Together for the first time in one place, a flux of marketing professionals, print service providers, publishers, advertising and creative agencies descended on the Business Design Centre in London on the 3-4 September to gain insight into the current capabilities and future potential of cross media. Organiser Informa Exhibitions confirmed visitor numbers of over 2,500, of which 59% were marketers, 28% print professionals and 13% publishers, demonstrating the vast appeal of the event to the various sectors in the marketing mix.
Incorporating its recently acquired event, mediaPro, Cross Media is aimed at businesses that wish to discover how cross-platform campaigns can improve ROI and help them recognise the commercial possibilities and opportunities that are available in the fast evolving marketing mix. More than 70 exhibitor brands from the marketing, creative, printing and publishing industries generated an engaging forum of shared creativity, expertise, vision and communication.
The six specialised theatres – covering cross media, digital and direct marketing, print and innovation and publishing strategies – held over 60 seminars with 78 high-level speakers from different facets of the communications industry. The impressive speaker line-up included presenters from Crew Clothing, Tesco, BBC Worldwide, Royal Mail, Microsoft, Sony, Adobe, Pensord and Advanstar, and drew large crowds who were all eager to hear from the industry experts and take part in the lively Q&A sessions afterwards.
“We are extremely pleased with the reaction from visitors to our rich content programme. With most theatres, the queues before each session resulted in a limited amount of standing-room only available before it even kicked off, and on a number of occasions even that was filled pretty quickly!” comments Nick Craig Waller, Event Director of Cross Media 2012. “One of the Digital and Direct Marketing theatres was known as the silent theatre as the seminars were delivered via headphones for absolute focus. This proved a very popular initiative with attendees, and we will certainly look to include this again in 2013.”
A number of the seminars, complemented by interviews with exhibitors, visitors and organisers, were broadcasted live through the Cross Media 2012 website and TV screens placed strategically throughout the Business Design Centre. This allowed both visitors and those who couldn’t attend the event to keep abreast with the up-to-the-minute happenings of Cross Media 2012.
