The first full day of Lisbon Web Summit did not disappoint, if the incredible line up of speakers wasn't enough to get us all excited, the exhibition totally blew us away! Here are some of my highlights from the day…

Wladimir Klitschko: from boxing champion to challenge master

Heavyweight boxing legend Klitschko is a personality that I have followed so closely in the media, his passion and drive I find so very inspiring, so I was eager to see his interview with Sachin Nakrani from The Guardian.

Klitschko explained his love for a challenge and talked through his success principles both inside and outside of his career. He talked about the techniques and methods he swears by to maintain his motivation, such as working out each morning to start his day positively.

Key takeaways:

Competitors can make you better by helping you to understand your weaknesses, just like he can learn from a fellow fighter, in the digital world you can learn from the other businesses around you.
Failure is not an option, you cannot just 'fail' - failure is a learning curve, a reminder of improvements and how everyone concentrates so much on success when sometimes we must relax a little more and understand that we can learn from failure.

From 'what if' to 'Shazam that'

A fantastic talk from Co-founder of Shazam Chris Barton. He talked through the timeline of the hugely successful music identification programme and how he built the app and formulated an algorithm when he was previously told it was impossible.

As far as I was aware Shazam was a relatively new app that had been running for the past few years on smartphones - my guess would be since 2012, so I was shocked to find out that the app had in fact been running since 2002 - the Nokia Days!

From a service that operated by texting 2580 to receive a text message identifying the snippet of music played to the operator to becoming a global multimillion business it was astounding to see the hurdles and challenges the company had been forced to overcome. Barton spoke about the importance of focusing on survival when it comes to competition, something that they had to do with the implementation of the Apple Store.

Key takeaways:

Ensure your company is agile - you must be fluid and move with the change
Simplicity is key - by this, he didn't mean a simple design, but a simple user experience. There's no need to create something too complex, you just want a simple end experience for the user
Prove the people wrong that say it's impossible and stay persistent and focused and don't be afraid to tackle a challenge
It's key to think differently

Innovating at scale

Innovating is core to what we do at Reflect Digital, so I was intrigued to see Gillian Tans Chairwoman at Booking.com thoughts on innovating when scaling a buisness.

She discussed how culture really is key when it comes to scaling and how this is the secret to enabling innovation. You must build a strong culture within your business to make each individual feel empowered to make decisions.

She also touched on the importance of experimentation and how this is crucial to test new techniques, tools and strategies to understand what works best for your company and what methods drive growth.

Key takeaways

Use your competitors as a benchmark and figure out how you can deliver above them
Think in the early stages about the type of culture that you want to have in your business
Really think through what you want to achieve and how you are going to scale and then empower and inspire your people to help you

What does it mean to be modern CMO?

What an interesting insight into the world of three incredibly successful CMO's. Maegen Eisenberg from Trip Actions, Janine Pelosi at Zoom Video Communications and Tom Klein from Mailchimp shared their thoughts with Katie Deighton Senior Reporter at The Drum.

The panel shared their experiences of being CMO's for large companies that are thriving in the digital realm, it was great to hear their tips and advice of being successful in such a fast-evolving world. They touched on the difference between a traditional and modern CMO and how you can grow as a marketer. Here are a few key takeaways from each speaker...

Key takeaways from Maegen Eisenberg at Trip Actions

Continually learn and adapt, you must be agile and always keep building up your skillset. Keep reading and growing - she recommended the book 'Play Bigger'
Understand your user's persona, we're in an over-stimulated market place so you must understand your consumers and innovate to a different level
Work with your C-suite team and use one another's skills to lead a winning strategy
Connect with people and create a network of people to learn from

Key takeaways from Tom Klein from Mailchimp

Establish your businesses offer and how it differs to your competitors. Use your USP to touch on your customer's pain points
Remember your brand always comes first
Delve deep and look at your customers, think of the different segments and cycles. The customer experience belongs to the customer so understand what that is like for them

Key takeaways from Janine Pelosi at Zoom Video Communications

Be a sponge - become a lifelong learner and don't ever stop absorbing new information
Be business-minded first, be a business leader and then put on your marketing hat and develop a creative solution for the business problem
Hire the team strategically, and ensure the department has a practical and focused lens and ensure they are able to adjust the media for each different market

Getting inside the brand marketing engine

Another very interesting panel at the Panda Conf stage with Alan Boehme the Global CTO of P&G and Dominic Grounsell the MD of UK & Ireland Sports Brands at GVC and Cynthia Johnson CEO and Author at Bell & Ivy, interviewed by Marty Swant a Reporter at Forbes.

The panellists discussed the latest adtech and martech solutions that can help to build and strengthen real connections between brands and consumers. Here are some key points from the speakers…

Key takeaways from Alan Boehme the Global CTO of P&G

When working with different brands you must recognise that they are local and precious to particular communities and consumers so harness this when planning strategies
Storytelling is key. You must inspire investors, employees and of course your customers and what better way to do it through storytelling
Diversity matters. Make sure your team is diverse and learn from different people with different backgrounds to drive the business forward

Dominic Grounsell the MD of UK & Ireland Sports Brands at GVC

Remember that the core of your business is to serve the customer and focus everything around personas and do not lose sight of this
Personalise your experience for your customers by being savvy with your data. Ensure your customer have a sufficient understanding of how their data will be used, and then you can utilise the data to help segment your customers and their individual journeys
You can never stop innovating, so keep finding new ways to do this and keep the creative momentum up

Cynthia Johnson CEO and Author at Bell & Ivy

Figure out your goals and from there find a way to create better, communication based content
User experience is everything, and personalised content is great and so effective, but you don't ever want this to drop off - make sure this is sustainable for you customers to have a smooth experience
Make sure can access the data in a measurable way and use the metrics to keep adapting and evolving your marketing

Night Summit at Pink Street

The team headed down to the famous Timeout Market to enjoy some local cuisine and then went over to Pink Sreet to mingle with other Summit attendees and enjoy the fantastic bars.