By Tiffany Brown
It’s been an amazing 2014-15 year with 10 educational luncheons, multiple mixers, and three large events now behind us. This year, we stuck close to our central mission of being the source for “connecting, informing, and advancing” marketers. We are proud to have brought in half of our luncheon speakers from outside of the market, including top-notch individuals from such locales as the Bay Area, Southern California, Seattle, Portland, and Knoxville, TN, despite working with a limited budget. Working with new sponsors and partners, we were able to bring in great speakers like Chris Guillebeau, world traveler, blogger, and author of the $100 Startup; Michelle Killebrew, TedX speaker and digital marketing expert from IBM; Matt Heinz, owner of Heinz Marketing in Seattle; and Mark Schaefer, a top marketing blogger, sought after speaker, and author of such books as The Tao of Twitter, Return on Influence, The Content Code, and more.
Our annual marketing workshop at the University of Nevada, Reno built on previous years and continued its purpose of bringing in great local speakers to share their valuable knowledge and insights with the business and marketing crowd. We also experienced record engagement and input from within the community for our annual Ace Awards event, with over 140 crowd-sourced nominations and nearly 2,000 votes for People’s Choice award. The event succeeded in sourcing, bringing to light, and collectively voting on some of the area’s top marketing initiatives.
On the leadership side, we sent eight board members to our regional retreat in San Francisco, and three board members to Chicago for the annual leadership conference, resulting in new experiences, learning, and great connections made. Nationally, there was also much excitement as we ushered in our new CEO, Russ Klein, and the AMA.org website was completely revamped, reflecting a change of what we’ve become as an organization since its founding in 1936!
To top it all off, we launched our own new website in June with the help of our sponsor JCML Media, to reflect the changes happening in the organization and to include more features and detail.
This year, we grew on nearly all accounts, achieving the highest level of membership we’ve seen in nearly seven years and also growing average monthly luncheon attendance considerably. Of course, none of our success could have been possible without the support and energy of our amazing 2014-15 board.
It’s a great time to be in marketing, and a great time to be an AMA Member. Earlier this year, McKinsey referred to the time we’re in currently as “the dawn of marketing’s new golden age” where “marketers are boosting their precision, broadening their scope, moving more quickly, and telling better stories.” If you’ve ever thought about becoming more involved with the AMA, now is the perfect time to do so as we transition to our 2015-16 board year beginning on July 1st. As with any volunteer commitment, what you put into AMA, the more you get out of the experience. We are excited for the years ahead!