BIMA Beyond | The Conference
The centrepiece of BIMA Beyond will be a high profile flagship conference hosted in London on Wednesday 29 June.
Hosted by Dan Sodergren, this four-part specially-curated programme of speakers will offer industry-leading insight as they explore the key theme of opportunity vs responsibility and what it means for us all. We’ll be looking at the new ways to engage, new business models to embed, and new attitudes and expectations; it’s an exciting time and digital and tech are at the forefront of that change.
From students, interns and apprentices to middle-management, CEOs and their clients, this event is future-focused and designed to inform, excite and get the cogs turning no matter what level you’re at.
So, join BIMA for a day at the world famous Ministry Venues in London, and let us take you beyond: beyond the office and your day-to-day job, beyond the right now to look ahead at what’s coming next for digital and for you. With loads of great speakers to challenge you from the BIMA community to connect with with throughout the day (and night), it’s not one to be missed.
Download the full agenda and programme here. We look forward to seeing you at BIMA Beyond!
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Ticket types
There are regional discounts available if you are not based in London. Please email events@bima.co.uk for more information.
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Meet the speakers(more to be announced):
Dan Sodergren, Co-Founder of YourFLOCK.co.uk
Ex marketing agency owner, digital trainer, TED talker, keynote speaker, serial tech startup founder and now media spokesperson, Dan Sodergren’s main area of interest is the #futureofwork, the #remotework revolution and #data and #tech startups. He is currently co-founder of www.YourFLOCK.co.uk with Michal Wisniewski.
In his spare time, Dan is a digital marketing and technology expert for the BBC. Donning the cape of consumer champion on shows like BBC Watch Dog, the One Show and RipOffBritain and marketing tech specialist for SuperShoppers and RealFakeAndUnknown, his favourite being reviewing the newspapers from a tech POV for BBC Breakfast.
Dan is also a host and guest on podcasts and webinars speaking as a futurist, as well as being a guest on countless radio shows. He volunteers as the diversity and inclusion head for the Manchester Publicity Association to change opportunities for underrepresented groups in the creative, digital and tech industries in Greater Manchester.
Dan’s main interest is in the future. Be that the future of marketing, or the future or work or how technology will change the world for the better under the #Tech4Good and #Tech4All movement.
Sir Martin Sorrell, Businessman, Founder & Executive Chairman of S4 Capital
Sir Martin Sorrell is Founder and Executive Chairman of S4 Capital plc, a new age/new era, purely digital advertising and marketing services business for global, multinational and millennial-driven influencer brands. S4 Capital plc merged with MediaMonks, its content practice, in July 2018 and MightyHive, its data and digital media practice, in December 2018. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange under SFOR.L and has over 7,000 people in 33 countries, with a market capitalization in excess of $4.0 billion.
For BIMA Beyond, Sir Martin Sorrell will share with us what he thinks the agency of the future will look like. And if it is even an agency.
Next up Sir Martin will take a Q&A from our special guests, a mixture of students and interns that would like some advice on how to build a career in digital agencies.
Orlando Wood, Chief Innovation Officer of the System1 Group
Orlando Wood is Chief Innovation Officer of the System1 Group, Honorary Fellow of the IPA and author of Lemon (IPA, 2019) and Look out (IPA, 2021).
Look out
Advertising both reflects and leads culture, but recently it has changed, and not for the better. It has become rhythmic, literal, didactic. It has lost its characters, its humour and its charm. It is all part of a broader cultural shift brought about by our digital age. But why, and what might we do about it? In this eye-opening presentation, Orlando will describe how this has happened and propose an alternative; one that will benefit both advertisers and culture as a whole.
Sam Conniff, Entrepreneur, Author, Creator of Uncertainty Experts
Sam is most recently the Creator of Uncertainty Experts, a unique hybrid of online learning, interactive documentary and psychological intervention. He is the author of the international best-seller and “modern life-bible” Be More Pirate. He was Co-Founder of Livity, the multi-award-winning social enterprise and youth-led creative Network, Co-founder of Digify Africa, providing transformational digital skills to thousands of young Africans and Co-Founder of Don’t panic, the original activist and Bafta-winning content studio. Sam has won Entrepreneur of the year, Agency of the Year, The Queens Award and many others and he turned down an MBE in 2020.
A consultant to brands from Rolex to Red Bull, and a mentor to many entrepreneurs and innovators around the world. Sam is also an in-demand Keynote Speaker, facilitator, host and MC.
Finding opportunity in uncertainty
Never in history has a time been more uncertain than now. You’re exhausted. Burned out. Barely holding it together. Uncertainty causes indecision, anxiety and self-doubt, while we lose confidence, connection, and productivity.
However great opportunities exist if we simply change our approach to uncertainty. Sam Conniff has been on a tremendous journey of discovery as he dealt with his own bouts of uncertainty.
He’s spoken with individuals all over the world, each an expert in their approach to uncertainty and armed with their insights and the help of some super clever academics, Sam’s equipping people with the tools and confidence to combat uncertainty and transform their lives for the better.
Mary Keane-Dawson, Provocateur and Legendary Digital Media maven
As a five times recipient of the BIMA 100 accolade, and having been inducted into the BIMA Hall of Fame in May 2022, Mary Keane-Dawson is a true pioneer of the digital world. Indeed Mary has been at the vanguard of the industry since the height of the late 90’s dot com boom. She’s led, grown and sold innovative business, launched start-ups, raised finance, worked in media, blockchain, the influencer space and more. And because of the breath of experience Mary has amassed, she’s an in demand advisor, mentor and interim CEO.
Having experienced Web 1.0 and helped build Web 2.0, Mary is now most excited by the promise of Web3. And if anyone is qualified to comment on those promises, it’s MKD.
Building your business during an economic crisis: using innovation and creativity to deliver unfair competitive advantage.
For BIMA Beyond, Mary will explore how creative sector agency and tech businesses need to build out their strategic value proposition, build innovative new products and services that meet clients needs in an online first citizen driven recession facing market.
Her success throughout previous economic downturns, as well as hockey stick recoveries, will be illustrated with real life case studies and examples, as well as a ‘surgery session’ for anyone who has specific challenges that they would like Mary to address during her talk.
Fern Miller, Executive Strategy Director a t R/GA
Fern’s career in strategy spans creative, brand, consulting, digital and service design, across global markets and in agencies, consultancies and client organisations across two decades. She has led industry thinking about brands and technology; she’s led brand, advertising and digital design strategies, with multidisciplinary strategic teams for UNICEF, Astra Zeneca, Costa Coffee, Nestle, Sky, Kelloggs, Comic Relief and Mumsnet, amongst others and advised several successful startups/ scale ups to help them define and live up to their promise.
Why Social Commerce Changes Everything
At first, the growth of shoppable content in social may seem like a simple extension to what your current social content can do.
This presentation will demonstrate why agencies should pay more attention to how people are buying in social platforms, here and abroad, because it’s more than a button, it’s a potential marketing revolution.
James Whatley, Chief Strategy Officer at Diva Agency
James Whatley is chief strategy officer for gaming-native creative agency, Diva. With over 15 years of marcomms experience working on integrated brand campaigns for clients such as Mondelez, Converse, Heineken, Expedia and Honda F1 Racing, James has been working at and writing about the forefront of digital trends for the best part of a decade. Occasionally describing himself as a ‘t-shaped strategist’, James notes that as his digital skillset has broadened from a discipline to something that impacts everything, so too has his work gone from depth of specialism to breadth of capability. Skills that have seen him develop award winning work at both WPP and Publicis.
At Diva, James puts these skills to use to help the world’s biggest and best games publishers, developers, platforms, and entertainment brands speak to millions of gamers all over the world.
James is also the co-creator of the DICE Charter initiative – a scored set of regulatory guidelines to ensure diversity and inclusion at conferences and events.
In his spare time, James writes an infrequent internet-culture newsletter called Five things on Friday, plays far too much PlayStation, and spends his weekends making huge Minecraft worlds with his two children. And yes, he is tired.
Metaverse? What Metaverse?
Depending on who you believe, the metaverse is either the science fiction future of all things Web3 or it’s already here and you and your business are missing out. For BIMA Beyond, James will equip you with the knowledge and tools you need to go back to your business and be the font of all knowledge when it comes to understanding this space.
Lisa Merrick Lawless, Co-Founder of Purpose Disruptors
Lisa was named one of Campaign magazine’sTop 10 most influential people in advertising for her work on climate awareness and action within the industry. With over 20 years’ experience in the industry, she’s held leadership positions for brands client-side and in creative agencies, working with Coca-Cola, Marks & Spencer, Heineken, Tetley, Unilever, Walgreens Boots Alliance, innocent, WWF, Greenpeace and more.
In 2019 she co-founded Purpose Disruptors to ‘help the industry transition so it only creates work in line with a 1.5 degree world’ in response to her concern about the climate emergency. She is continually learning and evolving her understanding of what is needed at this time and now dedicates her skills and expertise to helping others do the same.
Can advertising help reimagine the future?
We need to halve emissions by 2030 to stay within a 1.5 degree world. But what does this world actually look and feel like? What is the role of advertising in helping shape this new world? How can creativity and imagination help?
Join Lisa Merrick-Lawless, Co-Founder of Purpose Disruptors as she introduces the Good Life 2030 project which launched at COP26. Take part in a collective viewing of their documentary and hear about how the project aims to use the collective imagination of the advertising and comms industry to create a new vision for the future.
Yahye Siyad, Diversity & Accessibility Lead at Cyber-Duck
Yahye Siyad is Cyber-Duck’s Diversity & Accessibility Lead, bringing many years of lived experience, first-hand insight, and professional experience to the role. Born in Somalia with a visual impairment caused by retinal dystrophy, Yayhe uses his white cane to navigate the world independently and a screen reader to access the internet.
Taking a walk in my footsteps – how intuition transforms the unexpected into a world of opportunities
From Somalia to England and beyond, follow in former-Team GB Paralympian, entrepreneur and digital Diversity & Accessibility Lead, Yahye Siyad’s footsteps in his extraordinary journey around the globe.
For BIMA Beyond, Yahye will share how he uses intuition to reframe challenges as opportunities to be explored, and how digital transformation was key to unlocking closed doors and can be for billions of people round the world, particularly those with disabilities.
Kara Prosser , Design & Social Impact Consultant
Kara is a passionate design leader striving for change through creativity and innovation. She has over 10 years experience with start-ups, NFP’s, governments and corporates delivering products, services and experiences – for good.
Kara has worked in over 45 countries driving design projects with the world’s biggest organisations like the U.N, the W.H.O, and Google to combat climate change, eradicate malaria, and stop violence against women. She started a multi-million dollar creative agency division (Isobar Good) dedicated to social impact, which she scaled in over 10 countries.
Her unique energy, talent and drive brings people together towards her mission to make the world a better place through design.
Design For Good: The $30 Trillion Opportunity
The world is facing some of the biggest social challenges our generation has ever seen, all happening at once – climate change, inequality in health care, millions of people fleeing war and violence. As a creative community we have a responsibility and the skills to help solve these complex problems, whilst opening up new and diverse revenue streams for our clients, and for us.
Sonoo Singh, Co-Founder of Creative Salon
Sonoo Singh is the co-founder of Creative Salon, the home of commercial creativity. Founded last year in 2020 with her partner, former Campaign global editor, Claire Beale.
Born and raised in India, Sonoo worked with some of biggest national newspapers in India including The Tribune and The Indian Express, writing primarily about health and culture. She arrived in London in 2000 and landed a gig at Marketing Week where she stayed for almost 13 years and went on to become the editor. Sonoo has more than two decades of experience reporting on media and marketing and has worked at M&M Global, Campaign and The Drum. She lives in London with her husband, her 15 year old son and an extensive collection of books.
Will Harvey, Global Digital Innovation Manager, Diageo
Will Harvey is Global Digital Innovation Manager, as part of the Breakthrough Innovation team at Diageo, focusing on 3-5 year Vision for the business, experimenting and assuring that Diageo stays at the forefront of all things digital.
With the focus on leading the Test and Learn agenda exploring new and emerging technologies, behaviours and Startups, to then run Pilot Test to Deploy and Enable Sustainable and Scalable Digital Innovation.
He advises a number of Startups, was named in the Drum Future 50 as well as BIMA 100 and HClub 100, and has previously worked at both VCCP and Ogilvy looking to find the intersection of Creativity & Technology.
Chris Pitt, CEO of first direct
Chris’ career marketer specialising in financial services. He has worked for HSBC, Tesco Bank, first direct and Marks & Spencer Bank during his career.
He is driven by an interest in understanding what matters to people and communicating brands and propositions that deliver to their needs. He’s particularly interested by the intellectual challenge of new ideas and business opportunities.
Chris is currently the CEO of first direct. Leading one of the best customer services businesses in the UK – powered by doing the right thing, delivering on what matters to customers and challenging the status quo. Prior to this Chris was Chief Marketing Officer for HSBC UK, responsible for the leadership of a marketing team who developed and delivered all HSBC, first direct and Marks & Spencer Bank marketing activity.
Nishma Robb, Senior Director, Brand & Reputation Marketing, Google UK
Nishma is responsible for leading brand and reputation marketing for Google in the UK.
From the infamous Google Doodles, showing how Google’s products help you in your everyday life to helping businesses and individuals grow via free digital skills training and mentoring and promoting Google’s products and programmes to keep families safe online.
A storyteller at heart, Nishma is best described as a curious daydreamer with a piratical spirit with a firm belief in anything is possible!
She has led many of Google’s acclaimed projects and campaigns including 2021’s The More We Learn (with Marcus Rashford), It Starts With You campaign, 2020’s Dear Local campaign, Partnership with Black Pound Day, Digital Garage, This is My YouTube, the Google Executive Summit, Brandcast, ThinkwithGoogle and Be Internet Legends.
Nishma started her Google career leading marketing the advertising products for large customers and transformed B2B large customer marketing. She created a new approach to industry relationships and storytelling the magic of Search and YouTube for marketers. Working closely with a large group of cross-functional teams and senior stakeholders is core to the job!
Nishma is a passionate and tireless activist for equality. She mentors young diverse talent in the marketing and creative industry and lends her time and support to groups such as WACL and MEFA (MediaForAll) who are pushing for change in the UK’s media and advertising industry. Nishma is proud to be a Fellow of the Marketing Society. Her accolades include listed in the Top 100 marketers (2022, 2021, 2020) in Campaign, Marketing Week and Creative Review, was Ad Age’s Woman to Watch, Europe (2018), Campaign A-List (2017 onwards), Drum Digerati, and was recognised in the Hospital Group’s h100 list as one of the most influential and innovative people in the UK’s creative industry.
Nishma’s greatest achievement is being a mother to her amazing twins and when she’s not looking after her twins or at work, you’ll find her in sparkly shoes dancing in the sun or under the stars!
Sponsors (more to be announced):
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Wed, 29 Jun 2022
09:30 - 20:00
Ministry Venues - Elephant,
London
103 Gaunt Street, London, SE1 6DP
