Thumbing it to the Recession - CGT Sales & Marketing Conference 2009
I am just flying back from attending the CGT (Consumer Goods Technology) Sales & Marketing Conference 2009. Overall the conference was surprisingly well attended and even more surprisingly upbeat. Infact I haven’t seen sales & marketing executives more upbeat about innovation and investments even in the boom times. Granted there was tacit acknowledgement about the economy but there was a certainty of the fact that recovery had begun. Coming from sales & marketing folks in the consumer products industry who handle some of the largest retail accounts all over the world, this is a great sign.
The CEO & Founder of Terracycle, Tom Szaky kicked things off with a stupendous story in his keynote. He seemed all of 25 with spiked hair, shirt and casual pants – a drastic departure from celebrated keynote speakers in most conferences. The most important thing was he had attitude and spunk with achievements to back them up. His company has created a revolution in the concept of “up-cycling” products. If you haven’t checked them out, I highly recommend it. Of all the keynotes I have heard in hundreds of conferences, this one really stood out among the very best. Michael Ferrara (ex-VP of Coty Brands – the beauty company) followed it up with some hard data-driven decisions that have resulted in great progress at Coty.
One of the highlights of the conference was Lora Cecere of AMR Research and her panel on Sales & Marketing investments. In her expert style, Lora asked rapidfire questions to her panel and got the essence and mood of the industry out in a few minutes very effectively. Its clear that investments are tight, challenges exist but the market leaders are pushing forward with innovative ideas. Other sessions worth highlighting were the highly energetic performance by Craig Hodnett the VP of Category Management of Dr Pepper and Anthony van der Hoek Coca Cola’s Director of Strategy & Business solutions for the Wal-Mart account talking candidly on how his team works with Wal-Mart especially on the all-critical but often under-rated area of Master Data Management. I saw people taking furious notes in these sessions.
Ofcourse Infosys had our very own session on “Instore Marketing in the last 100 feet” presented by yours truly. It was fun talking about actual projects and their outcomes in the areas of digital marketing specifically in the last 100 feet. I had to stay back a full hour to handle followup requests. We are set to do atleast 5 followup sessions with select clients and prospects. We truly think this is where the future and the present should be.
All-in-all a great conference for the industry and a great conference for Infosys. We obviously caught up with some existing customers & friends, and made some new ones. We should be back for the next chapter of CGT soon.
