Speaking at WebCongress in Bogotá

This past week I had the opportunity to visit Bogota, Colombia and participate as a keynote speaker for WebCongress, an international digital marketing event.

I am extremely grateful whenever my work experience allows me to travel to locations I may otherwise never get the chance to see. I also find these conferences to be extremely inspiring and educational... and they typically have great happy hours.

WebCongress included presentations from Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram, Google, and Samsung on what’s new and what’s next for digital marketing. The content was heavy with new product capabilities and overall platform vision.

In addition to tech leaders, the event hosted Davi Braga, an 14-year-old kid who is also the founder of the Brazilian online marketplace, List-It. Davi shared the challenges of launching a startup at such a young age. And he stressed the importance the ‘idea’ when it comes to entrepreneurship. Davi’s presentation, which he ran from his iPad while speaking on stage, consisted of slides, videos, music and even fireworks. It was clear he knew how to make an impression.

The conference also hosted numerous product demos from Samsung’s mobile VR department, including a new Gear 360 camera that could can capture real-time 360 degree video — perfect for VR. The next teleconference you attend may be in VR using a Gear 360 and a headset.

While VR tech has come a long way, it still need to solve the issue of making the wearer look silly while riding a virtual roller coaster.

I was fortunate enough to speak early during the first day of the conference. So I could enjoy the remainder of my time without any pressure.

My presentation kicked off with a focus on my experience leading Coca-Cola’s global social marketing operations, including many of the campaigns I worked on: World Cup, Olympics, eSports, and Share a Coke activations. I did my best to transition to my recent work in machine learning by highlighting areas the Coca-Cola Company integrated cognitive power tools to digest the massive amount of data the company and its fans create. Tools such as Sprinklr, Hootsuite, DOMO, Netscape, and Sysomos allow social centers around the world to listen and engage with fan conversations in a cohesive brand voice.

The second half of my presentation transitioned to the importance of AI in a world where data is ever increasing. Annoying, and time consuming, tasks such and cleaning CRM data and personalizing content can now be passed off to an intelligent deep learning process.

In conclusion, I highlighted several campaign examples that are already utilizing machine learning AI to improve audience targeting, both at scale (using category targeting) and individualized (using custom audiences).

For a review of the presentation, Better Marketing Through Social AI, download the deck here.

If you’d like to say "Hi," I'll be speaking again soon at the Strategic Planning Innovation Summit May 18th in San Francisco, and at the Chief Marketing Officer Summit in Seattle May 26th.