Meetings People

I spent a good chunk of the week at the Possible conference, which has made remarkable progress in just three years to establish itself as a marquee stop on the marketing events circuit. Now whether there needs to be so many of these events throughout the year is another story but to me speaks to how humans are social creatures, not rational creatures.

Which is to say, I’m looking forward to The Rebooting’s many Cannes activities, including a private dinner with our partners at EX.CO, the New Growth Agenda event with our partners at Marketecture, a cocktails and conversation live podcast with Dotdash Meredith and more. We have partnership opportunities available. Find out more here. Get in touch: bmorrissey@therebooting.com.

Reminder: If you haven't already, upgrade to TRB Pro. It gets you access to all of The Rebooting's content as well as preferred invitations to the many gatherings we hold throughout the year.

What media product leaders are prioritizing

Be sure to check out our latest research, in collaboration with WordPress VIP. We surveyed over 100 product leaders at media companies, complemented with several interviews of executives and experts, in order to understand the strategic choices being made at a time when budgets are tighter. Some highlights:

• 55% of product leaders say audience engagement is their top priority—but most still struggle with legacy systems
• 45% of companies allocate less than 10% of their total budget to product and technology
• Only 8% are investing the majority of their tech budgets in innovation

Download the full report to get the complete findings.

Meetings People

The Fontainebleau hotel in Miami Beach is one of the city’s most famous hotels. Architect Maurice Lapidus created a grand scene that attracted the Rat Pack in the 1950s. His pièce de résistance: a wide staircase that ascends to… nowhere. 

It was a fitting context for what was the heart of Possible, the sprawling marketing conference that attracted hundreds of marketers and thousands of intermediaries. The lobby was heaving with the pent-up energy of sales. Bleu de Chanel hung in the air. 

The lobby is the locus of Possible. The sessions are elsewhere, the brands are seemingly secured in a Red Keep somewhere in the complex, and the poolside area filled with ad tech companies is fairly placid. The raw energy was in the lobby, where pillars with Viant branding frame a Renaissance-quality orgy of networking. This is the home of Meetings People. For a few hours over a few days, I too was one of them.