CEO — Founder — Speaker

Justin Watkins

A tireless connector of data and creative intuition.

CEO — Founder

About

Justin Watkins is CEO and Founder at Native Digital. He is a tireless connector of data and creative intuition. Through his 20 year career he’s always had one foot in strategic planning and the other in creative execution. Based in Kansas City, Justin’s professional experience spans interaction design, branding, and digital strategy for brands such as POLITICO, Virgin Mobile, National Geographic, and Enterprise Rent-A-Car. Prior to establishing Native Digital, Justin served as Vice President of Creative for MMGY Global and Partner at St Louis-based search marketing firm Evolve Digital Labs.

Little Known Fact

My first job in the industry was designing websites for blues record labels like Alligator, Tone-Cool and Blind Pig.

Speaking

Launching in an Attention-Starved World

Launching a new initiative in a noisy world is a daunting task. With limited real estate available in peoples’ minds, how do you earn attention when starting at zero? How do you avoid a failed launch? This talk covers both long-standing principles as well as new techniques that modernize how we introduce ideas to an attention-starved world.

Finding Message/Market Fit

How do we justify additional marketing budget? How do we deliver more impact with the investments we’re already making? Finding Message/Market Fit opens up Native Digital’s playbook to showcase marketing frameworks to help validate fit for audience, brand, creative, and channel strategies. Reduce random acts of marketing and establish criteria for success.

Right & Wrong

Grabbing attention is a science and an art. Best practices may get you 90% of the way there, but that final 10% requires something unexpected. Your audience can smell advertising a mile away, so how do you get past their filter? This talk discusses a process to arrive at unexpected messaging along with a checklist for evaluating your work. For examples, we turn to the world of late night television which has followed similar principles for years.

Finding Your Voice

Hear how non-profits can find the right voice and tone to communicate their mission without relying on heavy guilt or avoiding the reality of the hardships altogether. Justin Watkins of Native Digital and Claire Bishop of Children International will share how their teams partnered to strike just the right balance for the CI brand. Attendees will walk away with a better understanding of the importance of voice and a framework to implement an accurate tone.

Prior speaking Engagements
  • Digital Summit
  • UXPA
  • StL Digital Symposium
  • KC/IABC
  • C3KC
  • ESTO – U.S. Travel
  • eTourism Summit
  • PRSA
  • PCMA Convene