Brand Experience Center Conference 2025

(eap) The Brand Experience Center Conference will premiere on January 28 and 29, 2025. The new event will serve as a networking and experience exchange platform for professionals from the brand experience sector worldwide. The location for the event will be the former stock exchange building La Bourse in the center of Brussels, which was originally built in 1873 and has also been home to Belgian Beer World for the past year.

The two-day conference program is filled with exciting presentations and panel discussions by industry professionals. A keynote speech by Christian Lachel, VP at BRC Imagination Arts, entitled “Unveiling the World of Brand Experience Centers” will serve as an introduction and foundation for the rest of the program. Conference participants can look forward to input from 18 speakers, including Prof. Dr. Kai Müller, Professor of Consumer Behavior at HFU Business School Furtwangen (Germany). His core competencies and research focus include: the impact of psychology and neuroscience on consumer decisions and the perception of prices. In a moderated panel “Inside the Brand Experience Center”, Catherine Toolan, Managing Director of Guinness Storehouse, Laura Sileo Pavat, Head of Global Brand Homes, and Kathrine Kirk Muff, Managing Director LEGO House, among others, will discuss overarching strategies and the key performance indicators for measuring success and provide insight into the challenges they have experienced in developing and operating brand centers.

While most brand experience centers focus on a single brand, others take a broader approach and introduce different branded products – e.g. cheese, certain spirits or chocolate... In her presentation, Stephanie Schaub, CEO of the Chocoversum in Hamburg, will discuss the most important aspects of such multi-brand experiences and examine the possibilities and limitations in terms of sponsorship and identity.

And, of course, Krishan Maudgal, Board Member of Belgian Beer World, which opened its doors in 2023, will also be there to talk about the development of the Belgian beer experience center, which became one of the most important projects of his own marketing agency after he left Heineken. He will talk about the challenges of working with authorities, architects and numerous independent breweries to finally bring this ambitious public-private partnership project to life.

Last but not least, Prof. Perry Hobson, Director of the Academy for Tourism at Breda University, will give an insight into the future of tourism and discuss the place of brand experience centers in the tourism industry. Many brand experience centers are dependent on tourism. But what will tourism look like in the future? Detailed information on all the other speakers and full program items of the promising conference can be found here.

The organizer – Bart Dohmen and his TDAC partners have a wealth of expertise in the theme park and attraction sector and offer consulting services specifically for brand experience centers through their company Brand Center Consultance & Conference (BCCC). ■