Social Brand Forum 2014 Recap: Speaker Slides, Photos, & More


September 29, 2014

social brand 2014 recap

As the sun set last Friday, the Brand Driven team closed down another successful Social Brand Forum here in the heart of the heartland. Once again, the Midwest’s premier digital marketing event presented a bold intersection of expert content, engaging conversations, and a strong sense of community among attendees and speakers alike.

As you return to the office invigorated and ready to reinvent your organization’s digital marketing, we thought we would provide a quick event recap along with some resources to assist you.

Another Year of Exceptional Digital Marketing Smarts

Broccoli, bourbon, and a hearty dose of Teddy Roosevelt’s wisdom! Social Brand 2014 had a little bit of everything, including some of the best speakers in digital marketing. As often happens, a common theme emerged around the importance of creating the solid, quality content, not simply more content. We were also reminded of the critical roles that email and search continue to play in our evolving marketing mix. From Ann Handley’s pre-conference and opening keynote to John Jantsch’s closing, marketers left the Social Brand Forum with a mix of high level insights and practical tips that can be applied right away.

We’re working on getting as many slides and resources from our speakers assembled here. Below is a list of what we have so far.

And finally, here’s the deck from my closing talk recapping the big ideas from Social Brand Forum 2014.

Photo Finish

Carter Oswood, Molly Wilson, and Kerry O’Shea Gorgone all took some great photos during the event that you can find on our Facebook page. Did you take photos at Social Brand 2014? Feel free to add them here as well.

Continuing Conversations

You can still follow the conference conversation on Twitter and Instagram using the hashtag #SocialBrand14. Here you’ll find some of the most powerful ideas from the event as well as important afterthoughts from both attendees and speakers.

Reminder: You Have One More Book Coming!

As we announced during the pre-conference and before Ann’s opening keynote, all Social Brand Forum attendees will also be getting another book that Ann and I are working on right now, The Scrappy Marketing Handbook. More details on this soon!

A Big Thanks to Our Sponsors

Again, a big thanks to all of our sponsors who make this event possible including Infusionsoft, Hubspot, Zephyr Printing and Design, Verizon, the Tippie PM MBA Program at the University of Iowa, Don’t Panic Management, and Carter Oswood Photography. I hope you’ll take the time to learn more about these businesses who have stepped forward in support of helping all of us building better brands online.

See You Next Year

Remember to mark your calendars for October 15–15, 2015 for Social Brand Forum 2015. You can also keep an eye on our events page for information on our upcoming Digital Strategy Boot Camp tour.

What was your favorite part of this year’s Social Brand Forum? We’d love to hear in the comments below or on social media using the hashtag #SocialBrand15. Also, please keep an eye on your email inbox as we’ll be sending out our post-conference survey very soon.

Thanks again for being a part of the Social Brand Forum community!

~ Nick and the Brand Driven Team

brand driven team


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is a strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Brand Now: How to Stand Out in a Crowded, Distracted World and Get Scrappy: Smarter Digital Marketing for Businesses Big and Small. He is the Chief Brand Strategist at Brand Driven Digital, an educator at the University of Iowa, and host of the On Brand podcast. More about Nick.