Contagious Now / Next / Why Session - All Day Conference

'Change is a motherf*cker when you run from it,'
David Simon, writer, The Wire

Here's just a glimpse of what's awaiting you at the upcoming Now / Next / Why:

The ROI of R&D / (Adaptive Innovation)

Prioritising experimental practices to fuel innovation and growth is no longer a luxury, but a necessity for modern marketers

With brands demanding increasingly innovative approaches to how they and their agency partners come up with ideas, lab culture for marketing is moving from a nice-to-have to… Show more a need-to-have. Contagious will be looking at brands acting as VCs, debating whether brands can or should act like start-ups, and bringing in speakers from multi-disciplinary labs to hear how they work, how they convinced their businesses to adopt this way of working, and what their success rate has been like.

Beyond Screens / (The Post-Mobile Era)

Technology is breaking out from behind the glass. What does it mean for brands?

Forget the post-PC era. What does the post-mobile era look like? Soon consumers will regularly interact with brands outside of smartphone and laptop screens, as technologies like Google Glass, projected interfaces from Berg, and haptic surfaces created by Disney Research reach the mainstream. Where is interaction going next, and what do new interfaces mean for brands/agencies creating marketing content?

Digital Immediacy / (Buy It Now)

People can increasingly buy directly from posters, TV commercials, magazines and products themselves using their mobile phone. How should brands market themselves and compete in a world of 'Buy It Now'?

The rise of immediacy, whether through flash sales or limited-time offers, has created an even shorter path that people need to tread in order to get the things they want. But how do marketers behave quicker? How do they reconsider the traditional funnel of awareness and purchase, when mobile phones mean people can buy direct from posters, TV, magazines and everyday objects? We'll discuss the impact of accelerating communications for marketing, and how best to reach and reward the people who want to ride the roller coaster with your brand.

New Currencies / (Alternative assets)

Digital has reconfigured the way we think about 'value', both in terms of what we expect to receive from brands and the way in which we expect to pay them for it. How do brands go about navigating this new value exchange?

Peer-to-peer systems like AirBnB, Neighborgoods and WhipCar are disruptive forces in business, encouraging people to swap, share and rent between themselves, rather than simply buy from brands. A new understanding of 'money' is emerging, with people coming to realize that their data, everyday activities and social chatter are alternative forms of payment. Some brands have already begun to tap into this shift with the likes of Nike, Anton Berg and Ibitz finding new to ways to measure and reward people. What are these new alternative currencies? What value do they offer for people and brands?

What is Now / Next / Why?

Contagious deconstructs the torrent of news and information that marketers are exposed to in order to pinpoint the trends and technologies that actually matter. In each of these sessions we will examine key current trends and explain how they apply to your business in the following context:

NOW / What's the current consumer or technological trend? How are marketers exploiting it? What does best practice look like?

NEXT / Where's it going? What possible evolutions should you know about? How will your brand keep up?

WHY / What does it mean, and what are the implications for strategy, commerce and community?

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