A chance for ambitious local business leaders to meet with brand experts face-to-face.

Hear how some of the world’s best Brand Builders have supported profitable growth for ‘local heroes’ such as BALTIC, The Sage, onyx and Activities Abroad based upon identical approaches that they personally have employed at Coca Cola, Virgin, Nike, Intel, Sony, Starbucks, Porsche, Nokia, Metrocentre and more.

It worked for them – and it can work for you.

Speakers:

Les Stern – Ex-Saatchi & Saatchi Head of Planning and Strategy and now Violet Bick Brand Consultant. Advised for over 15 years on brand construction to the board of Virgin, Porsche, Coca Cola Corporation, Starbucks, Nokia and Metrocentre.

Roger Blight – Violet Bick Brand Consultant and the man that helped move the Nike brand from World number 3 to World number 1 during the recession of the 1990’s.

Mark Tinnion – Violet Bick’s Brand Director and the man that helped launch and build the Sony VAIO brand and Intel Pentium 4 brand in the UK. Mark now helps run four multi-award winning businesses here in the North East.

Parking: Lots. And it’s free

Eating and Drinking: Lots. Including warm Cinnamon cider, cloutie dumplings, double choc brownies and locally produced pork scratchings.

The venue is space limited so book early to avoid disappointment.

Now in its second year, MI EXPO, a unique innovation showcase, is set to return in 2012 providing senior marketers’ key insights into the essential technology driven marketing trends for 2012.

Attend MI EXPO 2012 to discover….

• Techniques that are delivering success for marketers
• Digital trends driving the market place
• Which new platforms are hot & set to explode in 2012
• The hot new marketing start-ups for 2012
• New opportunities for marketers in 2012

Marketing innovation is what will set you apart from your competitors and will give you the edge.

With an ever changing array of innovative marketing techniques and new tools emerging into the market, organisations are constantly left confused and overwhelmed.

MI EXPO will help you recognise which technology driven trends you should be adopting and which are just a marketing fad and better left ignored.

MI EXPO will showcase the innovative marketers, technology providers, and tools that will explode in 2012. The conference will bring a spotlight on the marketing innovation “must haves” to achieve success.

Speakers include senior representatives from Twitter, Foursquare, Facebook, YouTube, British Army, 10 Downing Street, Virgin Media, PeerIndex, buyapowa & many more.

Visit the event website to view the full agenda for the day.

Join the most important people from the digital industy & creative agencies on the 6th March 2012 at the River Room, Altitude 360, for key insights into technology driven trends that will drive ROI and give you a competitive edge.

The Marketing Innovation Awards, now in their second year, are set to return to bring a spotlight on the innovative brands, agencies, start-ups & technologies pushing boundaries and shaping the industry.

UTalkMarketing are delighted to be hosting the awards which are taking place on 6 March at the end of MI EXPO at Altitude 360 in London.

The MI Awards will uncover the innovative strategies, start-ups & technologies set to create an impact in 2012. Are you one of them?

New for 2012, the organisers have introduced seven new award categories which reflects the growth of innovation within the marketing sector and illustrates new depths marketers are adopting to achieve success.

Entry deadline: 3rd Feb, full details at www.marketinginnovationawards.com

With eleven categories open to submissions & twelve awards up for grabs, what are you waiting for submit your entry today!

The Marketing Innovation award categories:

• Innovative digital brand strategy 2012
• Innovative use of social media
• Innovative use of mobile marketing
• Innovative use of search
• Innovative use of CRM
• Innovative use of affiliate marketing
• Innovative use of display
• Innovative agency 2012
• Innovative start-up 2012 *free to enter
• Innovative technology 2012
• Innovation grand prix 2012

Community choice awards

• Most innovative individual 2012 *free to enter

This candidates for this award will be nominated by the members of UTalkMarketing are invited to nominate and vote for their most innovative individual proving a true reflection of successful innovation in the eyes of the marketing community.

With over 140,000 marketing & brand professionals as members of the community, this really is the crème de the crème of recognition.

To find out more and submit your entry, visit the event website.

GameHorizon are kick starting 2012 with a new event and a great opportunity for everyone to meet the new Chairman of GameHorizon and CEO of Thumbstar Games, Gareth Edmondson.

Following the success of Go Go Games back in May 2011 we would like to revisit the booming mobile games industry and hear from some of the mobile and app developers here in the North East.

The night will kick off with an opening from Gareth followed by 5 minute lightning round presentations from regional mobile businesses.

Speakers include:

Gareth Edmondson, CEO of Thumbstar Games and Chairman of GameHorizon
Stuart Varrall, Director of Fluid Pixel
Ryan Lewis Davies, Creative Director and Michael Dunn, Managing Director Gospelware

Find out more about the event and register at gamehorizonmobilemingle.eventbrite.co.uk

Although major labels have been slow to react to digital innovations, this has opened up opportunities for new music businesses and entrepreneurs to seize the initiative.

This ‘survival guide’ is designed to assist the region’s new music businesses take advantage of these new opportunities and examine emerging business models. Here we will identify the pitfalls you need to be wary of and improve your chances of achieving success.

It is relevant to new businesses in any sector of the regional music industry and we will be looking at:

• Setting and achieving short-term goals
• Developing a ‘real world’ business plan
• How the industry is changing and where you can make money
• Important new revenue streams – brand partnerships, sponsorship, fan funded models

Compact: Music Business Survival Guide is free to attend but spaces are very limited so please register interest as soon as possible.

For more information about the event and to book your place, visit: www.generator.org.uk/compact

Compact: Making the Most of Digital Marketing Platforms takes an in depth look into the key channels for marketing music using digital media and will assist in developing a strategy for your music business.

Across the two sessions you will learn…

• How to build a complete strategic digital campaign
• Effective communication through your social networks
• The impact of advertising on social networks and other online platforms
• Methods to develop and monitor your fanbase
• What you can learn from analytics and metrics
• Enhancing your video content
• Use new marketing technology – mobile / apps

This is delivered over two days at Dance City, Newcastle on 8th & 29th February 2012 by Music Ally, who are globally recognised as a provider of digital music intelligence and strategy. Music Ally has been providing digital training to the global music industry for almost a decade.

Compact: Making the Most of Digital Marketing Platforms is free to attend but spaces are very limited so please register interest as soon as possible.

For a full breakdown of the content of both days and to book your place, visit: www.generator.org.uk/compact

Some of the world’s most influential women in digital design and technology will come together in a unique conference to encourage other women into digital careers.

’The Emerge Mini-Conference’ is a three day series of talks and workshops is organised by newly formed not-for-profit Web Heroines.

The conference hopes to address the gender imbalance in the industry by engaging more women with design and technology.

The Emerge Mini-Conference will also showcase the fantastic work by women from within the industry and aims to share ideas, opinions and solutions.

Hosted in partnership with The British Library Business and IP Centre and supported by the Big Lottery Fund, The Emerge Mini-Conference will take place over 16th, 17th and 18th January 2012.

There will be ten virtual sessions followed by a networking session and a finale pivotal panel debate on the evening of the 18th January which takes place at the British Library in London.

For more information about the Emerge Mini Conference, details on all of the sessions and to book your place, visit the event website.

Join the conversation on Twitter by following @webheroines and use the hashtag #WHemerge

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Topic:

business & innovation
design
events
games
media
mobile
start-ups
technology
usability

Tags:

marketing
design
technology
digital
women
business event

The live music industry is keen to nail that elusive ‘social’ factor to power their business to the next stage and there are a lot of new services out there to help. But, do they deliver?

Topics for discussion:

• How will the live music industry develop?
• For whom is the live industry the great cash-cow?
• Only the top 1% performers?
• How much money do live gigs really make for the artist?
• What are the true economics of a live gig? Niche gigs or sell-out venues?
• Live is the music market place for new talent… Do digital tools mitigate the tour costs?
• How much do the events listings companies influence the market?
• The ticketing dirty market…how strong is its grip on power?
• What are the marketing tactics and tools, social and digital?

Organiser:

2Pears
+44 20 3239 9325
http://www.2pears.com

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Angels International invites entrepreneurs, business angels, funding groups and related business services to their December funding event in Leeds.

If you are looking for funding and you believe that you are ready to meet the investors on a one to one basis then register your business plan on the Angels International website for free.

All the 9 companies presented at the last funding event received interest from at least one Business Angel.

Organiser:
Angels International
+44 1924 437766
http://www.angelsinternational.co.uk

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The Finnish mobile giant is hoping Lumia 800 will have what it takes to challenge the almighty iPhone in the lucrative smartphone market.

New Media Now spoke to Griffith about the compay’s approach to design and what influences and inspires them.

Q: What does it mean to be an industrial designer at Nokia?

A: Being an industrial designer at Nokia is a very fulfilling job. A big design team with some really great people across lots of different disciplines working together makes it very exciting.

Whether it’s UI, hardware, colour & material, sound designers or various areas of research, it’s a rich environment to work in with lots of inspiration. It’s almost like working in college.

Q: What is the first thing you do when creating a design?

A: We are constantly thinking about how we can go forward, how we can advance the production technology we’ve been using and pull these things together. And then spending time in the factory to see something we’ve worked on finally going down the production line.

Q: How did the requirements of Windows Phone influence the design of the hardware?

A: There was a lot of work going on between the different design teams at Microsoft and Nokia for the User Interface and on the hardware. There was this common principle of reduction of design – the way Windows Phone and the hardware have come together is very natural.

Q: When looking for design ideas, what is your main inspiration?

A: People are a very big inspiration because these are such human objects and they are held in the hand. They are very direct in that sense and because we are selling in different markets around the world we are able to spend time in different countries meeting people and asking them how they use their phones.

We are interested as designers in the industrial design realm and mega-global trends and how these are playing out across the globe. When developing the polycarbonate body we worked with material scientists and they put on an internal exhibition showing the various stages of the product development and the things they had tried, which was quite beautiful.

By Peter Bull
@RoguePlanetoid