This October, the MATCH Agency team attended RIGA COMM 2025 — Riga’s biggest marketing event of the year — to do the listening, note-taking, and networking so you don’t have to. Here’s the reality: some speakers focused too much on self-promotion, some used AI just as a trendy topic, and only a few shared practical insights with data and examples. We filtered the noise to highlight several talks that were actually worth listening to.
We came prepared
Six of us — marketing strategists, project managers, content specialists — headed to RIGA COMM 2025 with a clear plan. Before the event, we uploaded the full conference program into our custom-trained GPT assistant, which already knew our team’s backgrounds, strengths, and professional interests. It helped us divide the topics so that each person could cover a different area and bring back unique insights.
Over two days, we attended 26 sessions across seven different stages, focusing mainly on the Digital Stage (marketing, communication, and creative strategy) — 11 in total — and the Executive Stage (leadership, innovation, and business transformation), with 6 sessions. Almost half of all talks (42%) revolved around AI and automation, reflecting the main theme of the conference. Another 31% focused on marketing and communication — from personalization to creative performance — the core of our expertise. The remaining % explored e-commerce, B2B communication, leadership or other topics.
As you see, we spent the least time at the IT-related stages — as a marketing agency, our focus naturally leans more toward communication and marketing rather than pure IT. Still, if you attended these tech-focused sessions, we’d love to hear your impressions and key takeaways from the more technical side of the conference.
From bold topics to empty words
On one hand, we didn’t want to sound like party poopers — but sometimes, constructive criticism is far more valuable than polite applause. Honest feedback helps speakers prepare better, raises the quality of future events, and ultimately pushes the whole industry forward.
Having spent years giving lectures and consultations ourselves — both for entrepreneurs and students at the MATCH Summer School — we know how challenging and demanding educational work can be. Out of respect for all participants, we won’t name anyone directly, but we’ll highlight a few questionable moments in the content and delivery that, in our view, deserve a closer look.
So…
It’s good when you use AI tools to bring your ideas to life. It’s bad when you try to replace the ideas themselves with AI. While on the first day we were intrigued by each relevant and well-chosen topic, by the end of the second day, though, it felt more like a “expectation vs. reality” meme.
Some speakers clearly used their stage time as a way to promote their own business. It’s fine when promotion feels natural and is supported by real insights and case studies. But when the whole session turns into a 20-minute commercial, it stops being educational and becomes a banner ad.
It’s great when AI experts highlight the real value of AI in business — after all, that’s the perfect opportunity to show how their solutions actually changed businesses for the better. It’s not great when the whole talk focuses only on how entrepreneurs are “not ready,” “afraid,” or “distrustful” of AI. Maybe the reason they’re not ready is because too many “AI experts” still can’t show real examples that actually work?
It’s cool when someone boldly challenges outdated systems and declares that classic frameworks no longer work. Not cool when the “new system” they present is just the same old framework in a new design — but now without any clear metrics or KPIs.
It’s admirable when a speaker promises to teach how to grow on a specific social platform. And it’s disappointing when, for 20 minutes straight, all we hear is that you should… comment more. No unique case studies, no detailed roadmap — just a motivational speech about the importance of posting and commenting.
And finally, it’s wonderful when we see a panel about growing Latvian exports — it’s a great chance to talk about what makes our region unique, which markets to target, which industries hold the most promise. It’s far less wonderful when the entire conversation becomes a set of empty metaphors like “exporting is like fishing” or “like shooting”, with the takeaway being that many local companies just “throw their product at the market and hope it sticks.” At MATCH, we work closely with export-driven brands and know how much effort, time, and money they put into it. A focused, data-driven discussion with real insights would’ve been far more valuable than poetic comparisons — at least to match the panel’s title.
Overall, many speakers lacked real, detailed, and proven case studies. We wanted to see specifics — project examples, measurable results, real experience. Instead, there were general statements, motivational quotes, and clichés that have been circulating since 2020. As a result, topics that sounded deep — but were delivered shallow.
Perhaps some speakers aimed their content at less experienced entrepreneurs. Yet nothing convinces business owners better than simple “before and after” results. Perhaps others were too protective of their insights, afraid competitors might steal them. Understandable — but real expertise only builds trust when it’s shared, not hidden.
Or maybe it’s simpler: some just didn’t have much to say. And in that case, the constant criticism we heard from the stage — about how business owners are “not ready” or “don’t understand enough” — raises a fair question: how can anyone trust you, if you have nothing real to show?
And lastly, we just need to share the pain of our designer, who’s still recovering from what she saw at RIGA COMM:
“Across the lectures, a recurring theme was the surprising neglect of basic design principles, even among large and established brands. Common issues included poor color choices (low-contrast text, unreadable combinations like yellow on white), inconsistent hierarchy and text positioning, overlapping icons, incomplete translations, and outdated or distracting animations. Many presentations also missed opportunities to visually communicate complex ideas, even when constrained by NDAs or sensitive data.”
What made it worth attending
Even among the 26 lectures we attended, 10 truly stood out — and each of these speakers deserves praise for something unique. In this part, we’ll mention both the speakers and the companies they represented — because their work truly deserves recognition and support.
RIGA COMM was worth attending just to hear from such great minds — like Dmitrijs Cudihins, Senior Cloud Solutions Architect at Microsoft, who spoke about implementing AI in business operations, or Michal Trzesiok, Data Scientist at IBM, who discussed trusted AI and risk management. These are examples of lectures where the speakers focused exactly on what their topics promised — real case studies, data, and lots of practical, useful, and clear information — a sapiosexual’s delight.
One lecture with plenty of data and valuable content was from Alex Danchenko, Co-founder and COO of Yespo. It was one of the most insightful presentations about personalized recommendations, showing how technology can suggest products based on user behavior and context — clearly answering the rhetorical question from the title: “Marketer vs. AI: Who Actually Boosts Revenue?”
Kudos for the most interactive and visual presentation of AI in action go to Krists Marhilevics and Kristaps Cirulis, Co-Founders of Shift Creative Intelligence, for their session “AI for VIBE Marketing.” In just 20 minutes, the team showed not only the power of visual, audio, and video AI tools – but also what happens when these tools are used by creative professionals. Before the talk, Krists and Kristaps asked the audience to name three random words — and using words like “orange” and “speed,” they built an MVP for their SaaS product, a micro-mobility builder, and demonstrated it live. Special thanks for the bold follow-up to the classic Spice shopping center ad. A creative mind and a few AI tools — and you have a campaign more interesting than one made with an expensive production team, yet just as high in quality. Well… You guys are rock stars.
Finally, someone took a swing at cold outreachers who awkwardly use AI-generated email openers like “Dear Sir/Madam, I hope this email finds you well.” James Karklins, President & Founder of 7 Knots Digital, talked about understanding the customer’s context before contact through three main levels of personalization, reminding us once again that cold outreach is still alive. All you need to do is, as we were taught in school, understand the pain points of a specific business — its challenges, goals, and limits — and now, with AI tools, it’s easier than ever.
Anyone working in email marketing should have definitely attended Dmytro Kudrenko, Founder of Stripo, and his lecture “Email Gamification in E-commerce: Strategies and Best Practices.” By the end of the second day, it was great to see that the content truly matched the title — Dmytro really shared both strategies and best practices. Real examples and data — an excellent presentation!
Special thanks to Lina Ivanova from BetterAnswer.ai for highlighting the fast-growing search traffic from LLMs. When a speaker shares real insights and explains the specific factors that affect ranking and indexing in AI assistants, promoting their company’s service feels fully appropriate.
Shout-out to Stjepan Zelic, CEO and Co-Founder of Hypefy. His talk “Why Do We Trust Strangers on Instagram More Than Brands?” may not have been new — the idea that many micro-influencers work better than one big star is already well-known — but the delivery was magnetic. Confident, dynamic, and full of energy, Stjepan easily earned the title of the most charismatic speaker at the event.
Among the big players, we’d like to mention the lecture “Smart Loyalty: Where Data Meets Human Touch” by Eugeni Velinov, MarTech & Omnichannel Experience Leader at SAP, and Zane Kemere, Baltic CRM Manager at Rimi Baltic Group. They showed how Rimi created a truly personalized customer experience by connecting all communication channels into one 360° system. Each user has a unique profile that includes habits, interests, and even family behavior — all used to personalize and gamify the loyalty program. It was fascinating to see the amount of analytical work behind it — and to view it as an art of connecting many small details into one working ecosystem.
One of the most honest and, in its own way, brave presentations was “Artificial Intelligence vs. Humans – Duel or Duet?” by Jānis Aizbalts, Chairman of the Board at Eco Baltia vide. Combining storytelling with real management experience, the speaker openly shared not only the company’s successes but also its failures and the lessons learned. As an example, he described a case study of a project where the company invested over €2 million, driven by market hype, and later closed it as unprofitable, stressing the importance of deep preliminary research. Special respect to the speaker for his honesty in describing the realities of the B2G sector: even with strong digital solutions, such companies often face two key factors — price and the political cycle, since public sector clients have only a short “window of opportunity” between elections.
Finally, we’d like to highlight Guntis Coders, Founder and CEO of THEO, for his lecture “From Random Prompts to Systematic Intelligence: Building Marketing AI That Actually Works” — one of the most practical and engaging presentations on developing AI assistants. Guntis’s lecture was the very last on the first day of the exhibition — and the most valuable. It wasn’t just about prompt engineering; it was a visual demonstration with documentation, real prompts, common mistakes, and a clear step-by-step roadmap. The fact that the only “question” after the lecture was actually a “thank you” from an audience member — and that a line of people waited to speak with Guntis afterward — says everything. A brilliant example for other speakers of what great content should look like. Guntis, we join the gratitude of the audience — thank you for your huge effort and generosity. To paraphrase the theme of your own lecture: “From empty words to real work — a talk about AI that was truly worth listening to”.
In any case, attending RIGA COMM 2025 turned out to be a great team-building experience for us — and a reminder that sometimes the best insights come not from the stage, but from the conversations in between. At the end of the day, we wrote this article not just to share what we saw, but to give honest (and hopefully valuable) feedback — to those who speak, organize, and listen. For the audience, we hope it helps you spot the people and companies that are truly worth your time.
Now it’s your turn — did we miss any talks that you found truly valuable? Share your thoughts, we’d love to hear your take. And if you enjoyed this article — let’s connect. We’re always open to meeting new people and great ideas.
