India’s 1st marketing festival to make managers future ready

NEW DELHI: It is time for marketers in India to join an extraordinary group of thinkers, doers and makers from the world of marketing as The Times of India is set to launch the inaugural edition of Star FLOW — The Change Festival in the Capital in March.


As the first-ever marketing festival in the country, the two-day event will bring together India’s most celebrated marketers and the world’s leading marketing minds in a free-wheeling exchange of ideas that could spawn a set of innovative strategies for the future.

During the event, participants will have the opportunity to interact with leading communications, marketing and public engagement professional Roger Fisk, who played a key behind-the-scenes role in the back-to-back electoral victories of former US President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. Fisk will speak on ‘Individuals are organisers that need to be activated’. Similarly, another great mind, Richard Seymour, co-founder of SeymourPowell, one of the world’s leading industrial design firms, will share his experience on decision making during his session ‘Violence of the New’.

Sports marketing

fans will be enthused by Joan Oliver, who was the CEO of Barcelona Football Club during its very successful 2008-10 phase. Oliver will speak on business of sports, branding, leadership and teamwork. Joining him will be Holly Ransom, CEO of Emergent — a company specialising in disruptive strategy and building the capacity of leaders to execute change, who will talk about how brands can create loyal customers by maintaining their trust during his session, ‘The New Trust Landscape’.

And those are just four of numerous sessions by global leaders. The icing on the audience’s cake will be the keynote address by W

Chan Kim

, co-director of the INSEAD

Blue Ocean Strategy

Institute.

Adding an Indian dimension to the event will be the decision-makers from India Inc, across sectors such as automobiles, media, IT, finance, FMCG, e-commerce and more. They will be part of two high-powered panel discussions on ‘Blurring of the line between India & Bharat’ and ‘Classical Vs New Age Marketing’. In addition, there will be workshops on several exciting themes, including Sonic Branding and

Augmented Reality

& Virtual Reality.

FLOW — The Change Festival comes at a time when the world is experiencing major changes — political, social, cultural and economic. And when it comes to India, where rapid economic growth and sweeping changes in technology need to contend with a diverse and layered social structure and a noisy and vibrant

democracy

, managing and living with change becomes an even greater challenge.

With a large and growing consumer base and spiralling aspirations, change is rippling through India in exciting and often unpredictable ways. Marketers are being asked to respond with speed and imagination. For any marketer, understanding the nature of change as well as grasping its many implications has become crucial. In this context, the event will bring together experts from diverse disciplines and geographies to examine the idea of change in all its myriad dimensions to enable participants set a new agenda for themselves.