Conversation is the heart of change. It’s how we share questions, mix ideas, and challenge beliefs. When the right people understand and harness the power of conversation, the world moves forward. Bazaarvoice’s never-ending mission is to make that kind of change possible, and make customers’ voices heard across our clients’ organizations.

Our clients continue to define the social business landscape. At Bazaarvoice, we’re fortunate to look across thousands of brand sites, major social networks, and mobile computing trends to put our finger on the pulse of what customers want. There’s no better way to understand what your customers want on the outside than to understand them from the inside. Mike will highlight several new innovations based on the one of the richest customer data assets a business can own – social data.

Customers have always been at the core of business, but there are more channels to reach them and learn about their opinions and behaviors than ever before thanks to social media. The power of truly knowing your customers will inform strategies that can impact your entire organization as you discover new ways to delight your customers.

Erin’s presentation will answer:
   • How do we integrate what we know about our customers socially into the traditional marketing engine?
   • Who is best positioned to unite the disparate tools and customer data streams to find the single voice of the customer?

In an age of high-speed living, big data, and info overload, visualized information has incredible potential to help us quickly understand, navigate, and find meaning in complex world. Daily exposure to the web is creating an information design-literate population who demand their information in visual form. In this talk, author David McCandless will unveil some of the interesting, unexpected, and sometimes magical things that happen when you visualize data, knowledge, and ideas.

Go “Texas chic” at The Rattle Inn, a new music venue in the heart of Austin’s entertainment district on West 6th Street. Owned by Asleep at the Wheel frontman Ray Benson, the Inn will host a relaxed, Texas-style party, complete with upscale barbeque.

It wouldn’t be Austin without live music. Loosen up on the dance floor to a showcase of local bands while enjoying dinner and drinks. We’ll provide transportation to and from the AT&T Center and Driskill hotel. And as always, we’ll have lots of surprises — this is our best Summit party yet.

Businesses that deliver excellent, helpful customer experiences before, during, and after a sale can pull customers into a “loyalty loop,” winning their repeat business. Brand leaders will share their experiences and strategies for attracting and retaining the best customers through social.

• Moderator: Andy Sernovitz, Author & CEO, WordofMouth.org
• Kip Levin, EVP of Ecommerce, Ticketmaster
• Hitesh Parashar, Product Management, Social and UGC, Expedia
• Tony Ventrice, Senior Game Designer, Badgeville

Success in social starts with well-organized programs and teams. Social heavy weights from several different industries will discuss how they organize, staff, and manage their social efforts to drive bottom line dollars.

• Moderator: Ed Keller, President, Keller Fay Group
• Judy Frey, VP of Interactive Marketing, Xerox
• Stephen Strong, Interactive Director, Unilever
• Ron Secrist, Director of Social and Emerging Channels, Capital One

Engaging customers effectively requires businesses to deliver the content customers want, when they want it. Representatives from leading brands will co-present the tactics and best practices that keep their customers engaged, contributing content, and buying their products.

• Lauren Beaubien, Manager, Dealer Advertising Solutions, Cars.com
• Kyle Lacy, Principal of Marketing Research and Education, ExactTarget
• Nilofer Saidi, Senior Director, Customer Relationship Management, Rosetta Stone

Your social efforts are only as good as what you can measure. Bazaarvoice and Rosetta will share practices for measuring ROI on social investments, and discuss how they measure and report their success.

• Chris Kerns, Director of Worldwide Social Analytics, Bazaarvoice
• Jason Tabeling, Associate Partner, Media and Search, Rosetta

Travelocity aims to find innovative ways to connect trip planners with other travelers, and get them the opinions and information they need in order to book. In this session, you’ll see how Travelocity has created brand new ways to connect travelers on their site and on Facebook, and how they leverage insights from social data to improve their bottom line.

• Joshua Bright, Product Manager – Social Commerce, Travelocity

Social media monetizing has been a hot topic for a while now, with varying results for many marketers. Today, the social enterprise is emerging as a successful enabler across marketing, sales, product, and customer service. Experts will discuss how businesses can tap into social networks to drive higher ROI, loyalty, and customer acquisition across their initiatives.

• Moderator: Pat Ferdig, Director, Global ISV Partnerships, hybris
• Krista Korelin-Sjoblom, Head of Social and Digital Partnerships, Nokia
• Todd Meerdink, Global Digital Manager, Kimberly Clark
• Johanna Murphy, VP eCommerce, Kate Spade
• Abbey Reider, Assc. Director of Social Media and Search Marketing, Starwood

The true value of social advertising comes from the creation of a critical connection between a satisfied recent customer and a prospective target consumer. By infusing social advertising with real customer voices, these consumer connections are created based on common interests, concerns, and sentiments. Join Bazaarvoice as we look beyond the social graph, and introduce the interest graph, to uncover the new, true voice of social advertising.

• Matt Marx, Director of Media Products, BV Media Solutions

Managing vendor relationships is critical to retail success, and social offers retailers new opportunities to cooperate with vendors and deliver better customer experiences. Home Depot will share their tactics for increasing sales by engaging their vendors through social.

• Bethany Gibson, Manager, User Generated Content and Social Commerce, Home Depot

Manufacturers have traditionally played influential roles during purchase research and post-sale support, but were noticeably absent at the retail level. But new social tools allow brands to have an active presence in the digital aisle – and they’re finding greater influence on sales. Bob Buhowski, Digital Marketing Manager at LG, will share case studies around how they’ve increased sales and deepened customer loyalty by helping shoppers find the information they need on retailer sites.

• Bob Buhowski, Digital Marketing Manager, LG
• Michael DeHaven, Network Product Manager, SEO, Bazaarvoice

This holiday season, 56% of smartphone owners used their mobile devices to help them make purchase decisions while shopping in stores. Learn how companies and interactive agencies are innovating on this platform to capture faster, smarter sales.

• Moderator: Michelle Rodemers, Account Executive, Google
• Ron Benson, Sr. Director of Engineering, @WalmartLabs
• Stephen Burke, VP of the Mobile Practice, Resource Interactive
• Amardeep Kahlon, Consumer Marketing Director, Wellness, GlaxoSmithKline
• Tom O’Neill, Senior Director of Product Innovation, Lending Tree
• Brian Wilhelm, Director of Online Marketing, JTV

Customer data can inform more strategic placement, stocking, and vendor negotiations. Cabela’s will discuss how incorporating social data into one of retail’s most data-driven functions – retail merchandising – uncovered a plethora of revenue opportunities.

• Scott Williams, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing and E-Commerce Officer, Cabela’s

Keynote speaker John Gerzema will moderate a panel of enterprise software partners and top brands, as they discuss how social improves everything from the customer record in CRM to customer service business processes.

• Moderator: John Gerzema, Chief Insights Officer, Young & Rubicam
• Scott Gulbransen, Director of Social Media, H&R Block
• Jeremy Liebowitz, VP, Digital Commerce & Marketing, Jarden
• Kathy Mandelstein, Director for IBM Collaboration Solutions, IBM

Consumer trust is the currency of our business – and yours. Working with you, our goal is to make sure all consumers are fully confident in the authenticity of the customer content that they encounter every day. In this session, we’ll explore how authentic, unedited content is the key to unlocking consumer trust. We’ll share some of the ways we’re fighting things like fraud and bias, and discuss what you need to do to protect consumers, and your brand.

• Jim Houlihan, Director of Content Authenticity, Bazaarvoice
• Erin Nelson, CMO, Bazaarvoice

Global manufacturer 3M uses social to build a strong, ongoing relationship with consumers, letting their feedback influence product development and create stronger consumer experiences. In this session, you’ll learn how to execute high-touch brand engagement through social, get tips for transforming your organization through social data, and hear insights from 3M’s social playbook implemented at NASCAR.

• Raj Rao, Global Director for eTransformation, 3M

Leading advertising industry experts discuss the convergence of word of mouth content and paid advertising campaigns. Real-world examples guide a high-level discussion around how earned media will drive paid media strategies in 2012 and beyond.

• Moderator: Wenda Harris Millard, President, MediaLink
• Matt Freeman, Vice Chairman, McCann Erickson
• Greg Kahn, EVP Business Development, Optimedia
• Stephen Strong, Interactive Director, Unilever