Magazine: This year’s BrandFestival was an intellectual assembly

BrandFestival, the marketing profession’s flagship event was organised for the 11th time this year. This time r-time also joined the programme, organising a mini-conference on television content. More than 600 participants attended one of Central Europe’s biggest marketing event on 20-21 October in Budapest’s MOM Cultural Centre and LARUS Event Centre. The main theme of the conference was ‘engagement’.

There were 15 sections and nearly 100 presentations, roundtable discussions and mastermind discussions. The line-up of presenters included Rohit Deshpande, professor of marketing at Harvard University, Porter Gale, marketing director of Virgin America and Cesar Montes, the regional director of G2. In the television section Neil Mortensen, Thinkbox’s director of research and strategy introduced their Neuroscience Study. There was a roundtable discussion with the major actors of the Hungarian food industry, trying to designate new, innovative directions besides price discounting. The organisers of BrandFestival made an effort to involve participants in the work: they could download iPad and iPhone applications, with the help of which the presentations were put into an interactive context. The two-day conference proved that BrandFestival has turned into a real knowledge sharing workshop of the marketing and communication sector: it became an intellectual movement.