How can companies use sustainability as a driver of growth? In an interactive workshop, Stefanie Kuhnhen, CSO of the Serviceplan Group, and her guests Jürgen Kornmann, CMO of Deutsche Bahn (German Rail), and Marco Voigt, visionary and founder of Green Window, presented success stories and specific lessons learnt, as well as findings from the latest study results. Based on this, they developed clear recommendations for action for an effective and sustainable communication strategy.

How is it possible to develop a successful image on TikTok? From strategy development and individual trend search to storytelling and asset production to working with creatives – a brand’s success on the platform depends on a closely meshed interplay of various marketing disciplines. Amal Rahho, Brand Partnerships Manager at TikTok, and Vanessa Machado, Senior Manager of Media & Marketing Insights for Europe at Puma, outlined how they have turned TikTok into a successful channel for Puma.

Cultural marketing is currently one of the major marketing trends. But how can brands establish credibility within a culture and make sure they aren’t perceived as a foreign body? Music journalist and hip-hop expert Niko Backspin explained it from the artists’ perspective and told us how artists perceive brand cooperations. Together with Lars Holling (from the Serviceplan team for O2), he juxtaposed the marketing perspective and analysed the perspectives and approaches that cultural marketing should be addressed with.

3:00 minutes to attract someone’s attention – that’s an eternity in the online economy and something that’s rarely achieved. But it is an important benchmark on the storytelling marketplace and a key objective when it comes to increasing the session duration of the storytelling that Christian Rohr, Director of Solutions at REPUBLIC Marketing & Media Solutions GmbH, and his team creates for their clients on the platforms of German newspapers Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Süddeutsche Zeitung. How can we develop content that encourages users to give us their time?

AI is taking not only the digital user experience to a new level, but also the content discovery of media offers. In this context, AI helps with the analysis of complex data signals to gain in-depth insights and uses them to automatically generate dynamic creatives for recommendations that promise a particularly high conversion beyond extreme personalisation. Experts from RTL Germany provided insights based on the development of streaming service RTL+.  

In this rapidly changing media environment, it is crucial to harness the power of retail marketing if you want to be one step ahead of your competitors. How companies are shaping their path to success in the retail industry: experts from Mediaplus were presenting relevant facts and figures, discussing with fascinating guests the approaches taken by key players and showing how the use of technology, moving away from departmentalised thinking and AI can support this goal.

How can brands better understand their customers and align and personalise their journey ideally to them in order to win their loyalty in the long term? And what could the customer journey of the future look like? Experts from Plan.Net Journey and Adobe were presenting an optimised customer flow, explaining how a customer journey can be smart and personalised by optimising it with AI, and also showcasing new and analytical generative AI tools like GenAI.

Discover the future of your own marketing: with targeted marketing automation and personalisation, brands can turn their customers into devoted fans. But how exactly does that work? Henrik Thiel from SAP provided inspiring best practices, valuable automation tips and case studies that can help companies boost their own marketing efficiency.

Cybercriminals need just 20 hours to destroy 20 years’ worth of brand development. What makes brands vulnerable? What tools are cybercriminals using? And how can we protect ourselves? Eileen Walther, Country Manager for Germany at Northwave Cyber Security, explained what tools you can use to arm yourself against cybercriminals, and showed us what measures to take if we are ever the victims of blackmail ourselves.

In this high-profile panel, Microsoft and Google took a closer look at their visions for the AI age: what direction are Bing and Google heading in? What repercussions is AI having on the search and usage behaviour of the users? How can companies and marketing teams ensure visibility in the internet of the future? What disruptions can we expect in the customer journey and how will our view of data protection change under the realities of an AI-driven hyperpersonalisation?

New technologies are creating exciting opportunities to improve the customer experience – but using their potential effectively can be very complex. Dr Carolin Kaiser and Dr Fabian Buder from the Nuremberg Institute for Market Decisions, or NIM as it’s known for short, provided insights into how leading brands can use the metaverse and how social robots can boost the confidence of customers and influence their decision making. Plus: a live experience with interactive robots, the metaverse and examples of the customer experience in the digital age.

We are only at the beginning of the AI age. In an interactive session, experts from thaltegos and Plan.Net took a closer look at the opportunities and risks of artificial intelligence. Best practices from the sectors of conversational and generative AI formed the basis of the discussion. Customer interaction and the communication of the future were at the focus. Also at the focus of the conversation were responsible AI and the prerequisites for the successful use of AI in companies.

BMW 3.0 - Winning the race for the next web. Web3, NFTs and the metaverse are dead? If we are to believe the mass media, then the new internet is already over before it’s begun. Nina Matzat from Serviceplan DCNTRL explained what is really happening and how Web3 and spatial experiences can already create valuable business cases now. Blockchain-based loyalty programmes, immersive HR on-boarding experiences, virtual spaces as an extension of trade fair booths and for product presentations – there is no end to the possibilities. Here’s how to get started.

Somewhere between the conflicting priorities of art and AI: why no one should be afraid of AI – a discussion with digitally connected, internationally renowned artist Jonathan Meese. Meese’s message: “The AI itself is never the problem, but rather the ideology that it should be filled with by ideologists… Like with everything, it all comes down to how we fill it, the content… So if the content of a situation is ART, the FUTURE is SAFE, YEAH!… So please don’t be afraid to fill AI with ART – IT’S THAT EASY!”