FEDMA Seminar during Cannes Lions 2007: A great success!

This is what Cannes Lions had to say about our seminar presented by Richard Rosen:

BRANDS MEET DIRECT

At the FEDMA (Federation of European Direct and Interactive Marketing) seminar on Sunday, entitled At Last - Convergence Of Brand And Direct, Richard Rosen, president and CEO of Rosen, spelled out his vision of a convergent future, developed over 20 years of experience, customer knowledge and business-school analystics.

In tomorrow's world, Rosen suggested, the brand may not be the most important thing. "Instead, the relationship will be the most important thing, because relationships breed loyalty," he said. "In turn, empathy will be the key to loyalty - and convergence will use empathy to create powerful, multi-level connections to the brand." Rosen added that the old, awareness-is-all model still works well for brands such as Nike, Virgin Atlantic and Apple, which combine huge marketing budgets with a visionary CEO.

However, for most brands, this is simply not the case. "For these, I propose the Brand-Interaction model, where awareness leads to engagement and interaction," he said. "When you have interaction, you can then survey and classify, which creates dialogue with the consumer. Real convergence involves knowledge and respect for the brand, which is built on the best aspects of branding, direct marketing and sales."

The Asahi Shimbun Company's Naotaka Kawada (Japan) talked to Lionsdailynews.com after listening to Rosen's seminar and Rosen also talked to Lionsdailynews.com about his first visit to Cannes Lions.

More than 250 people attended the seminar which is the highest number of participants ever to attend the FEDMA seminar.