The Midwest Digital Marketing Conference continues to gain momentum post-pandemic with a three-day event on the UMSL campus.
Stephanie Garcia, CEO of Lights, Camera, Live, delivered a keynote address titled, “From Unknown to Unforgettable: The Art and Science of Being Captivating in Front of the Camera,” at the Midwest Digital Marketing Conference, held at the Toohill Performing Arts Center on the campus of the University of Missouri-St. Louis. (Photo: Derrick Holtmann)
The 12th annual Midwest Digital Marketing Conference, held last week primarily at the Blanche M. Toohill Performing Arts Center on the campus of the University of Missouri-St. Louis, had many parallels with previous MDMC experiences.
First, keynote speakers Raashi Rosenberger, Global Brand Head, Meta Quest (formerly Oculus), and Stephanie Garcia, CEO, Lights, Camera, Live, will return to the event in 2024 to educate and entertain attendees.
“This is my sixth year participating in MDMC,” Rosenberger told the audience at the start of his keynote address Wednesday. “I'm excited to be a part of the conference and excited to be back in St. Louis. I live in Brooklyn, New York, but I grew up here in St. Louis, and the opportunity to come back and visit my hometown is just what I needed.”
Rosenberger was a student of MDMC founder and current UMSL dean of marketing and entrepreneurship Perry Drake when he was a professor at NYU. He talked about how Meta Quest was trying to rebrand itself as its product evolved. He then stayed near the stage after the presentation to mingle with the long line of attendees. “Rashi loves what we're doing. He loves being here and being a part of what we're doing,” Drake said.
As always, over the three days many connections were made, many conversations were exchanged, many ideas were generated and progress was made.
“I heard from the commotion happening at MDMC today that you're all looking for advanced strategies to communicate with confidence,” Garcia said at the start of his keynote address Tuesday afternoon. “How can you get your audience to stop and look and listen to what you have to say? Am I right or wrong? Great, because that's exactly what we're going to talk about today.”
This year's MDMC attracted 575 attendees and more than 75 speakers and presenters. In addition to the 40 sessions held Tuesday and Wednesday at the Toohill Center, the 2024 MDMC also featured seven workshops on Monday at Anheuser-Busch Hall, home of the UMSL School of Management.
“I'm super excited,” Drake said. “As long as people are having fun and connecting and communicating, that level of engagement makes me happy. And I've seen it.”
MDMC founder Perry Drake speaks with the audience before Tuesday's keynote address. (Photo: Derrick Holtmann)
MDMC's leadership team includes Drake, Mindy Chu (executive director), Thomas O'Connell (production director), Rebecca Bechtel, Nick Schreiber (graduate assistant), Alex Hill (intern), and the UMSL Marketing Club. DemandJump, a pillar-based marketing software tool, is back as title sponsor again in 2024.
The conference offered a wide variety of sessions throughout Tuesday and Wednesday, with three sessions held simultaneously in Toohill's Anheuser-Busch Performance Hall, Whitaker Hall and the E. Desmond and Mary Ann Lee Theatre, giving attendees a rich choice of topics.
Sessions included topics such as providing an immersive experience at CITYPARK, home of the CITY SC soccer team, several sessions on Search Engine Optimization and Google Analytics, marketing through social media, etc. There were also five panel discussions.
Ebi Nicol, digital strategist and founder, ET Digital Consulting, hosted a session titled, ‘Mastering Storytelling for Marketers: Unlocking Narratives to Connect, Engage and Convert’ at Whittaker Hall on Tuesday, and she was excited about how the session unfolded.
“My session was sold out and the participants were enthusiastic,” she said. “Many were taking pictures, notes, and asking and answering questions. Many came up to me afterwards and enthusiastically shared the valuable information they had gained from the presentation. I couldn't have imagined a better audience.”
As well as teaching her own sessions, Nicole also learned from the ones she participated in. Wednesday’s panel with Akeem Shannon, Brian Monsey and Vanessa Cabrera really resonated with her talks on entrepreneurship, leadership and growth.
“It was a great conversation,” she said. “It's rare to hear a founder speak so openly about the mental and emotional impacts of starting a company, so it was refreshing to hear about the ups and downs of the journey. At the end of the day, I can totally relate, and I think a lot of other people can too.”
One of the things Drake loves about MDMC is that it's a conference that has something for everyone, from professionals looking to gain knowledge to help advance their careers, to students at UMSL and other universities, to aspiring young entrepreneurs. This year, Drake and the MDMC hosted groups of young people from Girls, Inc., the St. Louis Science Center's YES (Youth Exploring Science) program, and NFTE (Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship).
“We wanted to bring them back and introduce them to different speakers and be inspired by hearing how they've been successful. So it's worked out well,” Drake said. “We brought in Fresh, who was one of the entrepreneurs in our Anchor Accelerator program last year. He's 14 years old. We brought him in to host a table and to help him make connections that will help him further this business. I've put him in touch with some key speakers.”
The first three MDMC events (2013-14-15) were held on the UMSL campus, but as the conference grew and word spread, Drake moved the event to Union Station in downtown St. Louis to accommodate the expansion. The first year at Union Station saw about 800 attendees. By 2019, that number had jumped to nearly 2,000, with over 125 speakers and presenters and up to eight sessions running simultaneously.
But 2020 was the year of the COVID-19 pandemic, which halted momentum and forced Drake and his team to rapidly pivot to an online version of the event. He's grateful for Garcia's help in making that transition work in a short space of time. “Stephanie was key in helping us pivot quickly,” Drake said. “We asked if she could help us make sure we had a really crisp and smart production, and she did. She helped a lot.”
The 2021 MDMC was also online-only, but the event returned to the UMSL campus in 2022. The process of growth has begun again.
“Our goal is to get back to Union Station,” Drake said. “We're going to grow it carefully but smartly.”
