Our Minio team made the most of the 2023 conferences. This time, we’re talking about Brand Power, GoTech World and the Romanian PR Award Gala. So, we invite you to read our impressions and highlights that our colleagues found out about and experienced at the industry events in November 2023.

We will start with Andreea Flori – Account Executive, Dorina Ochișor – Junior Account Manager and Vlad Boerașu – Creative Strategist, who participated at Brand Power. For one day, they exchanged new ideas and concrete solutions for responsible marketing actions, campaigns with real impact in society and an authentic and transparent relationship with the public.

1. Tell us one super-awesome thing you learned at the conference.

Andreea: I liked Brand Power because it managed to highlight aspects I already knew about a successful brand, but often forgot. The conference reinforced in my mind the idea that there is a huge amount of information, research and data behind a strong brand. The speakers were able to clearly outline how brands achieve success through thoughtful approaches and strategies, explaining that it’s not just products or usefulness that are key to a brand’s performance. The truth is that success comes when these brands choose to communicate in ways that deliver the desired results. Brand Power reminded me that any successful campaign or project for a client relies first and foremost on factual, well-grounded information.

2. Who was your favorite speaker and what drew your attention to them?

Dorina: My favorite speaker was Adina Vlad, I was really struck by the speaker’s approach and how engaging she spoke about strong brands writing consistent, authentic and courageous stories. Adina also mentioned that strong brands adapt to the context, are agile and evolve, it’s an interesting and correct idea considering the socio-economic situation of the last 3 years despite which brands are still with their consumers.

Vlad: For me, the most interesting presentation was by Andrei Bălan, CSO at MRM. The theme of his presentation was, as you would expect from a strategist, an insight in itself: because of all the events of the last few years, we as a global population are experiencing a common sense of general anxiety. But what I appreciated most about his moment was that I felt his goal was to convey some valuable information to an audience that can immediately integrate it into their work or, an approach increasingly rare in the local conference landscape.

Next up are Ioana Mucenic – CEO and Paul Cotor – Innovation Architect, who were present at GoTech World. With 11 content stages, more than 100 speakers and over 15,000 attendees, this year’s event focused on artificial intelligence.

4. What was the most interesting topic discussed there, from your point of view?

Paul: At GoTech, the topic that interested me most was the discussion about artificial intelligence and its influence on the future. It was interesting to hear the perspectives on how these innovations can change the world in different fields, including the marketing sphere. If in the past, a company kept repeating “The future sounds good!”, now we can say “The future sounds like AI!”.

Last but not least, we were happy to be with our industry peers at the Romanian PR Award Gala, now in its 21st edition, where we came back with 3 awards for our campaigns with Coca-Cola HBC and CeraVe customers and 1 award for Maker Podcast, a project developed together with Maker Studio. Colleagues Mădălina Badea – PR & Influencer Executive, Andreea Flori – Account Executive, Patricia Bălan – Social Media Executive, Mihai Bălan – Senior Art Director and Cristiana Pană – Head of Strategy, will tell us about their experience working on the winning campaigns.

6. What aspect of the CeraVe campaign do you think resonated most with the PR Awards jury?

Cristiana: With this campaign, CeraVe has not only successfully launched the anti-blemish range, but also created a strong buzz around it and brought dermatological expertise closer to direct users, with a special focus on Generation Z. The campaign, run broadly both online and offline, succeeded in normalising the discussion about acne, creating communities of discussion and providing support especially to the younger generation who face a lot of shaming and social pressure about beauty standards.

Andreea: The CeraVe House was much more than just an event – it was a first-of-its-kind experience for attendees and a successful debut of the new range of acne-fighting products. It succeeded in achieving our objectives, which were oriented in two different directions: on the one hand, we had to attract as many participants as possible, for which a variety of strategic approaches were used; and on the other hand, we had to showcase the new range for acne-prone skin in a way that was informative and as engaging as possible for those facing this problem. I think it was precisely the duality and balance between these objectives that made the Casa CeraVe event appealing to the jury.

7. What are the most valuable lessons you learned while working on the Coca-Cola HBC campaign?

Patricia: In my opinion the most valuable lesson from this campaign was that the greatest satisfaction in a campaign is when the customer is happy with the outcome and tells you so. No matter how hard a campaign has been, when at the end it gets the rewards it fully deserves, it makes life as an advertiser more meaningful.

Mihai: One lesson learned while working on this campaign was that you have to be constantly connected to the current way of communicating, especially when people with such different cultural backgrounds are involved. In a word: adaptation.

Mădălina: I learned that the comfort zone was created to be overcome and that pressure, if you know how to manage it, refines your attention and quick reactions.

You could find out how things went at the November 2023 conferences where our colleagues attended: they left with know-how, insights worth remembering and applying, excitement on stage and, most of all, the joy of being recognized for an internal project and two cool campaigns, enthusiastically implemented by super client-agency teams 😊