Dates: May 3-5, 2017 | Register here
Prices: starting from USD 375,-
Location: Chicago, The United States

EMS 2017: Experiential Marketing Summit

The ultimate training conference on the ultimate marketing discipline: experiential marketing. Get a year’s worth of insights and ideas in a few days. Join more than 2,000 marketers from around the world as emerging trends are predicted and dissected, best practices are explained and some of the biggest case studies are shared.

THE ONE. THE ONLY.

Attended by more than 2,000 marketers–and powered by a speaking faculty from the world’s leading brands–the Summit delivers the most mission-critical trends and best practices available on face-to-face marketing.

THE BEST. OF THE BEST.

At the Summit, you’re not just passing the heads of experiential marketing from Pepsi, Microsoft, Twitter, Bacardi, American Express, Ford and dozens more in the hallway—they’re your actual teachers, along with hand-picked design experts, strategy chiefs and bestselling authors.

LEARN IT ALL.

Get exactly the content you need using our “flex learning” format—attend traditional breakouts, workshops, sessions with bestselling authors and exclusive keynotes.

More benefits of attending

• BRAND-SIDE INSTRUCTORS. The brands you know, love and respect are your actual instructors for a few days.
• EXCLUSIVE KEYNOTES. Get senior-level perspectives on the marketing landscape. Keynotes feature American Express VP-Global Experiential Marketing Deborah Curtis, Twitter Head of Global Events Helen Stoddard, IBM VP-Global Events Colleen Bisconti and Adobe VP-Experience Marketing Alex Amado.
• MEET AND SCREEN 100+ PARTNERS. Come demo new products, services and solutions from our comprehensive Solutions Center of partners.

Master Classes

Bestselling authors teach super-session Master Classes on hot trends and business innovation.

Advancing Your Event Career During Pregnancy and Parenthood

The definitive Master Class for ambitious mothers and women who want families, presented by one working mother to another. For many women in their 20’s and 30’s, the greatest professional hurdle they’ll need to overcome has little to do with their work life. The most focused, confident, and ambitious women can find themselves derailed by a tiny little thing: a new baby.

While more workplaces are espousing family-friendly cultures, women are still subject to a “parenting penalty” and high-profile conflicts between parenting and the workplace are all over the news: from the controversy over companies covering the costs of egg-freezing to the debate over parental leave and childcare inspired by Marissa Mayer’s policies at Yahoo and carried through Mark Zuckerberg’s high-profile paternity leave.

The Paradox of Choice

With so many choices available to consumers, many of them find it difficult to make any choice at all.Psychology professor and bestselling author Barry Schwartz provides ample evidence that customers are faced with far too many choices on a daily basis, providing an illusion of a multitude of options when few honestly different ones actually exist.

The Invisible Gorilla: and Other Ways Our Intuition Deceive Us

If your message is vivid and memorable, your customers will see and remember it, right? Not necessarily. In this Master Class, Dan Simons, creator of the famous “invisible gorilla” psychology experiment, uses real-world stories and startling demonstrations to demonstrate an important truth: Our minds don’t work the way we think they do. We think we see ourselves and the world as they really are, but we’re actually missing a whole lot.

The Invisible Gorilla reveals the myriad ways that our intuitions can deceive us, but it’s much more than a catalog of human failings. Chabris and Simons explain why we succumb to these everyday illusions and what we can do to inoculate ourselves against their effects. Ultimately, the book provides a kind of x-ray vision into our own minds, making it possible to pierce the veil of illusions that clouds our thoughts and to think clearly for perhaps the first time.

Afternoon Workshops

Kick off your Summit learning with optional day-one workshops that provide deep dives into a variety of topics.

Event Measurement and Data University

Learn how to create and build a stronger measurement practice within your company. Get up to speed on current measurement strategies, trends and best practices, and walk away with actionable tips and insights on how to measure events, what to measure at events and what modern tools and infrastructure changes you’ll need to make to track it all efficiently.

Then, learn how to manage and break down the silos between the multiple data channels feeding into your organization, how to better unify your data in a way that makes sense and how to interpret your data in real time to create more personalized and impactful experiences.

Sponsorship University

From music to sports, from entertainment to the red-hot fair and festival activation trend, the rules of sponsorships are getting rewritten as brand enhance what they sponsor, why they sponsor and how they activate.

Come get a two-hour tune-up on sponsorship activation trends, best practices and case studies. Get a look at what’s changing. Hear tips for connecting with the right properties. And learn tangible ideas for making sure your current and future activations are integrated, engaging, amplified and effective.

Experimental Marketing 101

Back by popular demand, our “intro” class on experiential marketing. For up-and-coming event marketers, or those who might be seasoned in other areas but brand new to this industry, we offer a rapid-fire master class on “the basics.” An overview focused on what you need to know to thrive and survive will be deliverer.

Topics to be covered include an overview of experiential marketing, top trends, rundowns of the 12 types of experiential programs, plus case studies, measurement, logistics and planning/budgeting. You’ll get a real feeling for what experiential is, why it’s growing and what’s next.

B-to-B Events Field Trip: McDonald’s University

Immerse yourself in a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the home of Chicago’s most iconic hometown brand—McDonald’s. You’ll head to McDonald’s downtown digital offices (roundtrip shuttle transport in our EMS bus is provided) for a dynamic master class on how this 62-year-old brand is reinventing itself through live and digital experiences.

Learn how McDonald’s is bringing its new vision for the future to life through events and how its strategic, design and engagement teams are working together in a new way to set the pace for the McDonald’s brand of the future.

For more opportunities, check our opportunities sections and subscribe to our weekly newsletters.