10 things we learned at our 2016 conference

Things we learned at our conference

It was a day that began with Ed Lu’s view from space where watching 16 sunrises and sunsets every day made him realise that human beings can do great things if we work together. And a day that ended with the inspiring tale of how Team GB made history at the Olympics. We discovered a brave new world where millennials seek a ‘lebensabschnittgefaehrteh’ and ‘the loud is good’ Body Coach got 20,000 likes on Instagram for a Chunky Monkey smoothie right in front of our eyes.

Here are 10 things we learned today from our editor Elen Lewis:

  1. ‘Don’t put things off. You don’t know what’s going to happen.’ (Ed Lu)
  2. ‘The biggest impact comes from solving the biggest problems. And when you’re faced with the choice between strategy and execution, choose execution.’ (Nicola Mendelsohn)
  3. Be a good ancestor, kill complexity, never rest and care more.’ (Mark Wilson)
  4. ‘A lot of twaddle is written about change. Marketing comes down to three simple questions. Who are you trying to target? What are you trying to say? Why is it better than your competitors? (David Wheldon)
  5. This is how you increase your power as a marketer – tackle the big issues that are important for customers and also important for companies. Look at where these two areas overlap. (Thomas Barta)
  6. China has 28 big provinces and four big cities. What works in one province has only a 52% chance of working in another. (Graham Fink)
  7. If an alien observed the human species from the last 100,000 years – they would only have two things to say that are true across all societies. We, the 8 billion people try to live near water and we cluster in cities. (Parag Khanna)
  8. ‘The louder I got, the more followers I got’. Joe Wicks on Instagram.
  9. Advice on picking winning teams from Mark England. ‘There’s no emotion. Pick the best people for the job in that moment in time.”
  10. The problems of translation. KFC’s slogan, “Finger Lickin’ Good” came out in Mandarin as, “Eat Your Fingers Off.”

We were thrilled to share The Marketing Society's Annual Conference with you today and hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.

If you didn't get a chance to submit your feedback, you can tweet it to #global357

To watch the sessions from our conference head here.

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