The 2019 ANA Digital & Social Media Conference maintained the event’s rich tradition of covering forward-looking, cutting-edge digital marketing trends that will have an impact both today and in the future.

1. KEY TAKEAWAYS
FROM THE
2019 ANA DIGITAL
& SOCIAL MEDIA
CONFERENCE

2. Bringing together top marketers and CMOs from
some of the world’s biggest and most successful brands,
the 2019 ANA Digital & Social Media Conference
served as a master class on the latest and most powerful
marketing trends of today and tomorrow.
Topic areas included trust and transparency, data,
content creation, and more. Ahead, we’ll cover six
of our favorite insights shared during the event.

3. “It boggles my mind how
well Facebook performs for us,
despite my [impression] of it.”
— Debra Erickson, director of marketing
at San Diego Zoo Global

4. 4© Copyright 2019 by the Association of National Advertisers, Inc. All rights reserved.
This quote from Debra Erickson is more of a comment on data
than it is a comment on Facebook. Different things work for
different brands, and it is incumbent on marketers to set aside
personal feelings about what would or should work and focus
only on what the data says.

5. “Be brave enough to start
a conversation that matters.”
— Brandon Miller, media investment lead
at Land O’Lakes

6. 6© Copyright 2019 by the Association of National Advertisers, Inc. All rights reserved.
From fraud to brand safety concerns, there are a lot of
uncomfortable things going on in marketing right now. People
around the industry recognize this, making it incumbent on
all of us to start the uneasy conversations and address these
issues. As Brandon Miller said later on in his session,“If we’re
scared to discuss [the uncomfortable things in our industry],
we can never solve them.”

7. “Brand love alone simply
isn’t going to cut it.”
— Kristi Argyilan, president of Roundel,
Media reimagined by Target

8. 8© Copyright 2019 by the Association of National Advertisers, Inc. All rights reserved.
Target is one of the most beloved brands on the planet, but
that provides little comfort to Kristi Argyilan. As she said,“The
retail landscape is littered with brands that people once loved.”
Marketers at beloved brands would be remiss to simply rest
on their laurels. Achieving sustainable success is an ongoing
mission for marketers, who must strive to go above and beyond
and provide consumers with better experiences. If you stop
doing that, your brand may end up like RadioShack.

9. “A few good things are better
than a lot of bad things.”
— Rishad Tobaccowala,
chief growth officer at Publicis Groupe

10. 10© Copyright 2019 by the Association of National Advertisers, Inc. All rights reserved.
Marketers have fallen into a bad habit when it comes to
digital marketing: valuing quantity over quality. This is a
problem, says Rishad Tobaccowala. Instead of focusing on
quantity — slapped-together content produced on a large
scale and raw reach, for example — marketers should put
their efforts into premium content served on highly targeted,
high-ROI platforms. If you’re serving low quality work on a
high-volume, nontargeted platform, your brand is going to
become irrelevant. Stay irrelevant long enough and the brand
will eventually disappear entirely.

11. “You can’t be good at
social media if you’re not
good at organic social media.”
— Beverly Jackson, VP of social portfolio strategy
at MGM Resorts International

12. 12© Copyright 2019 by the Association of National Advertisers, Inc. All rights reserved.
While social media continues to careen toward the world of
pay to play — and some would argue it has already arrived —
there is still some value in being able to earn reach by posting
organically. In fact, for Beverly Jackson, if you don’t understand
how to drive engagement without the benefit of paid media,
you’re not equipped to manage paid social. Take some time to
figure out what works with your channels organically, because
if it works then, it will be better suited to drive ROI once some
paid dollars go behind the content.

13. “We’re in a trust apocalypse.”
— Dustin Engel, general manager
of corporate development at PMG

14. 14© Copyright 2019 by the Association of National Advertisers, Inc. All rights reserved.
For a long time, brands and marketers have abused consumer
data, collecting it and using it without much transparency for the
end user. With the recent efforts of regulators stepping up and
trying to fix digital privacy around the globe, the concept of their
own privacy is top of mind for many consumers. This heightened
awareness has plunged the marketing industry into a trust
apocalypse, where consumer faith in brands is at an all-time low.
It’s up to marketers to get the brands they manage back in the
good graces of consumers. It’s a tall order, but one Dustin Engel
believes we must start working on in earnest, immediately.

15. WONDERING WHAT ELSE YOU MISSED AT THIS YEAR’S
#ANAdigital CONFERENCE?
Our Marketing Knowledge Center has a treasure trove of session recaps
from the event for your reading pleasure:
Target: Innovation Driven by the Basics
Remaining Relevant in Transformative Times
MGM Resorts: Building Brands Through Storytelling and Social Media
Forrester: How AI is Transforming Advertising and What You Should Do
About It