, must be relevant, timely, valuable and support customers at key moments. So, how can you create content that engages, converts and retains?

Marketers must master how to combine creativity with data to deliver the ultimate storytelling scenario while simultaneously communicating true customer centricity through content.

So how do you break through the noise?

This roundtable will explore questions including: 
• Where are the best examples of personalized communications that cut through the noise?
• How can we transform our customer data strategy amid the decline of third-party cookies?
• With options as diverse as livestreaming, influencer marketing and video content, which platforms, tools and tactics will help you stand out?
• How can we navigate today’s fragmented buyer journeys? 
• What can we do to restore emotion and human connection to our communications? 
• As the world becomes increasingly hybrid, how do we blend digital marketing with physical world impact?

You may be surprised to learn that we’re using less Martech than the last two years – with 64 percent leaders agreeing their team lacks the technical skills to leverage the entire tech stack (Gartner’s 2022 Marketing and Communications Technology Survey).

Navigating this apparent skills shortage, or upskilling traditional marketers, is a huge challenge for CMOs, leading to wasted tech and personnel budgets. So, how can we lead a high performing digital team as the demand for technical skillsets grows?

This roundtable will uncover:

• How can we better collaborate with IT to accelerate business success?
• How can we seamlessly integrate automation and AI into the equation?
• What innovative opportunities are available to us to drive growth and deliver value?
• What skillsets are required to create a high-performing digital marketing team?
• What opportunities does the Metaverse present for brands to create new customer experiences?
• Is ChatGPT a marketing friend or foe?

With 120 zettabytes for data created daily, data and analytics dominate marketing decision-making. But creativity remains essential when it comes to making an emotional connection between a customer and a brand. McKinsey calls it the “growth triple play,” creativity, analytics and purpose delivering outsized growth rates. However, many marketing organizations have allowed data & analytics to overshadow creativity, limiting different ways of thinking, collaborating or reaching customers. In this session, we’ll explore why integrating creativity and data leads to better brand and financial outcomes and how you can create a distinctive customer experience by bringing together “art” and “science.”

In this session, we'll dive into how generative AI can actually be used to amplify, rather than dilute, your brand purpose, identity, authority, and market presence. We'll go beyond the hype to share insights from our year-long journey working with generative AI and harnessing it to help brands craft unique content experiences that are built around their customers. You'll learn how you can leverage generative AI to stay ahead and what pitfalls to avoid along the way. 

How do you go from being ranked by Glass Door as the absolute "Worst Company in America to Work For" in 2019 to being Voted the "#1 Best Supermarket in America" by USA Today Readers in 2021 and 2022? From being privately held to being acquired by one of the world's largest retailers? From alienating your best customers to being rewarded by their loyalty? Learn how The Fresh Market returned to its specialty retailer roots to engineer a turnaround anchored in “phygital” innovation.

According to a study by McKinsey, companies that use the three elements of the ‘growth triple play’ together - creativity, analytics, and purpose - achieve dramatically higher average growth rates compared to companies that don’t use any of the three elements. Only 7% of companies are delivering on the growth triple play by unifying creativity, analytics, and purpose.

Each element of the triple play is critical. Creativity is part of the origin story of marketing. It’s in the breakthrough ideas that have always underpinned bold, imaginative campaigns. The last revolution in marketing was all about the fusion of creativity and data analytics. What’s new today is partly the addition of purpose, the statement of a goal higher than just ringing up the next transaction.

If the “growth triple play” is the way forward, who’s leading the way? According to McKinsey, CMO’s have a once-in-a-generation opportunity, as 78% of CEOs are now banking on CMOs and marketing leaders to drive this newfound growth. So how do we make the most of it?

Do you believe that digital, AI and ChatGPT are your biggest opportunities for consumer connection? This session will provide a thought provoking perspective on what might just be right under your nose!
You’ll get a taste of brands and case studies from all over the world who are engaging a multisensorial dimension to their brands to inspire new possibilities humans might be craving.

Leadership vision is shifting from a focus on shareholder value to broader view of stakeholder value with customers and employees seen as critical stakeholders. Yet a gap remains between organizational strategies designed to turn vision into reality and intentional investments in organizational culture needed to implement those strategies and realize value for all stakeholders.

During this fireside chat, we’ll discuss the following:
• Why does a gap persist between leadership vision and organizational culture?
• How does closing this gap improve customer centricity across the organization?
• What steps can CMO take to advance this effort inside their organizations?