2. THE EVENT THAT DEFINED
A MARKETPLACE
The Festival of Media continues to be
the world’s only top-tier premium event
focused on the entire $500bn media
investment management sector.
“What you have achieved has not only
revolutionised the intra-industry activities but also
galvanised media’s role in the broader marketing
industry... truly phenomenal!”
Simon McPhillips, Director of Marketing
Communications, AT&T
Launched in partnership with some of the most powerful advertisers and the
CEOs of all the major media agencies worldwide, the Festival of Media now
takes place in Dubai, Miami, Rome and Singapore – uniting over 4,000 buyers
and sellers at the very highest levels of the industry.
Unlike so many events within the advertising sector, Festival of Media is
large enough to drive a movement of change and yet still intimate enough to
foster meaningful conversations. Our team strive to create an environment of
“automated serendipity” where the next amazing business conversation is just
around the corner. With more industry awards than any other media event, our
team continually strives to innovate and improve.
With an agenda crafted to focus on both current challenges and future issues
and boasting more “C-Level” executives in attendance than any other event of
its kind (all convening in some of the most remarkable venues on the planet),
the Festival of Media is immersive, elegant and has now become a crucial part
of the industry it serves.
3. Gerhard Zeiler, President, Turner Broadcasting.
Mona Eltahawy,.
Award-winning Columnist & Activist.
Carolyn Everson, VP..
Global Advertising Sales, Facebook.
Lakshmi Pratury, Host and Curator,.
The INK Conference.
Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO, WPP.
Vince Gilligan,
Creator, Breaking Bad.
Steve Mosko, President, Sony Pictures Television.
Biz Stone, Co-Founder, Twitter.
Valerie Wagoner, Founder &
CEO,.Zipdial.Alex Cheung, VP, Baidu.
Nizan Guanaes, Founder & Partner , Grupo ABC.
Dennis Crowley, Founder, Foursquare.
Bob Bakish, President and CEO, Viacom.
Luis Di Como, SVP Global Media, Unilever.
Vicente Fox, Former Mexican President and.
ex President Coca-Cola LatAm.
Esther Lee, Global CMO, AT&T.
“Congratulations on putting together such a
marvellous event! Inspiring line-up of speakers,
great entries and deserving winners!”
Lito German, Marketing Director,
BMW Asia
TOP OF THE AGENDAS:
BRINGING TOGETHER THE
BEST, THE BRIGHTEST, THE
BIGGEST AND THE BOLDEST
From its launch in Venice in 2007 – where the Global Media
Directors of both Unilever and Procter & Gamble agreed to
share a conference platform for the very first time in history –
The Festival of Media’s agenda team have worked feverishly to
create a memorable and stimulating conference programme.
Each year, over 500 speakers contribute to a series of
conference agendas all meticulously crafted in order to inspire
and educate our delegates. Every agenda brings global
leaders and some of the most famous names in media,
business, culture and political life – with each of our regional
events being carefully tailored to address distinct local and
regional media market issues.
The mandate from the Event’s founder, Charlie Crowe, is
clear: “Don’t just create an agenda, drive the agenda”.
Our agenda team is supported by a global advisory network
of nearly 100 influencers across 40 countries – ensuring
our topics are timely and well curated. Unlike many of our
competitors, The Festival of Media still retains a proud
editorial policy and there are strict lines of demarcation
between “editorial” and “pay to play”. Since 2014, this
has been matched with a screening process to minimise
unwanted sales pitches and to help our speakers drive
their arguments home. Our rigorous focus is to add value
to the business, not to merely add value to our business.
Having spent almost a decade bringing more than 2,000
speakers from across the world to our stages, the media
industry is now shifting on the axis of technological
change. And so the Festival of Media is responding. We
believe that it is our duty to help all players in the market
understand the many complex issues brought about by
digital transformation.
4. OUR PROMISE TO PARTNERS:
BE BOTH ENGAGED AND
ENGAGING
The topic of “media” was, for many years, a “side-show” at other
larger advertising events. But in 2007 the Festival of Media placed
the media buying/selling eco-system at the very heart of the
conversation, leading one global media agency CEO to exclaim:
“I finally feel like I am in a proper industry!”
The Festival continues to be unique in its ability to ring-fence
a broad community of buyers and sellers. During a Festival of
Media the community inside our venue is a microcosm of the
real world of media trading – where brands mix with agencies,
publishers, broadcasters, technology start-ups, researchers
and content creators – and where this community also mixes
with new platforms, social media businesses and all parts of
the programmatic landscape.
At other events, meetings among brands and agencies
are usually fragmented across towns and cities and these
discrete events are carefully guarded and controlled. At such
events, companies wishing to meet prospects must often
spend lavish amounts on venues, yachts, tequilas and talent
in order to spark a conversation.
Over 1,000 partners have used the Festival as a platform
to engage with their marketplace. It is truly unique in that it
has a partner base that is both global and equally spread
among media disciplines. From Google to Globo and
Twitter to Tencent and from Fox to Facebook and Spotify
to SpotXchange, the Festival of Media’s partnership team
deals with an eclectic range of companies and business
requirements. And we offer a huge amount of value,
whichever way our clients choose to measure their ROI.
Many creative activations and ideas are possible and,
with editions run in four separate business regions of
the world, the Festival can offer global packages with
varying activations in each region.
“It would be an understatement if I called FOM
a grand success. The networking, knowledge
exchange and business prospects coming out
of the Festival must be worth millions.”
Suresh Balaji, Global Head of Media and
Marketing Innovation, HSBC
5. The Showcase Theatre (pictured: Sizmek).
A SANE APPROACH
We call our approach to our partners SANE and
this also helps to outline our four key offerings:
STORYTELLING
Through our Showcase Sessions, Breakfast Briefings,
creative exhibition areas or via our premium ‘Founder
Partner Programme’, we help our partners tell their
stories to the right people at the right time.
AMPLIFYING
Through the Festival’s unique footprint, a Showcase in
one region is shared on screens at our other events. Via
the Festival’s sister publication M&M Global, interviews
and general coverage ensures your story speaks to the
international media community. And, of course, our own
websites, social media followings and the press room
enable an audience that is far greater than the attendance
to one single Festival.
NETWORKING
Our team goes further to tailor networking opportunities to
meet your business needs. We believe that ‘sponsorship’
has fundamentally changed but business face-to-face
networking is truly alive and well. In many cases, we sign
NDAs with our clients, enabling us to find innovative ways to
generate the right meetings among our partners’ prospects
and existing client base. On both qualified leads scores and
general relationship metrics, Festival of Media continues to be
one of the most powerful and cost-effective events in the global
advertising industry calendar.
EXPERIENCE
Our choice of venues has famously encompassed places
such as the Palazzo del Cinema in Venice – where the
main conference hotel was The Cipriani – to the incredible
Fontainebleau Hotel on Miami Beach. We carefully select our
venues to provide memorable experiences and our award-winning
logistics team are on hand to help make everything possible.
6. BRANDS AT THE FESTIVAL
The Festival of Media was the first event to recognise that
‘media’ was the largest single part of an advertiser’s marketing
investment – and that strategic media decisions were starting to
be made on a global basis. With the onset of mobile, content
marketing, programmatic buying – and digital in all its forms –
media expenditure has become more embedded into a brands’
business processes and yet, at the same time, it has all become
far more complex and fragmented. This is why we still take a
‘brand perspective’ on our agenda and why a growing number
of advertisers attend the event.
Advertisers make up approximately 20% of every delegation.
They come to assess media agencies, understand new
techniques, witness best-in-class media thinking and to meet
new suppliers and start-ups that could radically change their
approach. We have a dedicated invitation programme to
attract brands to the Festival and we also encourage agencies
to use the opportunity to host their clients at the event. At
the same time, we actively invite brands to participate in the
Festival’s content.
Across sessions such as “meet the judges” or at more
intimate drinks receptions and dinners, curious and
globally-minded clients are a vital component of every
Festival of Media.
“Excellent congress. This is the best festival to
celebrate best in class campaigns across the globe,
the best place for great networking, and of course
top speakers giving excellent insights.”
Dr. Christian Hahn, Vice President Marketing
Communications Strategy & Media,
Deutsche Telekom AG
A DEDICATED SERVICE
TO BRANDS
In 2015, The Festival of Media has introduced a
special bespoke service to our advertiser attendees
– focusing on four areas:
1. CLIENT CURATION. Our dedicated team speaks to
brands at the highest regional or global level and offers
an ‘event within an event’ - enabling meetings with
speakers or participants and tailoring an agenda to the
specific marketing objectives of that year. Often this means
meeting media agency partners in advance of pitches
or meetings with selected media vendor and technology
partners. Or, it can simply be for learning opportunities and
inspiration. Brands that have taken advantage of this service
have included Unilever, Nestlé and SABMiller.
2. EMERGE. As part of this unique global round-up of the
world’s best start-ups, advertisers can now benefit from
tailored meetings, carefully filtered to match their strategy and
areas of interest.
3. THE BRAND LOUNGE. We understand that brands can
learn as much from each other as from experts in various
media disciplines. The Brand Lounge is a new initiative
where our Festival team facilitates meetings with other clients
from other sectors, each having the need to learn and share.
Increasingly, advertisers from a ‘performance’ standpoint
are meeting more traditional spenders - creating a dynamic
environment of sharing and learning.
4. FESTIVAL INTELLIGENCE. Brands need benchmarks,
insights and inspiration. The Festival of Media now has a suite
of information products and data points that can be applied
to the specific needs of the global advertiser. The Festival now
works with a number of brands, harnessing and aggregating the
information it attracts in order to provide bespoke intelligence to
help brands make better and more informed decisions – 365
days a year.
TOP 80 BRAND SUPPORTERS
7. THE MOST RIGOROUS AND
TRUSTED BENCHMARK IN
MEDIA. NO EXCEPTIONS
The Festival of Media Awards was originally launched in 2009
in consultation with the global heads of GroupM, Publicis Media
Groupe and Omnicom Media Group. In just six years, the
Award Programme has become the largest of its kind in the
media industry. With more media entries than the Media Lions
at Cannes and with a greater spread across media disciplines
than any other awards scheme, The Festival of Media Awards
continues to develop its categories and shine its light into new
areas of the media trading eco-system.
The Festival rewards work from a unique MEDIA perspective.
Other awards ceremonies focus solely on creativity or
effectiveness, but the Festival looks through a unique lens at
the entirety of a campaign. There is a ‘two-tier’ entry process.
Shortlisting is done from a written entry only. It is only when
a case study has been shortlisted that we require the video
case. This has the benefit of clarifying and rewarding the
business results for the media entry – and not allowing
slick video production to sway decisions – while also
keeping the costs down for the entrants. We also insist
on having advertisers on the jury panels and a prominent
and respected global client as Chair. We believe that is
wrong for agency heads to have overall authority in juries,
especially when agencies themselves are most often the
recipients of the award.
We are also unique in our scale and scrutiny. Each year
entries to the awards increase by an average of 30%.
We screen entries from over 120 countries and are
supported each year by 300 industry executives – plus
major CMOs – all linking together into a network of
rigorous jury panels. Each Festival concludes with a
stunning awards ceremony, rewarding and celebrating
the very best thinking in media each year.
PREVIOUS JURY CHAIRS
LEONARDO
O’GRADY
ASEAN Integrated
Marketing and
Comms Director
Coca-Cola
BEN JANKOWSKI
Group Head of
Global Media
Mastercard WW
LUIS Di COMO
SVP, Global Media
Unilever
ANDREW KNOTT
VP, Media & Digital
McDonalds
NEW TO 2015
New to 2015 are categories engineered to capture
new work in programmatic and RTB activations; native
strategies and advertising campaigns that push into
the fast-eroding boundaries of e-commerce, attribution
modelling and content licensing.
Winning is a sign of true excellence in creativity and
capability and winners are frequently rewarded with new
business success and a significant boost in recognitions
on pitch lists, RFPs and client presentations.
The only global awards dedicated to the evolution
of media
“The FOM Awards has been another
milestone in my career. The result is
a legacy that we leave to the industry,
guiding and inspiring the advertising
community in this endless journey
towards excellence in communication.”
Luis Di Como, SVP, Global Media,
Unilever
SAMEER SINGH
VP, Head of Global
Media
GSK
NADINE McHUGH
Nadine McHugh,
VP, Global
Integrated Media
Communications,
Colgate Palmolive
SITAL BANERJEE
Global Head of
Media
Philips
PETE MITCHELL
Global Media
Innovations
Director
Mondelez
8. adledge
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SUPPORTING THE WORLD’S
MOST INNOVATIVE START-UPS
emerge* at the Festival of Media (emerge@FOM) is part of an
on-going global publishing and networking operation focused on
the world of digital innovation and start-up success. Before each
Festival, the emerge Advisory Council (EAC) – a unique global
network of entrepreneurs and investors – hand-picks a selection
of start-ups from across the adtech and general content/business
space and brings them to the event.
Each emerge company gains access to our emerge showcasing
area – where they will meet other start-ups from around the world.
But this is only the start of the networking opportunities. To our
established delegate base of brands, agencies and publishers/
media, emerge presents a unique opportunity to discover and
meet start-ups from across the world. The global nature of this
exercise makes it unique – building into a community of start-
ups from Bogota to Berlin and from Tel Aviv to Tokyo.
From the early trials of emerge, we have seen companies
such as Coca-Cola and Unilever build upon the meetings first
initiated at the Festival.
Through emerge, The Festival of Media has evolved its offering
to advertisers and given them a deeper and more engaging
experience to further understand and uncover ways in which
media is evolving and driving their businesses.
*At the Festival of Media Latin America, emerge is produced
under the name of “Media Sparks”.
“Meeting the most successful marketers in the
world at The Festival of Media was an incredible
experience. And having those same leaders name
‘VideoHub’ as ‘Hot Company of the Year’ was a
spectacular recognition of our entire team that will
resonate through the media world.”
Jason Krebs, Chief Media Officer, Tremor Video
“Advertisers are increasingly interested in seeing
new technologies but the landscape is complex and
seemingly bewildering. I am delighted that emerge is
providing this curation service – and, on behalf of all
the many brands at this year’s Festival of Media, I look
forward to meeting the chosen businesses”.
Sameer Singh, Former Global Head of Media for
GlaxoSmithKline; Director of Client Solutions, Google
PREVIOUS ENTRANTS
9. MORE THAN AN EVENT: A
CONTINUAL GLOBAL PROCESS
OF LEARNING, SHARING AND
UNDERSTANDING
The Festival of Media delivers over 600 video cases of award-
winning media ideas and executions every year continually
adding to a dynamic archive of thousands of innovative business
cases in media across the world. This archive has, for many years,
been available to the industry as a unique subscription service
called Cream.
These cases are now being combined with the insights and
data from the tens of thousands of written submissions which
form the first phase of the Festival of Media Awards process.
Matched with all current and historic speaker videos, a
unique search function, thought leadership articles, global
benchmarking white-papers and the emerge database of
worldwide start-ups – all with a fresh new user interface – the
industry now has a unique digital resource. Rich in data and
global in vision this new intelligence product from the Festival
of Media will meet all the information requirements of today’s
communications professional – 365 days a year.
Festival of Media’s sister publication – M&M Global – also
serves to extend the range of all the insights and cases at
each Event. For over 25 years, M&M has been providing
news and analysis for senior executives who need
information from outside their home markets and M&M’s
readership provides a network of international decision-
makers across the world.
All the key information from each Festival is carried
in M&M Global and it’s readership provides a crucial
sounding-board for the themes and topics of each event.
Find exclusive interviews and videos with
Festival speakers and delegates on
mandmglobal.com
You can search our extensive global award case
study database on creamglobal.com
10. NINE YEARS OF
NETWORKING
“The Festival of Media was
incredible, rich in content,
interesting people, business
opportunities… really really nice!”
Riccardo Nasuti, Digital Content
Manager, AS Roma
“During this event, we directly met
marketing decision-makers. After
discussions we succeeded in the
launch of 3 tests and negotiated 2
long-term contracts: the ROI was
amazing for us.”
Alexandre Grenier, Sales and
Marketing manager, MakeMeReach
“The FOMA was the most useful,
high level, least ‘sales pitch’ flavoured
conference I have attended all year.
High quality presenters and delegates
covered many of the major issues of
our industry at the moment. I’ll definitely
be attending next year.”
Robert Fry, Chief Research Officer,
GroupM
“I’m a big supporter of the Festival of
Media, I think that it’s really important
for media professionals and media
practitioners to come and celebrate all the
aspects of our profession.”
Daryl Lee, Global CEO,
Universal McCann
11. FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Here’s a quick rundown of key information about the event. Details on specific
events and initiatives will be inserted into the back of this folder.
N?
Every delegate has an international remit. Among brands, most delegates are on
the media, digital or content-side, at director-level. A frequently occurring job title
might be “Global Media Director” or “VP, Digital & Content”. Over 50% of the
agencies in attendance will be “CXO”-level and the remainder will be either senior
account directors running major international clients or functional leaders across
disciplines such as TV, Mobile or Programmatic. On the media side, over 50% are
“Director” level.
Across all sectors, The Festival of Media has the largest percentage of senior
decision-makers concentrated into its venues than any other media event.
WHAT IS THE SPLIT BETWEEN MEDIA SECTORS?
Regardless of location, the Festival of Media averages 20% brands; 35% [media]
agency; 30% ‘media seller’ (across TV, print, mobile etc.) and 15% technology
solution (across programmatic, native and so on).
WHERE DO DELEGATES COME FROM?
Since its launch, more than 10,000 delegates from over 100 countries have
experienced the Festival.
HOW MUCH BUSINESS IS CONDUCTED AT A FESTIVAL?
According to research conducted in 2013, each delegate exchanges an
average of 47 business cards and discusses an average of $2m in trading
while at an event. This ranges from the smaller deals – 100% of our emerge
companies discussed some proposals which led to business in the last 12
months – to larger arrangements between global companies, which are often
initiated or concluded at a Festival of Media. The Festival of Media cannot
claim to be a ‘trade show’ of a traditional kind, but the conversations and
new relationships that have been sparked have ensured that the market has
supported the event’s global roll-out and re-booking rate at the corporate
level is above 90%.
While we are not an ‘exhibition’ we are neither a standard ‘conference’ –
yet the space in between allows for many creative activations and ideas.
Increasingly, our partners are leveraging Festival of Media’s unique position
as an event run by the same company in four separate business regions
of the world in order to create annual global packages – governed by one
contract but with varying activations in each region.
of our delegation are CXO/director level
76%
12. ABOUT C SQUARED
C Squared is a multi-award winning publishing and events company providing
insights, benchmarking information and networking opportunities for executives
working in the international media and marketing industry. Headquartered in London
but with over 60% of revenues from outside the UK, the company owns The Festival
of Media; M&M Global; Cream and the global reputation survey, IMIS.
WHAT WE BELIEVE
At C Squared we believe that the sharing of global best practice, the provision of
multinational information and the facilitation of new relationships will lead to a more
innovative, efficient, profitable and exciting future for companies operating within the
media industry. By setting standards of global excellence and tirelessly seeking new
ways to inform senior decision-makers, C Squared inspires the industry to achieve
even greater heights.
GET IN TOUCH
+44 (0) 20 7367 6990 | info@csquared.cc
115 Southwark Bridge Road, London, SE1 0AX, UK.
