The Marketing Immersive 2025

The Marketing Immersive is a half day of enriching, expert-led sessions designed to equip marketers of all levels with the skills and knowledge necessary for crafting an effective marketing plan for the coming year. Whether you’re just starting your marketing journey or have many years of experience, each session offers valuable insights and practical tools tailored to meet the evolving demands of our industry.

Three concurrent sessions; you may attend only one, so bring your team!

• Session 1: Marketing with AI-Powered Strategy led by Jennifer Severns, Severns Innovation Group
• Session 2: Build The Perfect B2B Marketing Program for YOUR Business led by Steve Robinson, Co-founder & CEO, Brilliant Metrics
• Session 3: The Brand Is the Brief: Strategic Thinking That Unites Agencies, Clients & Creators led by John Minnec, EVP Communications & PR, Future Habitat Inc.

These sessions will not be recorded but each participant will receive a link to a digital document of information presented during the session they attend.

Session 1:
Marketing with AI-Powered Strategy

AI is transforming marketing, but too often, it still feels confusing, overwhelming, or disconnected from day-to-day work. This immersive, hands-on session strips away the hype and focuses on what really matters: how to use generative AI tools like ChatGPT to plan smarter campaigns without sacrificing creativity or control. You’ll join a small group, learn practical prompting techniques, and build a real campaign together using your own business or cause as a case study. Whether you’re a beginner or experimenting already, this workshop will meet you where you are.

Key Takeaways

1. A clear understanding of how marketers are using generative AI today – and how to spot the tools and tactics that work best for your needs.
2. Hands-on experience using prompts to build a complete campaign – from goal-setting to content ideas and rollout planning.
3. Your own AI-powered campaign starter kit – including a prompt library, ethical use checklist, and practical next steps you can apply right away.

Presented by Jennifer Severns | Founder, Severns Innovation Group | LinkedIn

Jennifer Severns is a design strategist, innovation consultant, and Board Member for AMA Chicago. With a background in human-centered design and over two decades of experience leading digital transformation efforts for brands like Oprah and Allstate. Jennifer now helps organizations navigate emerging technologies with purpose and clarity. She specializes in ethical, AI-driven marketing strategy and is passionate about making powerful tools like generative AI accessible and actionable for marketing teams of all sizes.

Session 2:
Build the Perfect B2B Marketing Program for Your Business

No two B2B organizations are exactly alike. Join us while Steve Robinson walks you through the decisions and planning needed to put together a comprehensive B2B marketing plan for your organization. Whether you sell directly, via a sales channel or both, you’ll come away with the scaffolding and strategy needed to produce measurable results.

Session Agenda

• Getting Clear on Your Objective
  • Nailing down and communicating the goals of your marketing program and targets for the next 6-12 months.
  • Exercise: Outcome and Target definition

• The 6 core B2B Marketing Strategies
  • Reviewing the 6 strategies (Lead-Gen, Demand-Gen, ABM, Channel, Brand & Performance) and clearly outlining when each is best.
  • Exercise: Choosing your strategies

• Branding & Positioning for B2B
  • Why a unique market position is the key to success and how to get there easily. Bonus: Introducing the ultimate brain hack to creating brand recognition.
  • Exercise: Clarifying a Highly Profitable Market Position

• Lead Generation
  • Mechanics of a high performing lead generation program, plus working with the sales team to plan, measure and improve results.
  • Exercise: B2B Lead Magnet Brainstorm

• Account-Based Marketing
  • Structure, technology and tactics to build a successful ABM program without fancy software
  • Exercise: Target ICP and Cohort Breakdown

• Measurement and Optimization
  • Measuring what matters, based on which of strategies you selected above, plus unifying metrics for optimization across channels.
  • Exercise: Pick your KPIs and Metrics

• Closing Q&A

Key Takeaways

1. Understanding the 6 Core Marketing Strategies and which are perfect for your business
2. A lead generation, demand generation or ABM blueprint with key decisions already made
3. Measurement plan to prove your impact

Presented by Steve Robinson | Founder & CEO | Brilliant Metrics | LinkedIn

Steve Robinson is the founder and CEO of Brilliant Metrics as well as the innovator behind Path3, Bot Badger and other marketing software. He’s a speaker, coach and instructor who LOVES helping marketers get to the next level in their careers and impact. He has facilitated countless classes and workshops with many organizations including the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, AMA and ANA Business. Outside work, Steve is a dedicated husband and father and spends his very limited personal time inventing gadgets and playing music.

Session 3:
The Brand Is the Brief: Strategic Thinking That Unites Agencies, Clients & Creators

Align cross-functional teams and client partners around a shared vision to spark better briefs, smarter collaboration, and breakthrough work.

Great strategy isn’t just for strategists. It’s for the teams who want to spark better ideas, unlock faster alignment, and elevate the impact of every campaign. Using the CCC framework, you’ll learn how to craft briefs that energize teams, inspire creative, and build the brand and budget with purpose and precision. Walk in with questions. Walk out with tools, language, and clarity. Let’s make the work smarter, braver, and impossible to ignore.

Who Should Attend

• This workshop is built for Creatives, Strategists, Account Leads, Brand Managers and Marketing Leaders who want to stop spinning and start winning.
• If you’ve ever felt the tension of a vague brief, a misaligned team, or a good idea stuck in approval hell—this session is your unfair advantage. Whether you’re agency-side, client-side, or somewhere in between, The Brand Is the Brief gives you the tools, language, and frameworks to align faster, collaborate smarter, and lead work that breaks through.
• You’ll leave with:
  • A shared model for strategy that sparks creative—not confusion
  • A practical toolkit to unite teams and scale smarter ideas
  • The confidence to brief, build, and lead like the CMO you’re becoming
• Come curious. Leave unstoppable.

Key Takeaways

1. Turn the Brief into a Shared Mission
   Transform how strategists, creatives, clients, and account leads collaborate. Ditch the disconnects and build campaigns rooted in alignment, trust, and brand truth.
2. Make Strategy the Most Creative Thing You Do
   Learn how high-performing brands distill strategy into a single powerful idea that guides not just the brief—but the work. Fewer rewrites. Faster approvals. Smarter budgets. Better outcomes.
3. Plan Like a CMO, Think Like a Creative
   Unlock proven frameworks that bring clarity to the potential chaos of 2026 planning—aligning teams faster, earning deeper buy-in, and scaling ideas with precision and purpose, to make your brand impossible to ignore.

Presented by John Minnec | EVP Communications & PR, Future Habitat Inc. | LinkedIn

John Minnec is a marketing futurist and brand strategist known for turning ambition into impact. As former CEO of FCB London, President of Havas Chicago and Colangelo NY, he’s led global teams and closed over $800M in growth by blending bold strategy, creative storytelling, and AI-driven precision. He’s led teams to win major accounts like Burger King, P&G, Diageo, State Farm, Bud, Harley-Davidson and Jaguar by crafting ideas that win in the boardroom—and in the market.

A powerhouse in brand positioning and storytelling, John helps companies unlock aggressive growth through smarter strategy, sharper creative and high-converting systems, he has delivered over 100s of keynotes and podcast appearances and serves as an adjunct professor at Michigan State University. He was also an instructor at Omnicom University’s “Rising Stars” program, helping elevate the next generation of marketing leadership.

John’s leadership, creativity, and strategic rigor continue to shape brands, mentor talent, and inspire transformation at every level.

The Marketing Immersive 2025 is sponsored by