BCAMA Launches the Marketing Innovation Experience

Vancouver’s annual Experiential Marketing (XM) Conference, powered by The American Marketing Association’s BC Chapter (BCAMA) since 2014, is re-launching this year as the Marketing Innovation Experience Conference, presented by Telus, taking place at the Telus Innovation Centre the evening of February 22.

Featuring a line-up of high profile names and top talent in the digital marketing and advertising spaces, this year’s conference focuses on emerging marketing technologies, and will be an elite networking event, bringing together Vancouver’s savviest marketing and technology professionals.

“We’re moving beyond simply experiential marketing to marketing innovations,” says Jon Malach, BCAMA Marketing Innovation Experience Conference Director. “What we promise is a non-repetitive, concentrated high value experience from the stage, and valuable networking opportunities with the elite of Vancouver.”  

The Marketing Innovation Experience Conference’s keynote speaker is Adam Bauer, VP, Partnerships West at Shazam, a company that is reportedly set to be acquired by Apple, after developing a music recognition app used by millions.   

Sharad Kharé of Kharé Communications will moderate the panel, and panellists include Madeline Ell, Senior Producer at Telus Studios, Diana Walter, Group Director, Digital Media at OMD Canada, Lloyd Berry, Head of Partnerships at Advertas, and Mark Jones, media supervisor at Cossette.

Malach says the event will focus on user engagement with a futuristic feel, but showcases the “technologies of tomorrow that you can use today. “

“It’s about time that Vancouver recognized that they are starting to come into a leadership position in North America as one of the communities that’s producing amazing technology and marketing campaigns,” Malach says.  “Vancouver has boutique agencies that are poised for hyper-growth.”

Malach says the BCAMA ensures attendees will have opportunities to meet with brands the organization attracts, and works collaboratively to continue to push the level up higher each year.

“An absolute mandate and requirement is that there will be nobody on the stage that hasn’t already performed and executed a campaign that involved a brand at a high level with high skills,” he says. “Everybody on the stage is speaking in terms of factual events that have happened, and real life strategies and concepts that can be implemented, and they can back them all up with measurements.”

Malach says the target demographic is mid-to-senior level professionals who are looking for immediate access to thought leadership behind top innovations in marketing technologies.

The latest digital developments and innovative disruptors in Virtual Reality (VR) activations top the agenda, and Malach says there have been some VR marketing capability developments in the last couple of years that constitute a quantum shift in technology– and cannot be ignored by digital marketers.

Malach says the game changer is that 360 videos are back, but are now accessible outside of an app, and that companies have solved the problem of scaling access to a 360 video experience on a mobile device or a desktop.

“Now we can reach the entire population that has a mobile device in their hand with this immersive 360 experience…Companies that have figured out way to change a 360 degree video into HTML 5 have unlocked the ability to reach the entire internet – the entire web on any website. 

The Marketing Innovation Experience conference aims to provide answers many questions futurist marketers may have about the latest key developments in immersive marketing.   

“The scale is here,” Malach says. We are scratching the surface of a new way of touching people.”