August 2008

As I take the reins of BMA, a profound thank-you to William Blair & Company’s Isidora Lagos, whose superb job as president in 2007-08 has BMA entering the 2008-09 program year with more momentum than ever.

This year, our luncheon programs are moving from the third Thursday to the FIRST Thursday of each month, with several exceptions (our Sept. 5 luncheon with the U.S. Olympic Committee’s Rick Burton is on a Friday).

Also, we are “standardizing” our monthly presence in the Grand Ballroom at the elegant Standard Club, 320 S. Plymouth Court. I think you’ll love this new venue.

This move has made it possible for BMA to keep costs for luncheons at 2007-08 levels, so there will be no increases this coming year (except in member value)!

Two other significant additions: the first-Thursday schedule is allowing us to add two more luncheons to our program year: December and June. So 10 in all.

Besides USOC’s Rick Burton on Sept. 5 (again, please note: a Friday), we have an outstanding lineup of speakers throughout the 2008-09 year:

• Oct. 2: Steve Pacheco, Managing Director, Advertising, FedEx
• Nov. 6: Patrick Crane, Chief Marketing Officer, LinkedIn
• Dec. 3: Greg Welch, Consumer Goods/Services Practice Leader, SpencerStuart
• Jan. 8: Mike O’Malley, Director, Global External Marketing, Tellabs
• Feb. 5: Larry Ross, Director, Global Marketing, Underwriters Laboratories
• March 5: Don Scheibenreif, VP of Strategic Marketing, Grainger
• April 8: George Hu, Executive VP, Products & Marketing, Salesforce.com
• May 7: Fritz Johnston, VP of Brand Management & Advertising, Boeing
• June 11: Cathy Coughlin, Sr. EVP and Global Marketing Officer, AT&T

To learn more about our 2008-09 luncheon program, go to our calendar or click here to download the full-page BMA ad that will appear in the Aug. 25 issue of Crain’s Chicago Business.

Our Breakfast RoundTable lineup is just as exciting. Here’s a look at this fall’s four RoundTables:

• Sept. 17—George Stenitzer, Vice President, Corporate Communications, Tellabs, on how to make your current value proposition more powerful
• Oct. 15—Steve Rubel, SVP, Director of Insights, Edelman Digital, on social-media techniques and perspectives
• Nov. 19—Moderator Jennifer Howard, Head of BtoB Markets, Central Region, Google, will lead a panel of experts on how to do b-to-b SEO and SEM
• Dec. 10—IMC authorities Don and Heidi Schultz on how to work internally with HR and corporate communications to do effective internal branding

I’d like to thank the IIT Stuart Graduate School of Business for agreeing to host our RoundTables for another year. All RoundTables will be held the third Wednesday of each month except in December, when the event will be held on the second Wednesday.

Other news and tidbits to share:

• We’ve formed a BMA Group on LinkedIn, with all BMA members pre-approved, and hope you’ll join. Go to http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/90114/784C9C07747D.
• The national BMA’s annual conference will return to downtown Chicago, from June 9-12, 2009, at the Drake Hotel. Yours truly is serving as vice chairman of the national BMA organization and will be responsible for staging this conference. Our chapter's June Luncheon, featuring AT&T CMO Cathy Coughlin, will be the centerpiece of this national event.

If you take a look at our 2008-09 board of directors, you’ll see that we’ve recruited even more of Chicago’s top corporate, agency and media leaders to help guide BMA.

A very special and warm welcome to new board members Margaret Posh of BusinessWeek; Jason Ferrara of CareerBuilder.com; Chris Iannuccilli of the Chicago GSB; Stephen Ban of Nuveen Investments; Tony Lorenz of ProActive, a Freeman Company; Reggie Riley of The Wall Street Journal; and Jenn Howard of Google.

Also, I’d like to warmly welcome our new academic advisors, Don Schultz, professor emeritus of integrated marketing communications at Northwestern University, and Heidi Schultz, executive vice president of Agora, Inc., and professor, Northwestern University.

And, last but not least, I want to say an extra-special thank you to Suzanne Martin, senior director of global marketing at Motorola, for agreeing to serve as executive vice president in 2008-09 and as my successor in 2009-10.

If you are not already a member of BMA, please consider joining today. You can join or register for BMA programs through the BMA Web site.

BMA members get the exclusive ability to download the PowerPoint deck and/or an audiocast from our monthly luncheon seminars in the first BMAIL of the following month.

Other exclusive members-only benefits include:

• The BMA/Chicago Directory
• Publications and white papers from the national BMA
• Eligibility for professional Marketing Skills Certification
• Member rates for guests joining you at BMA events
• Free postings to BMA/Chicago CareerLink listings

We’re going to give you lots of reasons to stay and/or become very involved in BMA this year, so I look forward to seeing you all at many of our events!

All the best,