Rebrandly at Web Marketing Festival 2019
The 7th annual Web Marketing Festival took place in Rimini, Italy, in June 2019, and Rebrandly were there to speak alongside marketers, technologists and innovators from all over the world. Here’s a look at what we got up to, who we got to learn from and how we brought the branded link philosophy to a whole new crowd.
If you haven’t been to Rimini before, I highly recommend it. Set on Italy’s Eastern seaboard, it’s a town bristling with summer excitement. Sadly, the conference didn’t take place on the beach, but the Palacongressi was a pretty good alternate venue, in my opinion. 
In the morning, we were greeted by performers on stilts, jugglers and even classical musicians- not to mention the Queen cover band that kicked off the final day. In the afternoon, a robotic band built entirely from scrap metal caught everyone’s attention. And as the day should have been winding down, there was no sign of slowing down, with speakers filling auditoriums late into the evening.
To say that the schedule was packed would be an understatement. There were 50 rooms, plus the main stage, with speakers discussing everything from brand & content marketing, to coding & IT to AI & robotics- and pretty much everything in between. And somehow, with over 21k attendees over 3 days, there was still a truly intimate feel. Speakers from massive brands were free after their talks to take questions, and there was a real feel of collaboration in the air.
I was lucky enough to catch a few really inspiring talks, like Paolo Ciotti from HP talking about megatrends in 2019- looking at how tech, economic and social trends will influence the way people live and work across the globe. Chiara Cocchiara described living like an astronaut for 2 weeks inside of a teeny tiny space dome in the desert to explore the possibilities of humans colonizing Mars. Bibop Gresta informed a captivated audience how the ultra-high-speed hyperloop might transform our lives in the years to come.
Aside from the innovative social discussions going on on the main stage, marketers and technologists described the challenges they’ve faced over the last year in their own quest for innovation and success, giving audiences advice to bring back to their own organization.
And that’s where we came in! I had the chance to bring the concept of branded link management into the mix- and I’d like to add that my crowd was just as captivated as Bibop’s was. Maybe even more so. 
We looked at the most common techniques and tools marketers employ to reach their target audience and challenged the notion that the status quo of ignoring the links that are being shared is acceptable in this day and age. Instead, we found unique, novel ways to include branded links to get even more bang for your buck out of each and every marketing campaign, regardless of the industry.
And so in the end, we missed out on soaking up the rays at the beach, but we gained a new network of innovators- much more our style anyway.
Thanks to the team at Web Marketing Festival for hosting us, we’ll look forward to joining again next year! 
Further reading:
- Rebrandly at DMEXCO 2018
- Rebrandly at DMEXCO 2019
- 5 things we learned about event marketing by hosting our first meetup
This article is about:
- Web Marketing Festival 2019
- Marketing conferences
- Social media
- How to supercharge your marketing strategy with branded link management
