Forrester's Marketing Forum 2010, April 22-23, 2010, Los Angeles, CA

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Event Overview

An influential consumer starts to rant about your brand on her widely read blog. Could you turn her from a detractor to a promoter before she does too much damage? Your best enterprise buyers want an unprecedented combination of features and services at a lower price. Would you uncover this insight in time to act before your strongest competitor?

Unfortunately, the answer is too often no. If you’re like most marketers, your intention to react with quickness and quality outpaces your ability. Why? A key reason is that building an adaptive marketing organization requires renewed investment in technology and process change, and with budgets down 20% or more over the past year, marketers’ hands are tied. But that will change soon. Sixty-one percent of marketers surveyed in the summer of 2009 believe that marketing technology is a key component of the organization’s success, and their 2010 technology adoption plans reflect this belief.

So what else stands in the way? Classic marketing practices prioritize stability over flexibility, leaving marketers ill-equipped to cope with — much less thrive on — change. Flagrant examples include: 1) budgets that are mere tweaks of last year’s spend and don’t reflect the real marketing mix; 2) media upfronts that lock down ad funds, leaving little for opportunistic buys; and 3) multiyear agency and distribution partnerships that are predictable but rarely innovative.

To secure your brand’s long-term survival, you must break away from these entrenched behaviors. In their place is a flexible approach that allows you to quickly and accurately recalibrate campaigns, product development, and even go-to-market strategies. Forrester’s Marketing Forum 2010 will explore how marketers are embracing adaptability more and more through their organizations, business processes, and technologies. At this Event, Forrester analysts and chief marketing officers will answer the important questions about adaptive marketing, such as:

How does the need for rapid response influence how marketers build long-term visions and anticipate customer needs?
What are the biggest barriers to customer-centric marketing, and how are they overcome in practice?
Which technologies will become the critical enablers of customer insight and marketing responsiveness?
As your audience moves, how do you make sure your market research isn’t locked in a bureaucratic groove but rather is learning?
If media is more perishable, how much should you buy and how often should you buy it?
How can you empower real-time response while preserving core brand equity and consistency?
What new marketing measurement techniques will improve the accuracy of predictive models?
How do quantitative and creative marketers come together to optimize marketing programs?
What changes should you make to your partnership strategy to improve your adaptability?