At the SIPA 2019 Awards Luncheon earlier this month, Kirstina Colvin, president of Pub K Group, was named the winner of the Andy McLaughlin Rising Star Award. The other three finalists were:

• Simone Bunsen, marketing and events manager, Chief Executive Group
• Jenn Ocampo, marketing director, Cynopsis (Access Intelligence)
• Justin Scace, senior editor, Simplify Compliance

Of course, they are all winners. I was fortunate enough to speak with each person recently and will present four Q&As over the next few weeks starting with Ocampo today and culminating with Colvin.

Ocampo has been with Cynopsis for almost nine years, the last three as marketing director. In 2018, she won a 1st Place SIPAward for Best Awards Program Marketing for their Short Form Video Festival—an event they built out of a new awards program. Their marketing for the event brought in 300 entries representing 100 companies and a good chunk of revenue. (See my article here about it.) 

SIPA: Can you describe your role with Cynopsis?
JENN OCAMPO: As marketing director for Cynopsis, I oversee the event and award portfolio, as well as general branding campaigns, circulation, social media and sales support. Over the past 8.5 years, I've been integral in the start and expansion of what's a now 1M+ event portfolio for the television, digital and sports media industries. 

What comes to mind for something recently that was very successful?
I'm really proud of a recent project my team and I collaborated on for the 2019 Television Upfront/Digital NewFronts season. It's an online resource and destination for agencies and brands. And it just won first place in the SIPAwards for Best Product Launch/Relaunch. We didn't have a budget to promote, so the amount of organic page views and visits was impressive. Also, due to the success two years in a row, my team is already in talks on how to make it an even bigger online destination for 2020!

(A brief description of this project: The Navigator is a one-stop resource centers that includes a network guide, calendar of industry events, and breaking news/updates from the presentations to help the media buying and planning community "navigate" the busiest two months of the year. Email marketing, editorial and house ads in their two daily e-newsletters as well as social media promotion attracted and held the attention of their audience to the tune of 85,000 page views, an average of 9 minutes per visit, with a 50% return user rate. They also sold "deluxe" listings to monetize this initiative, bringing in a healthy amount of unbudgeted digital revenue.) 

Is there any trend that you see with your audience? Something that maybe wasn't so 2 or 3 years ago that you've had to adapt to.  
With the market being saturated with conferences and events, we're seeing our audience crave better experiences—and we aim to deliver. Consumerization of events is the future, and attendees want to go where they will learn, network and have unique experiences. My goal moving forward is to focus on out-of-the-B2B-box ideas for events: incorporating different learning formats, audience surprises, trivia and prizes, fun food options, etc. 

How do you communicate best with your audience? 
Email marketing is still a very tried-and-true method for us, but we're seeing more and more engagement on social, and through our programmatic ad campaigns. 

How did your day go? (I communicated with her at the end of a very long travel day for her.)
So nice of you to ask. It was a long day (literally and figuratively) but very productive. My team is scattered so it's nice for us all to get together and connect to brainstorm.

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Ronn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 and SIIA in 2013 as editorial director…