Edition 1 of the Marketing & Sales Show opened its doors today at the Festival Arena in Dubai. The event gathered professionals from all across the region in one space to discover, discuss and develop ideas.

The event is structured around six key streams: Business to Consumer (B2C) Marketing, Business to Business ( B2B) Marketing, Sales Innovation & Strategy, CMO Summit, Marketing Technology, and SME University.

Communicate tried to attend a little bit of everything. Here are our key takeaways from the day.

The B2C Marketing stream covered interesting topics such as the future of outdoor advertising, a session in which Ursha Spranz, CMO of Lifeonscreen, stated that “Advertising cannot be blocked and cannot be skipped” and “Marketers are looking for dynamic, programmatic, measurable, efficient and effective outdoor advertising medium.”

A panel session on “Brand-driven storytelling: investing in your brand narrative to drive engagement” saw a full house as panelists from organizations such as Lifeonscreen, Barclays Bank, Dubai Airports, Mumzworld, Cleartrip and Snap Inc., discussed how storytelling for brands is evolving and how valuable it is to focus on the story you communicate to your clients.

“The breakdown in trust, alongside the reduction in physical presence, has driven digital storytelling to become critical. What the brand stands for and how it relates to ‘me’ is as important to conversion as it is overarching brand positioning,” said Dania Bazzy, regional head of marketing at Barclays Bank.

The crowd kept growing as Shafika Houcine, group director-digital channels at OSN, gave an insightful session on how the power of viral content can instigate change.

Meanwhile, in the B2B Marketing and Sales Innovation Theatre, Ali Shabdar, regional director at the Zoho Corporation, led a session on how to enable digital marketing as part of the customer journey map.

“Today, customer interactions are moment-based, multi-channel and personalized. The key is learning how create a ‘wow’ effect for every customer persona,” he said.

The afternoon saw the theatre packed for a Sales Innovation & Strategy panel session on how to leverage on word-of-mouth marketing, with speakers from Insydo, Helping ME and Ekar.

The day ended in style as the show managed to break a Guinness world record for the longest time for passing a ball between two people.

Tune in tomorrow to see what the Marketing & Sales Show has in store for its second day.