WORKSHOPS

 
 

11:15 AM - 12:00 PM

* Registration for workshops has been closed. All attendees who have signed up in advance should have received their confirmation via email. If you have not signed up in advance, you can select from available workshops onsite.

WORKSHOP #1 (IN PERSON ONLY): 

Brave by Design: Delivering for Your Brand on TikTok

Did you know that brands that partner with creators on TikTok have seen a 24% lift in brand favorability and an 18% lift in brand recommendations? How about that 43% of users trust the recommendations of TikTok creators?

As a strategist, it is your incredible responsibility to drive growth for your client by understanding and being the voice of the consumer, and in this workshop, Allison Miceli from TikTok's Creative Agency Partnerships Team will share how to do just that on TikTok, using consumer insights, trends and, of course, creators.

Then, enjoy a fireside chat with a TikTok creator, who will share their approach to content, provide insight on what successful creator / agency partnerships look like, and discuss how TikTok trends can inspire brave ideas that drive impact on and off the For You Page.


Sponsored by

 

WORKSHOP #2 (IN PERSON ONLY):

De-risking Innovation: Building for the Future in Times of Constraint

This workshop will explore how organizations can navigate and justify the significance of investing in innovation amidst periods of uncertainty and financial limitations. We will delve into a range of invaluable innovation tools and methodologies such as leveraging cultural foresights, consumer insights from cutting-edge audiences, experimentation, prototyping, and iterative learning methodologies to make strategic, brave and informed innovation decisions that mitigate risks and maximize potential rewards.

WORKSHOP #3 (IN PERSON ONLY): 

Braver Thinking for Bigger Impact: The Power of the B Side

With brands as with people, our B sides offer a wealth of buried treasure, untapped potential, and powerful complexity only available to the brave. In this workshop, we take stock of the gifts, resources, and magic we wield that isn't public-facing. Utilizing prompts and exercises to dialogue with the parts of ourselves we tend to hide, we will find new depths, unknown strengths, and greater capacity to connect with others. Then we'll scale it up, flipping our brands on their B side to find the same. Ethnographer and Empathy Trainer, Karen Faith, joins Unconscious Bias Expert Steffon Isaac in this bold session designed to help strategists identify and utilize uncommon courage, starting with themselves and extending to the brands they lead. 

Participants will come away with the skills to:

* Create the space to see ourselves (and our brands) more clearly

* Transform hidden fears and flaws into powerful allies

* Build strategies with deeper resonance and perspective

* Connect with others (and audiences) with braver authenticity

WORKSHOP #4 (IN PERSON ONLY): 

Strategy in 3D 

Join Brendan Brown and Shane Quinn from leading experiential agency, GPJ, for a 45-minute intensive on Experience Strategy. Consumers are looking for experiences that offer something unique, and brands who are brave enough to reject the reassuring conventions of their categories are reaping the rewards, In this fast-paced, interactive session, you'll learn the fundamentals of experiential strategy, and leave with a few tools and tricks for taking your strategy off the page and into the real world.

WORKSHOP #5 (VIRTUAL ONLY): 

How Brave is Your Brand? Scoring Your Brand’s Ability to Deliver High-impact Ideas that Drive Business, Brand and Culture

Lynne Field, Head of Strategy for FutureBrand North America, will share FutureBrand’s model for becoming a strategically brave brand by delivering on 10 key dimensions of Brand Purpose and Brand Experience. You’ll score your own brand (or client’s brand) on the dimensions that make top performers successful both at Cannes and on the FutureBrand Index and leave with actionable insights for how to embed bravery more deeply into your brand’s DNA.

  • Lynne Field - Head of Strategy, FutureBrand North America

12:45 PM - 1:30 PM

* Sign up for one interactive workshop!

WORKSHOP #6 (IN PERSON ONLY): 

The Audience is the Message: How Audience Intelligence and AI are Changing Strategic Planning

In 15 years of studying virality and hundreds of marketing campaigns online, we've learnt one simple but powerful truth: it all starts and ends with the audience. Specifically the shape of the audience.  Your audience is never a monolith, but always a system of communities connected in a network. The shape of that network predicts how content will spread and the reactions it will generate. And in our new normal of channels, formats and platforms those communities and conversations are always moving. Mapping your creative and targeting strategies onto that shape will give your strategic plan the best chance of success. 

In this workshop, we turn that theory into a playbook and look at what it means to go audience-first and how this approach is revolutionizing the way we do creative and media strategy, influencer marketing, reputation intelligence and campaign measurement and optimization. Participants will be using tools like Pulsar, ChatGPT, Dall-E and Midjourney to create an audience-first media or creative strategy for the launch of a new startup coffee brand in the US market.

Participants will come away with the skills to:

* Design a modern planning process that incorporates audience intelligence and generative AI

* Derive insights from live audience data to shape creative and media strategy

* Use insight as inputs for generative AI systems

* Use generative AI to iterate strategy

* Build strategic plans that are inspired by and resonate with the audiences they're aimed at

Sponsored by

 

WORKSHOP #7 (IN PERSON ONLY): 

Strategic Bravery: Are We Ready for What Comes Next?  

WARC’s Future of Strategy report is an annual study based on a global survey of strategists, that looks at the current state of planning and strategy, and where the discipline is going.

Join us as we reveal some of the key themes that emerged from this year's report including how the strategy role is changing; what skills and expertise need to be prioritized, as well as the impact of different social, cultural and technological trends on strategy development.

WORKSHOP #8 (IN PERSON ONLY): 

"I'm Not Creative, But..." — Yes, You Are

“I’m not creative, but…” is a phrase heard WAY too often, even among strategists who work hand-in-hand with creatives every day. And it could be hurting our business and careers. Time to quit apologizing and take back your creative confidence. Strategists deliver key leadership and thinking when it comes to innovating, disrupting, and defying convention. We owe it to ourselves to stop believing creativity is just concentrated in people who know how to use photoshop or write copy. We’ve confused “Creativity” and “Craft.” In this workshop, you'll be given tools to build on your own innate creative superpowers — no matter what your role is — to help give you and your company the unfair competitive advantage that creative thinking can bring.

WORKSHOP #9 (IN PERSON ONLY): 

Tearing Open the Black Box of the Brain 

Want to know a secret? Your audience is pretty terrible at telling you what they think and feel. So how do we understand what truly drives them, especially during challenging, risky times? By using neuroscience to see exactly when they’re emotionally connected and, as importantly, when they aren’t.

Join Nick Childs (Chief Creative Officer) and Brendan Murray (Chief Science Officer) from DIRT, as they the unlock the key drivers for audience engagement, and share examples and exercises to show how we can better understand human behavior.

From a common misreading of Dan Kahneman’s famous book, Thinking Fast & Slow, to insights into how our brain perceives “relevance,” we’ll discuss ways in which we can harness human biology to better connect our work with those we’re passionate to reach. And dig into why right now – in the age of generative AI, inherent biases, and fractured attention spans – it’s more important than ever to know exactly what moves us most.

WORKSHOP #10 (VIRTUAL ONLY): 

The AI-Assisted Mindset

AI is reshaping how all knowledge workers operate, while also creating innovative ways to reach customers. Adopting an AI-assisted approach is the future, providing chances to extend your capabilities and boost your creativity like never before.

Join us as we hear from Ivan Perez-Armendariz, Head of Digital Experience at Deutsch LA and gain insights into the latest advancements in Generative AI technology and how it is reshaping the advertising landscape, the work we do and how we do it.