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President’s Message

March 2009

by Gary Slack, CBC

BMA’s 2009 national conference, which I have the honor of organizing, returns to downtown Chicago June 10-12 at the Drake Hotel.

Themed “Unlearn: Reprogramming marketers when it’s business as unusual,” the conference will focus on what business-to-business marketers and communicators have learned and what we need to relearn and unlearn to manage these challenging times.

Topics to be addressed, all with a 100% b-to-b focus, include:

  • New go-to-market business models
  • Building and using online communities and networks
  • B-to-b applications of LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter
  • New models for structuring marketing departments
  • Latest b-to-b SEO/SEM techniques
  • B-to-b blogging success stories
  • Sustainability marketing
  • B-to-b measurement
  • New thinking on b-to-b market segmentation
  • Place-based and online event marketing

Speakers will include David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR; Joe Pine, author of The Experience Economy and Authenticity; and top marketing leaders from AT&T, Google, LinkedIn, Aon, Siemens, IBM, Symantec, Dresser, Newark, Texas Instruments, Indium, the Institute for the Study of Business Markets and GlobalSpec, among others.

We’re going to start a new tradition at this year’s annual conference—numerous private dinners for 10 hosted Thursday evening, June 11 (after the Windy City BizBash), by top Chicago and national b-to-b marketing leaders—and, we hope, many of our speakers—at top Chicago restaurants and private clubs.

You’ll be hearing a lot more about the national conference in the coming months, and you can save a lot of $$$ by registering before the April 26 early-registration deadline. If you can’t attend the entire conference, you can register for single days at lower daily rates.

2009 Tower Awards

I am very excited—and I know you will be, too—with the innovations our BMA Tower Awards Chair Jeanine Gaffke has cooked up for the Tower Awards.

Thanks to Jeanine’s leadership, we’re moving to an all-electronic awards-management system, using the same entry and judging software the Effies use.

Marketers and agencies entering their work can do so entirely electronically—thereby saving on material and time costs.

And our judges no longer have to travel to Chicago, saving them and BMA time and money, but can judge (and collaborate with other judges) at their convenience from home or work 24/7. Yet another innovation is BMA’s decision to recruit ONLY corporate marketers to serve as judges—and very senior, nationally known and respected marketers at that.

To date, we’ve recruited seven of the nine judges needed, and they are:

BMA LinkedIn Group

Nearly 600 members strong, BMA/Chicago’s LinkedIn Group is starting to get more tractions—with more posts and comments being added each week.

I encourage you to join and get involved in the discussions.

By the way, every post to each month’s featured discussion (here’s this month’s) automatically enters the poster into a monthly drawing to win a free table for 10 at an upcoming BMA/Chicago luncheon.

Heidi Miller was January’s winner, and she has decided to use her free table at our April luncheon featuring Ed Russ, partner and chief marketing and sales officer of Grant Thornton.

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

I hope to see you at our March 5 luncheon and future BMA events.