SIG-Marcomms meeting in Lisbon, 4 March 2026 (incl. joint meeting with SIG-MSP)

Welcome

User journey and service requirements  

We don’t build services for the sake of having services, but we build them for the users. Understanding their journey and how to address their needs is key to creating value and driving adoption. 

Presentations (max 4) could look at the following topics:

• How do we currently gather user needs (interviews, analytics, support tickets)? How does marcomms come into play?
• Which user insights have most influenced your work? Are there examples of insights that changed your service roadmap and related marketing strategy? 

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YOUR PRESENTATION <here>

Followed by a discussion (30 minutes) on:

• How can marcomms help translate user pain points into clear value propositions? 

Collaboration and co-creation between marketing experts and service owners 

Marketing and service development often run in parallel, but real impact only happens when they intersect strategically. Early involvement of marcomms ensures that services are not only technically sound but also clearly positioned, understood, and adopted by the right audience. 

Presentations (max 3) could look at the following topics:

• How can marketing and service owners collaborate strategically from the start? What impact does this early alignment have on the success of services?  

• In what ways can marketing specialists and service owners work together to make the most of limited resources while maximizing impact and re-use? How can early involvement of marcomms in the service design phase help shape positioning, adoption, and resource efficiency, and what role can service owners play in enabling this? 

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• SURF
• Implementing a brand strategy across marketing, communications and service design (Lars Fuglevaag, Sikt)
• YOUR PRESENTATION <here>

Followed by discussion (30 minutes) on:

• What materials work best to maximise impact and reach?  

User journey from a marcomms perspective

Here, we will be elaborating further on some of the items discussed during the morning joint session.

Presentations could look at the following topics:

• What are some of the ways you spread awareness of your NREN’s services and make sure that you reach the target audiences?
• As a marcomms expert, do you participate in creating landing pages and FAQs for services offered by NREN? What are some of the key points where a comms perspective is necessary?
• Similarly, what are some of the advantages of a comms approach or overview of the onboarding videos, instructions and quick start guides? Do you participate in creating this content and if so, what are the pain points to avoid in communicating the onboarding?
• Do you use personas in your campaigns?
• While the service is online, what are some of the key aspects of reviewing the quality of communication with the users? (e. g. proactive vs. reactive comms, clear communication of updates and outages, etc.)
• How much is your communications team included in the user support with regard to tone of communication, etc?
• Do you gather user feedback? How?

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YOUR PRESENTATION <here>

Emerging tools and technologies: AI, new platforms, new ways of working

AI is transforming how we create, distribute, and optimise content. However, this comes with some challenges in terms of compliance and knowing what really works.

Presentations could look at the following topics:

• Which AI tools have your tried? What worked and what didn’t?
• Has AI changed your workflows/workload?
• Are you experimenting with text-to-video or geo generative AI for website optimisation?

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• Memos for AI and Web Design (Andrea Meloni, GÉANT)

YOUR PRESENTATION <here>

Goodbye and see you at TNC26!