Martini IO successfully completed its "Growth Marketing Forward 2026" initiative.

The company's first marketing conference was a success, with over 500 marketing practitioners and decision makers in attendance.
– 13 sessions presented by domestic and international marketing experts, including KFC, Kurly, Healing Paper (Gangnam Unnie), and Antropic.
– Co-hosted by Braze, Amplitude, and AppsFlyer… Sharing marketing strategies based on data, AI, and automation.

Martini IO (CEO Lee Seon-gyu) held "Growth Marketing Forward 2026 (GMF 2026)" at the Lotte Hotel World Crystal Ballroom on the 24th. This event, the first marketing conference hosted by Martini IO, was a huge success, with over 500 marketing practitioners and key decision makers in attendance.

This conference, with the core theme of "Be First to Scale," focused on specific strategies and practical examples for achieving marketing goals for 2026. Beginning with a keynote address by Lee Seon-gyu, CEO of Martini IO, the conference shared insights across all areas of marketing, including performance, growth, CRM, AI creative, and data analysis.

In his keynote, CEO Lee Seon-gyu highlighted "borrowing power" as a key word. He delivered the message that effectively connecting and leveraging partners, solutions, and processes is the essence of business growth. He emphasized that "adopting a good solution is not the end, but the beginning," and that "connected operations" drive real results.

Next, Kurly's Growth Marketing Group Leader Oh Yu-mi presented a case study of how membership created growth with a low cost structure, while KFC's CDTO Lee Hyeong-il introduced an integrated campaign strategy that connected fragmented customer touchpoints into a single journey. Nextwork CEO Lee Jae-cheol stated, "The key to the AI era is good questions," and shared a real-world example of how they discovered a mismatch in optimization goals between Kakao Moment and Meta and increased sales. In a conversation with CEO Lee Seon-gyu, Braze's Channel Sales Manager Bae Min-ji defined the global CRM standard as "AI accelerating on an orchestration structure," and diagnosed that it was time for Korean CRM to shift from a channel-centric to a journey-centric approach. Martini IO's Advertising Planning Team Leader Kim Seong-heon presented the three values of AI creative: ▲efficiency ▲expansion ▲madness. Healing Paper's Analysis Team Lead Lee Seung-min introduced the concept of a "context funnel," which defines users' purchase intent through a combination of multiple actions. Choi Young-ah, CRM part lead at Martini IO, shared a case study of a cross-service campaign that was conducted in collaboration with YES24 over a six-month period. Jo Hyun-ho, lead account manager at AppsFlyer, redefined AppsFlyer as a “modern marketing cloud” and introduced key updates such as ▲real-time web postbacks ▲automatic AI audience creation and optimization ▲creative hub ▲MCP integration. Choi Dong-hoon, head of Korean business at Amplitude, shared his experience of building 1,000 AI agents across all employees in just six months and launching the super agent “Moda.” Kim Jin-han, growth team lead at Martini IO, suggested that in order to overcome the judgment breakdown that “leaves no decision behind,” it is essential to write down ▲purpose ▲problem definition ▲hypothesis ▲preliminary judgment criteria before starting analysis.
A highlight of the event was a fireside chat with Anthropic's Head of APAC Startup Partnerships, Lee Yeop, who, along with representatives from Braze, Amplitude, and AppsFlyer, shared real-world use cases of connecting Cloud MCP (Model Context Protocol) to their martech platform, drawing significant attention from attendees.
Lee Seon-gyu, CEO of Martini IO, introduced global leader solutions like Amplitude, AppsFlyer, and Braze as a powerful foundation for accelerating growth. He added, "The real difference comes from connecting data, processes, and team execution to create 'connected operations.' Going forward, we will continue to practice 'Be First to Scale Together' by accumulating insights and case studies that can be applied directly in the field."