Nick Worthington to be keynote speaker at next month’s BEfest, as draft program is revealed
The draft program of next month’s BEfest conference – celebrating the best of content marketing and branded entertainment has today been revealed, including a rare keynote appearance from one of the world’s most celebrated creatives Nick Worthington.
Now in its third year, the BEfest conference takes place at Luna Park in Sydney on October 9. It will be preceded by a networking afternoon and followed by the BEfest Awards.
Worthington is ECD of Colenso BBDO in Auckland, which has been consistently one of the five most awarded agencies in the world. Colenso BBDO has been Mumbrella’s creative agency of the year for the last two years.
Worthington will discuss the agency’s philosophy of “Love & Trust” and share the story of its six year journey away from traditional advertising.
In his previous role at Publicis Mojo, Worthington was ECD of the Schweppes branded entertainment film Signs which was one of the first of its type to go viral.
The film recently exceeded 10m views on YouTube.
Worthington was labelled one of the most inspiring speakers at the Cannes Lions in 2012. And last year his agency’s work for Amnesty International won Gold in the Branded Entertainment category of the Spikes in Asia.
Also announced today is an expanded focus on content marketing, with experts sharing advice on every aspect of a campaign from developing strategy to creating a content marketing plan, to understanding distribution and measuring ROI.
Specific types of content marketing will also be explored with expert speakers sharing a series of their most successful local case studies including integration into TV vehicles, thought-leading initiatives such as webinars, books, brand journalism and white papers, and online video series.
Also on the program to talk about how to develop strategy is former Ogilvy & Mather global planning director Kate Smither who was yesterday revealed as group strategy director at M&C Saatchi. Smither helped develop the strategy for Cannes Titanium Grand prix winning Dove Real Beauty Sketches for Unilever. Also on the strategy panel is the Account Planning Group’s founding chairman John Ford and former Fairfax journalist-turned-content-marketer Lauren Quaintance.
Meanwhile, Danielle Long, editor of Branded Arts Review, will present a showcase of the world’s best branded entertainment.
And speakers from The Guardian Australia, Sound Alliance and a major brand will share case studies and insights into how to make native advertising work.
Among the panellists discussing distribution strategy will be Karen Nelson-Field of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science who will share her controversial research on video sharing. She will be joined by Ayal Steiner, boss of content distribution platform Outbrain, and Matt Tindale, director of marketing solutions at LinkedIn.
- An earlybird discount of $100 is available for tickets purchased in the next fortnight. The BEfest program and ticket details can be viewed via this link.
- Entries for the BEfest Awards for content marketing and branded entertainment remain open until September 12 (late entries September 19)
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