The economics of talent will be discussed at the Silver Mercury Conference

Marketing decisions often don't pay off. In 2026, the market is less willing to pay for creativity on its own and is beginning to evaluate marketing as a business tool with measurable results. This will be discussed at the Silver Mercury TALENT Conference, which will be held on June 15-16 in Moscow.

The conference is dedicated to the real economy of marketing talent — how to turn people, teams, processes, creativity, and technology into a paid result. Participants will discuss which skills, approaches, and solutions are really profitable today, and which ones no longer work.

"We see that the market is in a difficult situation right now: marketing is expected to produce quick and understandable results — from creativity, advertising investments, and technology adoption. At the same time, everyone has almost the same access to tools, data and AI, and this aligns the starting positions. At this point, people begin to play a crucial role — the way they think, make decisions, and use these tools. It is talent that becomes the factor that most strongly influences the result — and, in fact, it is talent that makes money today. Therefore, it is important for us to figure out which talents allow us to stay ahead in this chaos and how they give us an advantage," Ilya Volkov, Program Director of the Silver Mercury Conference

Leading market players will present short 18-minute TED talks. In fact, it is a concentrate of practical solutions without theory and unnecessary words. The speakers will share dozens of specific mechanics and cases that have already proven their effectiveness in an unstable market.

Changes in the cost of marketing expertise will be discussed separately at the conference.: what makes a specialist expensive, what roles in marketing are increasing in value, and how relationships between brands, agencies, and internal teams are transforming.

Among the topics:

• how to evaluate the effectiveness of marketing in the new environment;
• where does real money appear in communications;
• how to build processes that produce results, not just activity;
• what role do AI and MarTech play in the marketing economy;
• how the career trajectory of specialists is changing.

The conference will be attended by representatives of major Russian companies, including Ozon, X5 Media, MTS Web Services, VK, Alfa-Bank, Detsky Mir, Cooper and many others.

This year, the conference is deliberately moving away from discussing trends and "beautiful cases" in favor of applied solutions and an honest conversation about how marketing affects profits and how to do it effectively.

The Silver Mercury Conference will be held on June 15-16 in the CONNECT space. The venue is designed for more than 1,500 participants and includes several halls for parallel presentations and discussions.