Highlights of B2B Ignite 2019

Pete and I rocked up at B2B Ignite last week. He was speaking. I was his cheer leader, responsible for kicking off his personal Mexican Wave. We had a great time - you should get along next year.

Having walked the floor, here are my reflections.

General takeaways

ABM is hot – but the relationship issues between sales and marketing continue – ABM should be the spark in this relationship... but this is one love match that never quite seems to get consummated. Which is odd because we explain how CMOs can fix their ABM here.

Data is hot – but no-one agrees what they mean by data. It seems generally to be the sort of data that lies closest to your existing competence. Buzzwords are bandied about. Yet no-one is willing to fess up where they really are, probably for fear of being outgunned in public. For most marketing functions, I’d say it’s still a state of unconscious ignorance.

Privacy isn’t hot – but it should be. Maybe all that GDPR fatigue hasn’t been rebooted yet. On the morning of the conference BA got fined $230m for its data breach. You’d think that’d catch the eye. The flip side of topics like personalization and AI is that privacy and GDPR will become hardy perennials for all marketers.

Marketers are still from Mars and technologists are still from Venus – many of the marketers talked to topics like AI, data and the like, but most seemed to be flirting one hard question away from exposure.

Martech is congested – the big platforms (Adobe and Salesforce) provide centres of gravity, surrounded by a zillion point solutions. Most are destined to burn out or be consumed as they crash inwards to become feature extensions for the platforms. Agencies can add value by knowing which tool to use for which task.

Speaker highlights

The illustrious Pete Morgan talked about using data to identify and fix the weak links in demand programs and so improve marketing ROI (and there was an amazing spontaneous Mexican wave after his session).

Marisa Jansen van Vuuren of Dimension Data shared the story of building a brand through its high profile Tour de France sponsorship, and making that real by great storytelling and fan experience enrichment using live data sourced from the event.

Nick King explained how Autotrader created a community around its car dealers through open and interactive webinars. And in the process made Autotrader a more valuable channel for car manufacturers.

Martin Häring of Finastra spoke on the changing role of the CMO – adding a realistic assessment of the opportunities and challenges of AI to marketers, at both an operational and ethical level.

And finally, Doug Kessler spoke on the monotony of safe marketing, and provided tips on getting different, risky ideas approved. The sermon delivered by Doug ended with a collective amen from agency folk in the audience.