Empowered and Beyond: A Recap of Empower NYC 2018

Our largest user group event Empower was one for the history books, attracting over 100 attendees made up of thought leaders, marketing strategists, practitioners, and technology professionals from the world’s leading global companies. Designed to bring Crownpeak customers from different industries together to get to know one another and share digital marketing war stories, the annual event took place at the elegant JW Marriott on Central Park South.

The event kicked off Wednesday night with a welcome reception sponsored by our good friend and global platinum agency partner, Epsilon. At the South Gate Restaurant located inside the JW, specialty cocktails were served to loosen things up as marketing and tech folks, most of whom did not know each other beforehand, shook hands and mingled. Besides a chance to rub shoulders with people in similar roles at other enterprise companies, the lively gathering provided an opportunity for customers to meet Crownpeak team members they had perhaps only spoken to on the phone or emailed with in the past.

For those who chose to keep the party going after the official one ended, the next morning came too soon. Fortunately, the lure of caffeine and brekkie helped as they grabbed their badges and scored some Crownpeak swag. 

With Central Park just steps away, the venue was a respite from the clogged streets of the city, making it apropos for an event dedicated to opening the minds of attendees with innovative digital trends and inspirational speeches about the fine art of balancing privacy with customer experience.

Vice President of Marketing, Stewart Maurer opened the day with an inspiring reminder of why we were all there – to learn how to foster deeper bonds with our customers in a largely digital world. His address, of course, included the required housekeeping notes including an introduction to what would quickly become a heated competition – the gamification portion. Attendees who hadn’t already started earning points anxiously downloaded the app and geared up to win cool techy prizes like a Waterproof GoPro 3 and a Ring 2.

Next, attendees chose their own adventure by making their way to one of two sessions led by Crownpeak customers. Wells Fargo’s Operational Risk Consultant, Sophie Johnson, shared how they use Digital Quality Management to conduct regular automated testing for quality assurance and compliance. A whopping jaw-dropping statistic from the session: they have used Crownpeak DQM to identify and correct over 44,000 public pages!

Besides detecting broken links, SEO issues, and spelling errors, DQM’s accessibility checkpoints have enabled Wells Fargo to also fulfill their commitment to providing outstanding service to people with disabilities, ensuring they’re able to check their balance, pay a bill on the go, make an investment, or anything else they need to manage their account.

In another hall, Pat Kennedy from Influence Health discussed how they use data to connect the dots to create personalized engagements by combining an integrated set of technology solutions made up of Crownpeak, a powerful CRM, a marketing automation solution, and an integrated results management tool.

Following a quick break, Eduardo Ustaran, Partner of Hogan Lovellis, LLC and internationally recognized privacy expert, took the stage to speak about “The Future of Digital Privacy” and the high risk global brands are taking by not implementing a properly sequenced process for gaining consent before cookies are dropped.

For lunch, attendees were transported back in time with sandwiches and homemade ding dongs served in signature retro metal Crownpeak-branded lunchboxes, harkening back to a time before customer relationships were digital.

Shortly after, Tim Walters of The Content Advisory delivered a captivating address. If you’ve ever seen Tim speak before, you know he could make watching grass grow interesting. Tim’s galvanizing talk about the state of privacy concerns and legislation made the case for why companies who comply with laws like the GDPR should look at compliance as more than just dodging a fine, but as a brand differentiator.

The panel titled “The “Future of Content” and moderated by Stewart Maurer featuring agency and implementation partners Epsilon, V-Shift, NMQ, and Dynamit, addressed the ever-increasing amount of content being created and the challenges around delivering it effectively.

Ushering in Fall, hot cider and autumnal snacks were served in between afternoon sessions, giving people a chance to rest their noggins and reenergize.

The culminating keynote, presented by Devon Harris, one of the founding members of the Jamaican Bobsled Team (for which the movie Cool Runnings was based on), was the perfect antidote for those on the brink of hitting a late afternoon full-belly coma wall. Filled with booming energy and optimism, he captured the audience’s hearts with a motivating story about what it took him to triumph over an impoverished upbringing in a shantytown ironically called Olympic Gardens in Kingston, Jamaica. Perhaps the greatest takeaway was his insistence that the only way to succeed is to “be a little delusional.” That’s because without an inflated belief of what you’re capable of, you’ll never convince yourself that you can overcome the obstacles required to achieve an ambitious goal.

The jam-packed day of sessions concluded with our inaugural Peak Awards ceremony, a chance to recognize customers for achieving digital excellence in a range of categories. To judge the submissions, we called in leading analyst firm Forrester to choose the winners based on a set of specific criteria. As one might imagine, with a customer base made up of some of the most respected Fortune 1000 companies, the competition was stiff.

Overflowing with new insights and lessons to process, it was time for a much-needed evening reception. Drinks and delectable nibbles closed out the event in style, as new friends toasted to a day well-spent learning about the ever-changing state of digital experience delivery and how to stay ahead of it.