Recap: DEPT® x OMR Festival 2023

On 09.05, the day kicked off right at 7:30 a.m. for the DEPT® Marketing Team, as we put the finishing touches on our Booth. The showstoppers? A silver Airstream and our DEPT® Hangout – an oasis for networking and relaxing in the middle of the festival hustle and bustle. 

At 2:30pm, the first highlight was our Web3 Masterclass: Virtual Showrooms, Metaverse, Roblox & Co. – How Brands are using new Web3 technologies to connect with Gen Z & Alpha. Best practices with H&M and essence (cosnova GmbH). 

With Web3, a new age of the Internet is upon us. 3D Experiences, Avatars and new Gaming Channels like Roblox or Fortnite create new opportunities to take branding, marketing and e-Commerce to the next level and to connect with Gen Z & Alpha.

In the masterclass we discussed the opportunities, challenges and first use cases featuring the brands essence (cosnova) and H&M. We demonstrated how brands and retailers can start sustainable Web3 projects and establish long-term relationships with young target groups. 

Oliver Lange (Head of H&Mbeyond.), Constance Stein (Senior Growth & Trends Manager at cosnova), Jan Gutkuhn (Director Web3 at DEPT®), Gesine Meitler (Director Marketing & Business Development at DEPT®), and David Pajung (Head of Web3 at DEPT®) gave insights into the projects of essence (cosnova) and H&M and answered the audience’s questions. 

Missed the masterclass? No problem, you can watch it here (in German):

Later on, we hosted our second masterclass of the day: Pioneering Retail Media: How BSH & Medela leverage Amazon & Marketplaces to stay ahead. 

Retail media is the new buzzword and the increasing relevance of marketplaces leads to more and more questions. Is a higher media budget always better? Is there a universal strategy for marketplaces? The answers will determine the future of marketing and sales teams. Together with our clients BSH and Medela, we looked at how to effectively:

– Promote growth in marketplaces
– Assess time-to-scale for marketplaces and the necessary market maturity 
– Proactively solve challenges within a global marketplace structure 

In the Masterclass, Karen Gutermann (Head of Digital & E-Commerce Marketing – Europe, Medela), Katrin Hageneder (E-Commerce Marketing & Content Manager – Europe, Medela), Kevin Veenman (Strategy Director & Head of Marketplaces, DEPT®), Nesma Abdel-Hamid (Team Lead Search Advertising, DEPT®) and Nils Zündorf (Managing Director, DEPT®) presented our approach to Channel Management and Retail Media and presented insights into our secrets of success. 

Watch the talk here:

We ended the first day in style with our DEPT® Beers & Bites event at our booth. We toasted to the first successful day with customers, partners, colleagues and other digital pioneers.

The second day of the festival began with our third masterclass: Exploring the Future of Content Marketing: Using AI and Automation to Create User Journeys and Authentic Brand Experiences.

How can we improve the customer experience for today’s consumers who expect seamless and easy brand interactions across all touchpoints? As AI & automated content creation are on the rise, how can brands ensure they continue to deliver relevant, high-quality, and useful content? And how can AI or machine learning improve CX, optimize marketing efforts & automate repetitive tasks? What opportunities & risks do these new technologies present as they continue to evolve? 

These were exactly the questions our speakers Tobias Cummins (Global SVP, Clients & Managing Director, DEPT®), Florencia Obert (Senior Lead Tech Planner, DEPT®) and Jiri Durek (Lead Motion Designer, DEPT®) answered during the masterclass. They presented exciting cases in which tomorrow’s technologies solve today’s challenges. 

This talk also had a huge turnout and the queue for latecomers stretched to the next Masterclass track.

The rest of the day bustled with more exciting conversations in our DEPT® Hangout and featured DEPT®’s Sabine von Nordheim as a guest speaker at Google’s Masterclass: More sales, higher ROAS – the UX practice talk for more conversions (with Google, Douglas and DEPT®). 

This one wasn’t recorded, but you can register here for Google’s Crunchy CX Bites Breakfast on May 25. Sabine von Nordheim (Product Design Lead UX, DEPT®) and Serina Gummert (Lead Digital Innovation, DEPT®) will speak on ‘Sustainability in Strategic UX – from User Insight to Feature’ and provide more exciting insights.

We are so grateful for everyone who joined us at all of our OMR23 events. From our kickoff dinner to our booth and masterclasses, it was definitely one for the books.

See you at OMR24! ✌️ 

Save the date: 07 + 08 May 2024