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Guy Hayward, the JWT chief executive kicked things off this morning. He introduced MediaLink chairman and chief executive Michael Kassan, whose theme covered the marriage of technology and marketing.

Wag the dog: why Silicon Valley will determine the future of marketing

Giving the opening keynote at Haymarket's BrandMAX conference in London on "why Silicon Valley will define the future of marketing", Kassan said that one of the most important concepts marketers should learn from California's Silicon Valley, the home of the digital and technology revolution, was "fail fast".

Silicon Valley was no longer a place but a collective mindset – "a set of principles built around execution, and so are marketing organisations," he argued.

Kassan said: "It's OK to make mistakes as long at they are recognised and rectified quickly. It's just another way to recognise how not to do something, as long as it is experiential and not reckless."

Best Job in the World: Tourism Queensland

Steve McRoberts, executive director of marketing at Tourism Queensland and Paul Bennett, country managing director of Sapient Nitro, gave a top presentation on their marketing strategy for the Australian state at the BrandMAX conference.

You must remember 'The Best Job in the World' campaign, where a Brit won the opportunity to be caretaker of an island on the Great Barrier Reef, on a salary of A$150k.

That was a couple of years ago. This morning the guys shared what they had learned from the campaign and how this influences the way they approach their entire communications.

They came up with five key questions to ask when setting out on defining a marketing strategy.

1. Have you got great consumer insight that everyone believes in?
2. Have you got the whole organisation on board and willing to try something new?
3. Have you got all your logistics and internal processes organised?
4. Are you measuring everything and can you prove your ROI to your stakeholders?
5. Are you fully integrated?

McRoberts and Bennett added that it’s no longer enough to think locally about campaigns.

"Everything you do for your brand is on the world stage so you need to make sure you’re building a world-class experience," said McRoberts.

Thinking out loud: the ultimate brand optimisation ingredient - integration

Charles Vallance, founding partner of VCCP also had five points to make, this time on integration.

The five criteria to aid integration:

1. Integration starts from the brand up - "You first have to know what the brand stands for – the most integrated brands have the best vision.
2. The quality of integration correlates directly to clarity of purpose. To get the concentrated brand idea first look at the consumer truth, the market truth and the product truth.
3. Think people, not processes or agencies. Think integrated working, not integrated work.
4. Integrate dbrands live in a world of their own creating, not someone else's.
5. Improvisation beats codification. Codes and brand guidelines should not become a subsitute for judgement, argued Vallance.

Oiling the machine: bringing everyone together to build the brand

Amid the talk of how to shape the perfect brand, it fell to BMW's UK marketing director Richard Hudson to remind delegates that not all brands are in complete control of their destiny.