May 19, 2025
The key to developing a winning marketing strategy is understanding what the customer needs and wants, then finding a way to deliver. The same principle holds true for a marketing event, which is why the 13th annual Midwest Digital Marketing Conference had a bit of a different feel in 2025. “We assessed last year pretty heavily, tried to understand what was and wasn’t working,” said MDMC founder Perry Drake, the chair of the University of Missouri–St. Louis Department of Marketing and Entrepreneurship. “We listened to comments and feedback, as we always do, with our survey after the event. We heard that people wanted more of the higher, elevated sessions, as opposed to introductory sessions, so we tried to make all our sessions intermediate to advanced, as much as we can control that.” The changes were a rousing success, as evidenced by the nearly 700 attendees – topping last year’s total by more than 100 people – and the entertaining one-hour roundtables and interactive two-hour masterclass discussions held across the UMSL campus. Sessions were held at the Millennium Student Center’s Century Rooms and in Anheuser-Busch Hall on Tuesday and at the Blanche M. Touhill Performing Arts Center on Wednesday.
One of the challenges leading up to the two-day conference was finding out which sessions participants would sign up for. Initially, Drake said, the plans called for the individual Century Rooms in the MSC to each host separate roundtables. It didn’t take long for Drake and his committee – Executive Director Mindy Choo, Production Director Thomas O’Connell, Senior Consultant Lisa Grimm and UMSL students Katie Basler, Cristina Fernandez and Clayton Bruce (Drake’s dog, Peanut, was the official mascot) – to adjust those plans. “Those roundtables filled up really fast and we had to expand,” Drake said. “Everybody wanted to go to some of these sessions, so we just combined the rooms and have about 170 seats in there. Same thing with the masterclasses.” John Weller, a senior digital strategist at SteadyRain, moderated one of the Tuesday roundtables, along with three of his colleagues from the St. Louis-based digital strategy firm: Kirstie Bischoff, senior director of digital marketing; David Logger, digital marketing strategist; and Tom Kasperski, senior digital strategist.
