Speaker’s Corner: Featuring Juan Camilo Suarez, Co-CEO, Isobar Colombia 

Tell me about Isobar Colombia, its work, and projects…  

Isobar is a part of Dentsu Group with over 60,000 people across the globe. Our global community brings together deep expertise, local relevance, and the ability to execute at scale. Isobar Colombia has 200 talents working on customer experience, Martech solutions, Commerce Services, and digital operations. We serve different industries such as airlines, banks, insurance and retail. We operate some of the largest companies in the region like Mastercard, Rappi, Avianca, Sura & P&G.

What are the challenges within the Marketing industry today?

The challenges we are seeing are about integrated solutions, our industry has been working on silos for a long time between creative, media, and Technology solutions. Now is time to join forces to integrate solutions using data and technology to achieve unified customer experiences. Clients are looking for the same solutions around identity resolution, security, real-time response, personalization, and unified experiences. Those are solutions that are tough to achieve without a clear path from business strategy supported by a unified customer experience and promoted with creativity. The interactions should have an understanding of the audience, the relation and journey of those audiences, content to be provided and personalized, and finally taken to the right channel at the right time.

How has the COVID-19 pandemic changed the way you go about business? What trends do you see for the future?

We see five trends that have been very important last couple of years:

• Redistributed ownership: New models for collective & community ownership accelerated by cryptocurrency and powered by fan communities.

• Conscious Decoupling: A newfound urgency to decouple economic growth from environmental impact and to remake the world of work for a climate in crisis.

• Generation “Also Me”: The emergence of a generation who defy categorization and embrace multitudes.

• Personal Bubbles: A newfound focus on the self, the body, and the home as a source of truth and comfort in a fast-changing world.

• Alternate Realities: The rise of virtual worlds and alternate narratives for a world where we can truly choose our own adventure, persona, and reality.

What is your biggest objective as a speaker?

Inspire people and show them an alternative to integrate solutions. People to learn from the session and then have some actionable insights is my biggest objective.

Could you share with us the points of discussion (the input that you provided) during the panel(s) at the Ecom World 2022 Conference?    

I´m in charge of the “Total Brand Experience” framework in the group and I shared this framework with the audience and gave them some actionable insights about some key elements to having this framework facilitate the unified customer experience approach for commerce services.

 As a leader, what are the factors both professional and personal that drive you? What keeps you going?

Experience has shown me that my greatest successes are the successes of the people around me. Being able to share my experience with people and for this to be used by them to grow as a persona and as a professional is what makes me get up every day.

In your opinion, do digital events give you a similar level of feedback/result vis-à-vis the live versions? What would you say were the biggest pros and cons of both formats? Which do you prefer?  

This is a very good question. I have been a speaker in both formats in different countries. I see that live versions have more engagement during the session but the insights are not taken to the next steps since trying to organize the ideas afterward the event is more challenging. The Digital Events are more practical and the material is in a format that actions and next steps are easier to adopt. Hybrid is a very good combination.

 What is your take on in-person events? Do you prefer in-person events as compared to hybrid or virtual? How soon do you think in-person events would return? 

I have been already a speaker in in-person events and they have worked, for me both formats are great but if I have to choose, I will probably recommend Virtual events with in-person workshops.

 In your opinion, what are the top 3 challenges to returning to ‘In-Person’ events? How could we mitigate risks?

Deciding the events to go to is challenging, travel expenses, schedule, and intensity of the dedication during sessions make it tough to go to a lot of in-person events. I think it should be a combination of in-person events with spectacular keynotes plus a lot of hands-on workshops and then complementary material for digital sessions to go on demand afterward.

Eventible.com is a review platform catering to B2B events. Given how review-driven our lives have become today, do you think reviews will bring in a level of transparency to the events industry? Would you rely on event reviews from other speakers if you had to make a speaking decision?  

Yes, it would be useful to have some insights about the event, engagement and audiences.

Finally, do you have a favorite mocktail or drink? We’d be delighted to know. 

Negroni!