The Media Insights & Engagement Conference is taking place January 29-31, 2014 in Miami, FL. The annual conference, which boasts the same producers as The Market Research Event (TMRE) and Shopper Insights in Action conferences, will bring together media industry leaders as they speak about trends and challenges faced in all aspects of the media, from telecommunications to cable.
KL Communications’ CEO and thought leader, Kevin Lonnie, will be attending this conference and blogging his experiences in daily updates. I sat down with him to hear his thoughts about the upcoming event and what he is most looking forward to.
CP: Why is it important for researchers to attend conferences and events inside their key verticals?
KL: We need to immerse ourselves in our client’s world. To be able to offer strategic insights and deliver those insights in a way that are easily absorbed, we need to speak our client’s language. You can’t just show up as the research expert and expect folks to listen to you. So in a way it’s doing your due diligence. It helps that we love media and find the chaotic world our clients live in absolutely fascinating. You need to choose verticals that work for you, otherwise you’re just forcing it, like a square peg in a round hole.
CP: What are you most looking forward to getting out of this event?
KL: Folks are always going to absorb media/entertainment, but how they do that is changing so rapidly. Twenty years ago, there was a movie with Tom Hanks called “You’ve Got Mail” and the movie was cutting edge at the time when folks were just getting on the Internet. In the movie, Tom Hanks basically plays the CEO of Borders putting all the little Ma & Pa book stores out of business. Fast forward 20 years later and you see that Amazon and others have put Borders out of business. So it’s a rapidly changing landscape and I’m very curious to see the business plans for all media players, from cable to print to web based.
CP: Are there any specific speakers/presentations you are planning to catch?
KL: Actually it’s the first two tracks that seem really interesting to me (Track 1 – Multi-Dimensional Research & Track 2 – Future of Content & Media/Partnerships/Collaboration). I think they’re honing in on this changing world and I intend to soak those in.
And finally, it doesn’t hurt to get out of the Northeast and this damn Polar Vortex for a few days and go down to Miami. Especially for a good cause, yeah that works for me too.
We at team KLC are eagerly anticipating gaining invaluable knowledge from the Media Insights & Engagement Conference and if you happen to see Kevin, be sure to say hello!