Each year the American
Marketing Association, St. Louis Chapter, offers a conference in February (This
is the 52nd year). Students and Professionals are invited to participate in a
full schedule of presentations. This year the line-up included Mercy
Healthcare, Pixel Farm of Minneapolis, University of Missouri Athletic
Department and bestselling writer and speaker Kevin Eikenberry (author Remarkable
Leadership). The event took place at the Missouri History Museum on 2-22-13 and
100+ were in the audience. Highlights are worth noting for the record:
Master of Ceremonies, Bill
Ellis of Branding for Results, hosted the conference and skillfully and
gracefully. He stitched the program segments together and made it look easy.
Barb Meyer, VP of Marketing Communications
and Nancy Schnoebelen, Director of Advancement Communications presented for
Mercy Healthcare. A variety of less than optimal technical difficulties didn’t
prevent them from telling a powerful story of managing MarCom and faith. The
most devastating tornado in the country since 1947 hit Joplin in May of 2011
and Barb and Nancy reinforced the power of Remarkable Leadership in spite of
adversity as Mercy recovered from the impact on their hospital which was in the
middle of the tornado path of destruction.
Elliot Robia, Market Strategist from Pixel Farm of
Minneapolis showed with metrics comparing the results of campaigns for a start
up firm and a film festival. Engagement needs to be the goal when social media
is part of your strategy. He cautioned against being too obsessed with “likes”
when it is better idea to know your audience (or as Seth Godin likes to say “tribe”).
Andrew Grinch, Associate AD, University of Missouri
Athletic Department drove in from Columbia, MO and arrived just-in-time to
present the story of his marketing task of rebranding the Mizzou Tigers as they
enter the SEC last year. Excite & Invite: Excite Mizzou fans - A New Era
Begins. Invite SEC fans to find out about the University of Missouri - Mizzou Proud to
be SEC. The 90 day campaign included outdoor billboards, pay per click web
tactics and, of course, social media.
Keynote speaker Kevin Eikenberry delivered a powerful
presentation via Skype. (His flight into St. Louis was cancelled due to weather
but he made the best of it.) Are leaders born or made? Kevin suggested the
answer is “both” and that there are 13 core skills leaders can develop - outlined
in his book Remarkable Leadership.
Heroic efforts that should be noted: Justin, the A/V
tech at the Missouri History Museum was running up and down with switches from
MAC to PC and back, sound and Skype challenges. Pam (of Creatives on Call)
managed to get Skype working on her laptop to make Kevin’s presentation even possible.
Remarkable.
Box Lunches from Patty Long were served in the
AT&T room adjacent to the Lee Auditorium.
Connie Zabarovskaya orchestrated the bonus offering of
company tour of LockerDome and agency crawl of Stealth Creative, Drive Social
Media and Manifest. A shuttle bus augmented the invitation to get up close and
personal at the four firms downtown. The students and young professionals
especially enjoyed the access to these companies. LockerDome provided insight
into how there start-up become the facebook for your sports life, Stealth
Creative shared stories of their success in advertisting/marketing for clients
in Telcom, Cable and and Agriculture. Drive Social Media talked about their
innovative approach to driving business to restaurants and other businesses. Manifest
shared some insight into how they are managing their growth as they more than
doubled in size via a merger with a Chicago based company as they continue to
manage accounts in St. Louis like Post Holdings and Scottrade.
Congratulations to AMA St. Louis on Remarkable Leadership
in the face of adversity.
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