Another C3 is in the books – and it was our biggest, best organic marketing conference yet. From May 6-8, 2019, hundreds of top digital marketers from leading brands around the world gathered in New York City for three days of inspiration, innovation, connection, and fun.
Here are the highlights from C3 2019:
Big Ideas, Inspiring Speakers: Keynotes and Sessions
We come together at C3 every year to learn and grow first and foremost. So this year, we featured some of our best speakers and most exciting ideas ever. There’s no way we could cover all of the great content from all of the keynotes here, so what follows are a few notable callouts:
Our very own Seth Besmertnik, CEO & Founder of Conductor, kicked off the conference by reminding us all of our mission as marketers: to humanize marketing by helping people.
This is so important, in business and in life. Never be afraid to ask for help #C3NY pic.twitter.com/JjK6Vm65rZ
— Cassy Trussell (@cassytrussell) May 7, 2019
Friend of the blog Rand Fishkin, Founder of SparkToro, was dapper as ever (let’s talk colorways, my guy!) breaking down the state of digital marketing in 2019 and how search marketers, social marketers, content marketers and advertisers can react to recent changes.
How to win at digital advertising in 2019 by @randfish #c3ny pic.twitter.com/WoezXhhfRM
— Lily Ray (@lilyraynyc) May 8, 2019
Crowd favorite Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO & Co-Founder of VaynerMedia brought the heat and challenged all of us to work harder and smarter. He doled out more the insights he’s discovered at the cutting edge of attention and culture.
“Articulate your truth. Think relevance over reach. Be a practitioner vs a headline reader. Live in the trenches.” @garyvee dropping some pearls at #C3NY. pic.twitter.com/UQ1ea10bhf
— Scott Fedonchik (@Fedoner) May 8, 2019
And branding icon Julie Rice, Partner at WeWork & Co-Founder of SoulCycle, sat down for a wide-ranging talk with Seth Besmertnik, inspiring us all with her story, drive, and brilliance.
“You can be something bigger than you thought” -Co-founder Julie Rice @soulcycle #C3NY pic.twitter.com/E0QMOyxhzf
— Ryan Bennion (@RyBen3) May 8, 2019
Meanwhile, the sessions at C3 2019 covered everything from customer experience to SEO automation to voice search and featured exciting marketing leaders from all different kinds of backgrounds.
• First time on a Keynote stage
•First time speaking in NYC
• First time time feeling 100% comfortable in my own skin while speakingThank you @Conductor & #C3NY for letting me share some stuff I love. Shout out to @askreinhart & @stephanbajaio for being awesome. pic.twitter.com/FmvHzVZc1h
— Upasna Gautam (@UpasnaGautam) May 8, 2019
Next-Level Product Reveals: Conductor Searchlight Feature Announcements
C3 is always a special opportunity for us to share our vision for the future of marketing technology. And this year, we made a host of huge Conductor Searchlight product announcements.
One of the biggest: our platform now serves social media insights alongside search insights in Explorer in Conductor Searchlight to give you the most holistic understanding of your customers you’ve ever had. We’re so excited to be working with our new partner Talkwalker to pair the best social listening data around with our best-in-class search data.
Words can’t even describe how excited I am about our new partner Conductor that I was fortunate enough to bring on board for @Talkwalker! We will be working with a company with a similar vision, values and goals as we bridge the gap between search and social. #C3NY #IDidThat pic.twitter.com/d4Pbv3qsbi
— Theresa Lee (@iamtleecious) May 8, 2019
We also announced our new smart content briefs. No more cobbling together briefs by pulling insights from spreadsheets and emailing them to your content writers or manually uploading them to your project management platform.
Now, you can create content briefs right in Explorer, automatically populate them with our search, social, and demographic insights, and use Conductor Actions to send them directly to your project management platform. This is how easy your workflow should always be.
We now have a Content Brief template built into Conductor Searchlight to make going from content research to content creation a seamless process. #C3NY pic.twitter.com/BMEt04Cv86
— Conductor (@Conductor) May 7, 2019
And we dropped our new multi-channel content measurement capabilities. See all of your analytics from paid, organic, social, email and more in one place to get a complete picture of the ROI of your content.
Introducing multi-channel content measurement into Conductor. By providing multi-channel analytics across paid, organic, social, email and more, we’ll provide a more holistic picture of how your audience finds your content. #C3NY pic.twitter.com/ZRb7CLKbey
— Conductor (@Conductor) May 7, 2019
You can read more about all of the features we revealed at C3 2019 here. Everyone on the floor at C3 seemed pretty excited about where we’re going next!
When people stay past closing and choose demos over a party @conductor #C3NY, you know you are building software that matters. pic.twitter.com/BmAumxz2zE
— Neetu Rajpal (@Nee2D2) May 7, 2019
Bonus: New Services Through Conductor Orchestra
We also made a huge announcement about expanded digital marketing strategic services – introducing Conductor Orchestra. Now, with Orchestra, every company can find the right level of content and SEO support from our experts.
Read more about how Conductor Orchestra works here.
Party Time: Opening Reception and Afterparty
If there’s one thing we know people love about C3, it’s the parties. We make sure to put on a good time for the digital marketing community, and this year, we worked hard to outdo ourselves.
We kicked off the conference with a rooftop tiki party – and, thankfully, the NYC weather cooperated for a beautiful evening.
#c3ny starting out with a bang this year with a rooftop party. Thank you @Conductor. I say this with the utmost respect and years of experience in the #seo business. You are one of the best #Saas solutions ever. pic.twitter.com/H23nmEgk8N
— Garth O’Brien (@garthobrien) May 7, 2019
Then, after Day 1 of programming, we threw the latest edition of the legendary C3 bash. Drinks, food, live music, and the best company in marketing – what more can you ask for?
See you at the search bar at Haswell Green’s! #afterparty #C3NY pic.twitter.com/yE943f9Mfs
— Conductor (@Conductor) May 7, 2019
So @Conductor knows how to entertain. Just a small shindig at @haswellgreens for #c3ny. I presented today so I can enjoy the night. Thanks you @Besmertnik. This is above and beyond. #seo pic.twitter.com/w4VugQiKfz
— Garth O’Brien (@garthobrien) May 7, 2019
(Thanks to unofficial C3 photographer Garth O’Brien of GoDaddy for snapping pics!)
Of course, marketers work hard and play hard, so we were glad to see everyone back in action the next morning.
And the Winner Is: The 2019 Searchie Awards
Every year, we recognize the best in digital marketing at C3 with the Searchie Awards. We had another great batch of winners at C3 2019 – see the full list of Searchies winners here.
The Searchies happening now!🏆 #C3NY #FoundAtC3 pic.twitter.com/wSsj9yhoaC
— Conductor (@Conductor) May 7, 2019
So proud of our team! #c3NY #ourteamourwords @Conductor @moregumsalami pic.twitter.com/k3wv2yaoO4
— Erika Nieman (@erikamarie23) May 15, 2019
Thanks to our very own Joe Taylor and Mergim Selimaj for hosting. They displayed incredible comedic chemistry, and I’m sure we’re all interested to see what these two talented young men do next.
Humanizing Marketing Together: The C3 2019 Slack Channel
During his keynote, our CEO Seth Besmertnik launched humanize-marketing.slack.com, a free Slack channel that provides a place for everyone at C3 to help each other and stay in touch. Join the community here: http://cndr.co/ke
This is just the beginning. Let’s humanize marketing together. Join our free @SlackHQ channel at https://t.co/4qRPSzhieR #C3NY pic.twitter.com/haXRcAE7Y5
— Conductor (@Conductor) May 8, 2019
Honorable Mention
Last but not least in this rundown of C3 2019 highlights: who could forget the massive double chocolate chip cookies we had during the afternoon coffee break on Tuesday, May 7th?
I didn’t manage to get a picture of the cookies before I scarfed mine down (I think I blacked out), but they looked a little something like this:
In awe at the size of these lads. Absolute units.
Thanks to everyone who attended C3 for making it a conference to remember!
Another incredible week at C3 with my @Conductor crew – a week full of great content, experiences & above all great people #C3NY #marketing #seo #contentmarketing pic.twitter.com/E8ppY2AbGY
— Laura Roth (@lauraroth) May 11, 2019