This Year’s Highly Anticipated Brandweek Summit in Palm Springs Will Be Splashier Than Ever

Visit Palm Springs and you’ll find stars of all kinds—be they luminous points in the dark night sky or classic haunts and hotels that radiate glimmers of Ol’ Blue Eyes and his Rat Pack crew. This week, California’s desert oasis will shine even brighter, as 700 marketing stars gather for our second annual Brandweek summit, our Brand Genius Awards gala and our inaugural Constellation Awards Ball. Beginning each summer, senior editor Robert Klara oversees the process of meticulously curating a lengthy list of Brand Genius nominees whose marketing efforts over the past 18 months were not only ambitious and impactful but also measurable. Once again, Adweek’s editors had their hands full selecting this year’s class of 10 Brand Genius Award winners, each of whom boasts an array of remarkable accomplishments across a variety of categories including telecom, video and apparel. Inside, you’ll see why we’re celebrating everything from AT&T’s stellar storytelling efforts led by chief brand officer Fiona Carter to Amazon Studios’ resurrection of the Carnegie Deli for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, overseen by Mike Benson, formerly head of marketing (now president, CMO at CBS). The Brand Genius Award winners will share the spotlight this week with our Brand Save honoree Stand Up to Cancer and its co-founders, Rusty Robertson and Sue Schwartz—we’re proud to present the esteemed charitable foundation with our philanthropic award. Read on to learn how SU2C has done an outstanding job of increasing awareness about cancer prevention and accelerating the pace of cancer research and treatment. This year’s Brand Visionary is the extraordinary multi-hyphenate Chrissy Teigen, profiled by senior editor T.L. Stanley. The entertainer, entrepreneur and author—and unofficial queen of Twitter, with a whopping 11.9 million followers—has so much going on that we were updating our story right up to our deadline. Whether it’s appearing in Hulu and Pampers spots, visiting Morocco with friend David Chang for the restauranteur’s Netflix series Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner, clapping back at President Donald Trump or sparking a tweet storm after positing The Office’s Jim and Pam were kaput, Teigen’s musings and projects truly deserve their own platform. In fact, today Teigen will get just that, with the relaunch of her ambitious food and recipe site Cravings by Chrissy Teigen. And of course, the self-proclaimed “demotivational speaker” says she wants to engage with readers. “Whether it’s questions about cooking, relationships, kids—I don’t care what it is, I’ll answer anything,” she posted on Twitter. We’ll be hearing more from Teigen, both at the Brand Genius gala and the following afternoon, when we sit down to talk about her ambitions and her emergence as a cultural icon. Given that Brand Genius has been touted by some as the “Oscars of marketing,” I’ll venture to say the Constellation Ball, celebrating brand marketers’ innovation and teamwork, is our version of the Golden Globes. Selected by Adweek’s senior editors, winners will be announced on Nov. 6 at an evening awards gala that promises to be more of a boisterous affair. Winning teams will be posted online after the ceremony, and their profiles will appear in our Nov. 18 issue, along with tons of Brandweek photos that will be sure to leave major FOMO in their wake. Fortunately, we’re already programming February’s second annual Challenger Brand summit in New York—because really, what’s better than New York in February. If you'd like to share insights on your brand's journey to a rapt audience of 500, then please reach out. We're always eager to hear what's next.

Brandweek

This Year’s Highly Anticipated Brandweek Summit in Palm Springs Will Be Splashier Than Ever

Editor's letter: Brand Genius gala and inaugural Constellation Awards Ball poised to make the Nov. 3-6 event unforgettable

Lisa Granatstein

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Lisa Granatstein