Speaker Guidelines

Audience:
MSI events are engaging, interactive, sales-free events where academic speakers offer a first look at new research findings and executive speakers share their knowledge and experiences. MSI’s events are open to MSI member companies, select academics, and limited public attendees. We keep events small to enable intimate discussion. MSI members come from a variety of B2B and B2C industries including CPG, retail, pharma/biotech, financial services, transportation, media & technology, etc. Presentations should be primarily directed to this audience of well-informed, middle to upper-level executives with roles in marketing research & insights, data science and analytics, strategic planning, and marketing management. Attendees come prepared to hear examples from across industries and join to apply new insights and ways of thinking to their own challenges.

Preparing Your Presentation:
Each presentation must conclude with 3 Key Takeaways for “What Marketers Should Do Next”. Questions you could consider:
• What might attendees do differently based on the results/insights you present?
• How might your presentation lead to improvements in members’ day-to-day practice of marketing?
• What new skills and knowledge will marketers acquire from this session?

Guidelines for Presenters:
• Focus on managerial implications and actionable frameworks.
• Consider ways to make the session as interactive and discussion-based as possible. For virtual events, MSI will share the tools available to you such as polls, yes/no hand raises, open questions, etc.
• We encourage sharing a variety of examples and approaches. Since the audience is a mix of companies from B2B and B2C industries, we ask that you use a wide range of examples.
• Please note that MSI events are sales free, so sales pitches for proprietary techniques are never appropriate at MSI conferences.

Audio-Visual:
MSI will manage full AV support and registration for events. Please make sure that your presentation slides be formatted for Microsoft PowerPoint in widescreen (16:9) aspect ratio. MSI will schedule a run through of the session so you can test the flow of the presentation, interactive tools, and timing.

Post-Conference:
Following the conference, we will upload your presentation slides for MSI members and conference attendees only. Virtual events will be recorded and posted on our website, so please plan your content accordingly. If you prefer that we post an edited version of your presentation slides, please provide the edited version in advance of the conference. In addition, we may prepare conference highlights, key takeaways, presentation summaries, and other conference content.