Forrester's Christine Spivey Overby kicked off the conference, first reminiscing on how great innovation comes out of times of economic struggle. Her example, well suited to Forrester’s marketing conference in Orlando, was Walt Disney’s creative genius to develop an iconic entertainment franchise. She stressed that now is the time to do marketing differently by embracing innovation.

VP/Principal Analyst on the Interactive Marketing team, Shar VanBoskirk, spoke next. She indicated that a recent forecast shows that mobile, social, email, display, and search marketing will increase at a CGR of 17% in 2014. She gave some funny examples of silly Tweets from overzealous customers.

Next, we had Rita Bargerhuff, 7-Eleven’s VP of Marketing, discussing how her organization takes risks. She presented a case study of how the retailer aligned its brand with the popular – but not always politically correct – Simpsons movie. Did it pay off? There were lines wrapped around the block to get into the store. Her closing remarks: “Success leads to success. You’ll attract new business partners.”

On Day Two, Forrester's Peter Burris spoke on “Engaging the Innovative Customer.” He suggested that innovative customers are ready, willing, and – thanks to social media – able to guide your efforts to manage risk. His recommendations were very clear for engaging innovative customers:

• Position marketing as a resource that B2B customers can use to drive better business outcomes.
• Blend social media with traditional tactics to create new marketing forms
• Align marketing and development to lower the risks

Next, we heard from Craig Dewar of Microsoft, New Zealand. He discussed how Microsoft launched the Xbox product into a saturated market where Sony was a leader. Each Xbox user established their own online identity and interacted with others. As each new game came out a new forum and dialog was formed. Lessons learned included:

• Even if you build it, they may not come
• Critical Mass in a community is hard to achieve and will take longer than you think
• You won't get Community right, so be prepared to optimize.

Forrester’s Marketing Forum had around 500 attendees – even during this tight economy. It goes to show that now is the time for marketing to step up and innovate.