The Global Marketing Summit, which opened on Saturday, November 21, at Shahid Baheshti University International Conference Centre, brought together prominent and seasoned executives from across the world as well as hundreds of top marketing managers from Iranian companies. Featuring presentations by international marketing experts from all corners of the marketing world, the summit provided attendees with the latest insights into the ever changing global marketing world, with real life case studies on the most important marketing challenges and trends, presentations by some of the most innovative global marketing experts from the world's most admired companies, and over five hours of interactive discussions.
The Global Marketing Summit brought executives from across the world as well as hundreds of top marketing managers from Iranian companies
Arash Vafadari, the CEO of Mana Payam Public Relations, and the first speaker at the Global Marketing Summit referred to the unique challenges and opportunities in the communications sector in Iran. He said: “An organisation gives different messages to various members of its audience. One of the primary principles of communication is to send the right message to the right audience, and this should be done constantly. Communicating with media, regulating bodies, stake-holders, and even communicating with people within an organisation requires a strategic communications plan, which is handled by the public relations departments. All activities conducted by the public relations are very important for the survival of the organisation; that's why today, public relations has an important status in addition to marketing.”
Vafadari also touched upon the significance of consistent and strategic communications under the current circumstances in Iran, adding: “We are in a special and important situation. The private sector is growing and moving forward, and competition has increased. Under such circumstances, we should get closer to observing the principles of communications and international standards. However, we should keep this important point in mind that this should happen after getting to know the Iranian audience and taking into account the conditions in our country. This will make campaigns, marketing programs and public relations efforts, more successful and effective.”
The summit was the first of its kind to be hosted in Iran, and featured presentations by international marketing experts from all over the marketing world
Another key speaker at the summit was Lars Silberbauer, the global social media director at LEGO Group. He spoke about communicating effectively with customers through social media. He said: When our children are born, most of them are creative, but only a few of them keep this creativity until adulthood. At LEGO, by offering a product which its idea may seem primitive, we tried to maintain creativity in people until they become adults, so that we would be able to nurture talented individuals for society.”
Arash Vafadari
Other speakers at the summit included M&C Saatchi senior director of corporate communications, Tomas Jensen, Unilever Turkey marketing director Alper Eroglu, and P&G corporate communications manager Alex Malouf, who gave a talk called “Building Strong Brand Equity By Creating The Right Brand Framework.” The Global Marketing Summit was organised by The P World in cooperation with Mana Payam, and was held at the Shahid Beheshti University International Conference Centre on November 21-22, 2015.
