This year, Spark.me conference welcomed a number of incredible speakers from areas of marketing, art, science, and entrepreneurship.
First to present his ideas was Mark Schaefer, marketing consultant, and a globally recognized speaker. He explained the hardship of the marketing of today in the online world where the users are overwhelmed by the ads on a daily basis. Since most of the businesses tend to give up after failing to reach their audience in a certain amount of time, Schaefer pointed out the importance of being persistent by saying that ‘’consistency is more important than genius’’. He made clear that it’s not necessary to always strive for the best quality content, but to always be present for your audience and steadily reach out to more people. Speaking from his personal experience and by sharing a story of how he was “hugged by a brand”, Schaefer explained that the customers will stay loyal to the company that is ready to go out of its way to make sure that the customer’s needs are satisfied.
Denise Lee Yohn, the go-to expert on brand leadership for national media outlets, spoke of similar ideas pointing out that the customer experience is the new marketing. To earn the loyalty of the customers, it’s important to ‘’sweat the small stuff’’ and always be on the look of what the customer needs and expects in advance.
Later the stage was occupied by two cyborg artists – Neil Harbisson and Moon Rivas, who showed the future to the audience. Harbisson, who was born color-blind, is best known for having an antenna implanted in his skull through which he receives sounds and vibrations that give him the ability to perceive colors. Rivas explained the sensors implanted in her feet that allow her to feel seismic movements – to feel every earthquake in real time, which she then interprets through dance and music. They both presented the ways of using the already existing technology to give people the possibility to modify and gain extra senses.
The feeling of the outer space was brought by a former NASA astronaut, Mike Massimino, who spoke of his childhood passion to become an astronaut and the road he took to reach his goals. Massimino explained the projects he worked on while in NASA and his incredible experience at the space station.
Dhiraj Mukherjee, co-founder of Shazaam, the world’s first mobile phone-based music recognition service, told all about the struggles of young and inexperienced entrepreneurs. Despite having only 4% chance of succeeding with the idea for a business, he and his partners decided to be persistent. He pointed out that, among other factors, their success comes from the fact that they never stopped believing in themselves, they never took a no for an answer, didn’t work flat out, and very importantly, they never stopped enjoying themselves.
Dave Briss was there to speak on the subject of creativity where he pointed out that the ability to have ideas and imagination is present in everyone, but what matters the most is the ability to recognize good ideas, develop and articulate them, and then to have the perseverance to execute those same ideas. Briss made clear that learning by doing things is by far more superior than learning just from the books.