Kristin Heinonen is a digital trend analyst at Medievarlden, a subscription service for media executives, as well as Program Curator at The Conference, an international digital conference with 3000 visitors from around the world. As a digital strategist Kristin has worked for some of Sweden's best known companies and large media organizations. She is also listed as one of the most creative people on the Swedish web scene by Internet World magazine, is a co-founder of Sweden Social Web Camp, Scandinavia's largest unconference on the social web and the future of the Internet and is actively engaged in the development of emerging digital talent as a member of the steering committee at Hyper Island. She joins us today from Malmo, Sweden to discuss the role of the digital strategist in Sweden.

Ya-Yung Cheng, who goes by YY, is the Senior Director of Digital Marketing and Platforms at Sylvan Learning, the leading provider of K through 12 tutoring and supplemental services in North America. YY brings almost 20 years of marketing experience to the role, with positions at American Express, Ingenio and Yahoo along the way. YY is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and has an MBA from UC Berkeley. She joins us from Baltimore, Maryland to discuss the role of the digital strategist in integrated marketing.

The advertising agency. Maligned and mocked. Its obituary has been written countless times. Its sheen of mid-century cachet long diminished. Brands are taking business and talent in-house. Ad-tech platforms and vendors line up to tell CMOs that they don't need to spend money on agencies any more; that they can move the funds they used to spend on Friday night beer carts and hip offices for agencies of record on more working media to help them achieve their ever more aggressive objectives and hold on to their jobs. What's more, it now looks like many major agencies have been pocketing commissions in return for booking media without telling their clients. Yikes. And yet, in spite all these pressures, I believe that there is a future for advertising agencies, and that future is based on the work of the digital strategist.

Louise Broberg is a digital and social strategist with strong copywriting roots. A native of Sweden, working in Norway and with experience with a Danish company, Louise understands what it means to work as a strategist across Scandinavia, with all the complexities and nuances of this region. She joins us from Oslo to discuss the role of the digital strategist in Scandinavia.

To listen to podcasts and read blogs on the subject of digital strategy, it's easy to get the impression that ths is a straightforward business, where everything is awesome, or at least it would be if pesky clients could only grasp the wisdom of your words and if we applied the '7 rules for success'. But what happens when you get it wrong? I'm not talking about marginally missing the mark, but rather catastrophically, spectacularly failing. What happens when you realize that your well considered, intricately planned strategy that you worked so hard to pitch and convince various levels of stakeholders that this is the answer to their dreams, just doesnt work? Here's your 6 Step Digital Strategy Recovery Plan.

Dr. Elisa Cerruti is a Digital Marketing Strategist consulting with CMOs, startups and digital marketers on the planning and execution of their marketing strategies. Prior to working as a consultant, Elisa taught marketing and management as a lecturer and adjunct professor for start up incubators and for executive programs. Elisa started her career as a project manager in the arts, before earning her PhD, and then a research fellowship in Business Administration at the University of Turin. She joins us from Turin to discuss the role of the digital strategist in Italy.

Jon Bernstein is an award-winning journalist, editor and digital strategist. He was deputy editor, then digital director at the New Statesman; multimedia editor at Channel 4 News; ran the Channel 4 FactCheck website during the 2005 general election; and was editor-in-chief of Directgov, working in the Cabinet Ofiice's eGovernment Unit. He began his career in journalism as a technolofy writer, working as a reporter for PC Week and news editor of Network News before moving on to become a founding member and editor-in-chief of business and technology website silicon.com. There he led editorial launches in London, Munich and Paris. In 2011 he was named Website Editor of the Year by the British Society of Magazine Editors for Newstatesman.com. He writes for Press Gazette and the Guardian Media Network. He joins us from London to discuss the role of the digital strategist in journalism.

Ian Lee is VP Strategy at Sensei Labs, a division of Klick Inc. He is a twenty-five year veteran of strategic consluting, digital marketing, solutions architecture and client service. He has worked with clients across a broad spectrum of both consumer and B2B industries, devising business and techical solutions for marketing, infrastructure, collaboration and knowledge management.

Prior to joining Klick, Ian held senior leadership positions at several prominent North American digital agencies, engaging with clients in the automotive, pharmaceutical, retail, finance, aerospace, technology and transportation sectors. His core focus is the technology of business management and how data driven approaches can be applied to optimize team and individual workflows, performance, innovation and employee engagement. He joins us from Toronto to discuss the role the the digital strategist in sales.

'It's how we've always done it'.

These are the words of bureacuracy. The words of inflexibility. Words that may make sense in the context of a well oiled machine delivering efficiently in a static environment. But as we've seen, digital media is not static. It's dizzyingly dynamic. And efficiency and success in this space are not achieved through myopic adherence to legacy processes, but to approaching challenges and opportunities with an open mind. We explore this subject with perspectives from the US, the UK, Canada, New Zealand and Hong Kong.

Matthias Hendrichs is Managing Director with the Gao Feng Advisory Company, a pre-eminent strategy and management consulting firm based in China. Before joining Gao Feng as the lead for their digital practice for Greater China, Matthias worked in Europe and Asia for blue chip companies such as Bertelsmann and BASF. He consults, speaks and writes extensively on the subject of digital transformation and disruption in China. He joins us today from Hong Kong to discuss this subject.