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Kevin Hohnbaum
AMA President
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President’s Message
I’m about halfway through Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba’s new book Citizen Marketers – When People are the Message. The authors discuss a number of different instances where single individuals or small communities have had major impacts on companies and consumers by participating in what the authors refer to as “social media”. The upshot is that marketing is changing as quickly as communication methods are changing and the most effective marketers will be those that embrace this new world of collaborating enthusiasts. Our goal as the board of directors at AMA Oregon is to give each of you the opportunity to step into that future world armed with the knowledge, skills and passion that will help you be successful. Our Professional Development series and luncheon team have some dynamite programs coming up this spring and our conference team is in the final stages of planning an event that you will not want to miss! The number one lesson I’m taking from the book I’m reading is to take advantage of every chance you have to learn and stretch professionally and personally and look for opportunities to work with others to change your corner of the world! I hope it’s a lesson I can learn and practice.
See you at an event soon. |
Ben Lloyd, President Amplify-Interactive
About the speaker:
Ben Lloyd started his Internet marketing experience in 1999 as an offshoot of his music industry background where he had the opportunity to promote lifestyle Web sites to teens. Shortly thereafter, he took that experience to Internet marketing pioneer Wave Rock Communications and then to the Young & Roehr Group where he honed his search engine marketing skills. In 2003, Ben moved on to form his own search engine marketing company, Amplify Interactive ( http://www.amplify-interactive.com/) , to help
a wide range of clients maximize their online visibility and amplify their online marketing effectiveness. He is also on the board of directors for SEMpdx ( http://www.sempdx.org/) , and has spoken at the search engine marketing industry’s biggest conference Search Engine Strategies.
Sponsored by:
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We represent more than 400,000 marketing and creative professionals around the globe.
Visit aquent.com to learn more. |
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Topic:
Don’t have the money, time or resources to implement a full blown search engine optimization program or site redesign, but still want to improve search engine traffic? Have a thin corporate site that you just can’t jam any more keywords into without sounding ridiculous? Learn how to make the most of what you have by identifying your site’s assets and using them to make your site more effective with search engines and end-users.
What you’ll learn:
- Techniques for leveraging your existing site content for search results?
- The role that links play, and how to get the right kind
- Fact vs Fiction. Legacy SEO myths dispelled
Pricing:
Member: Early Bird (Before 3/2/07) $25
Member - Regular Rate: $30
NonMember: Early Bird (Before 3/2/07) $35
NonMember - Regular Rate: $45
Students - $15
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About the speaker:
Roger Courville is the co-founder and principal of 1080 Group, LLC, an independent consulting and training firm that helps companies design and optimize web seminar programs. A practitioner in the web seminar industry since its inception, Roger has provided companies with thought leadership, innovative web seminar program design, vendor and system analysis, and staff development. His real world expertise is backed by that of the seasoned professionals at 1080 Group -- expertise gained from working with hundreds of clients on thousands of events involving more than a million event attendees. Together with co-founder and industry veteran Scott Driscoll, Roger has created of the industry’s first independent curriculum to teach marketers and trainers how to organize and accelerate their web seminar production efforts. Roger is a frequent speaker and trainer, both online and onsite, on how to improve corporate and personal productivity using web-based communication tools.
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Featuring: Roger Courville, Co-founder and principal, 1080 Group, LLC
Time and Location
11:30 a.m.- 1:00 p.m.
The Benson Hotel
309 SE Broadway Portland, OR 97205
Topic:
If Web-based seminars are not part of your media mix, you’re missing a powerful component in your communications mix. If “webinars” or “webcasts” are part of your media mix, you already realize that producing stand-out online events is more time consuming than it appears at first glance.
So how do your online events stack up? The risk in doing poor Web seminars is that we just move ‘death by PowerPoint’ from the conference room to the Web. The upside? Integration. Differentiation. Conversation.
Join online event expert Roger Courville as he explores the ins and outs of truly great online events. Attendees will come away with a better understanding of
- Critical Web seminar planning points that affect reaching your objectives
- How to decide between ‘live events’ and ‘on demand’
- Four key strategies for and producing dynamic Web seminars that stave off the ‘snooze factor’
- Five most overlooked ways to optimize media-mix integration
Attendees will also receive a free supplemental 1080 Group report, “How to Kill a Lead Gen Webinar.”
Pricing:
Member: Early Bird (Before 3/9/07) $25
Member - Regular Rate: $30
NonMember: Early Bird (Before 3/9/07) $35
NonMember - Regular Rate: $45
Students - $15
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MAX - Marketing Award of Excellence
For the past four years, the AMA Oregon Chapter has presented the Marketing Awards of eXellence (MAX) to recognize campaigns, from local marketers, that achieved BIG results. The 2007 line-up of winners – Leopold Ketel, Maxwell PR, eROI, Anvil Media, and Sherri Nee and Caroline Fenn – were first-rate and exemplified the diversity of talent, scope of creativity, and passion for results that define the MAX achievement.
With a stellar list of finalists, a huge vision from AMA MAX Chair Cris Shulz, and unreserved support from the AMA Oregon Board of Directors, the MAX Awards became, for the first time ever, an event of its own. More than 160 zealous marketers gathered at the MAX, hosted in the prestigious Portland Art Museum on Thursday, February 22, to eat, drink, network, and honor exceptional marketing.
Five categories defined MAX this year: Integrated, PR, Branding, Web and ROI (Return on Investment). To learn more about the winning campaigns, look below…
Integrated Winner – Sherri Nee and Caroline Fenn
Street of Eames
Street of Eames, a modern home tour for Portland, began in 2006 as an effort to raise money to salvage an award-winning after-school program for homeless public school students. Two Portland Public School parents, Caroline Fenn and Sherri Nee, teamed with graphic designer Mark Senffner and architect Becca Cavell to develop the new home tour and its marketing campaign. The goal was to target Portland's architecture and design communities with a new, inaugural cultural event that would attract a younger crowd of home tour enthusiasts along with a group of sponsors interested in reaching this crowd. The goal was to raise $60,000 to save the Project Return SOARING program for homeless children. With only a Web site and a post office box, the Street of Eames tour raised $81,000 in its initial year.
For more information, visit www.streetofeames.org.
PR Winner – Leopold Ketel & Partners
Bic Yakka Kayak US Media Introduction
BIC Sport, the watercraft division of the French pen, lighter, and shaver giant, introduced a unique, rigid-hull, inflatable, foldable recreational kayak in Europe in 2004. Hoping to make a big splash on this side of the pond, too, BIC Sport asked Leopold Ketel to introduce this unique kayak to the North American market through an aggressive media relations campaign, targeting not only the vertical kayaking media, but lifestyle, outdoor, and recreational press as well.
The strategy was simple: capitalize on the BIC Yakka’s unique design as the only foldable, hard-shell kayak in existence. Typically, kayaks, even recreational sit-on-tops, are notoriously long and unwieldy, difficult to store in a city apartment, cumbersome to carry atop an automobile. And not even the biggest SUV can fit a kayak inside. The BIC Yakka was different, a sit-on-top kayak that folded into a compact shape, a mere 50-inches long.
Branding Winner – Maxwell PR
Party Packs: Expanding on the success of Kettle Foods People’s Choice Campaign
To fend off increased competition from mainstream consumer brands entering the natural food category, Kettle Foods invested in a PR program to increase brand awareness and drive product trial in support of its national sales push.
By leveraging the cult following of the brand, Maxwell PR created the annual People’s Choice campaign, inviting fans of Kettle™ brand Potato Chips to choose its next flavor. Out of hundreds of flavor ideas submitted each year, five are selected annually for consumers to vote online. The third installment of the promotion is now underway at the Passort To Flavor web site.
Party Packs, introduced in the second year, brought the program to life and have proven to be a critical component to building buzz among consumers and media pre-launch. Sampler packs of limited-edition flavors are sold through the Web site, and consumers are encouraged to host tasting parties to experience potential new flavors before they hit the shelves and speculate on which will win -- making for good stories for blog chatter and great ink.
Web Winner – eROI
People’s Choice:Passport to Flavor
In 2006, for the second year (third campaign) in a row, all-natural snack-maker, Kettle Foods, teamed with Portland e-marketer eROI to create a buzz around the new People’s Choice KettleTM brand Chip flavor. The idea behind the campaign: Let the people decide what the new flavor would be. Kettle Foods was one of the earlier companies to embrace the concept that customers own their brand, not them. This has worked beautifully for the user-generated content and social media world we live in today. The choices were: Aztec Chocolate (yes, chocolate), Royal Indian Curry, Island Jerk, Chili Lime and Dragon 5 Spice. eROI was tapped to create the Flash website with creative inspired by authentic looking, 19 th century, travel stamps from each flavor region. Blog comments for each chip flavor and old-world, customizable email postcards were integrated into the site. Not only did the site build an incredible community of Kettle brand loyalists, but the Passport to Flavor Web site exceeded Kettle’s goal for both online PR and sales of Flavor Party Packs.
ROI Winner – Anvil Media
Smartwool PPC
SmartWool's socks are made of the best fiber in the world for varying weather conditions, combining comfort and performance into one versatile package. SmartWool's Web site reflects their award winning socks for running, walking, hiking and just plain comfort. In order to increase sock sales, marketing brought in Anvil to research and manage PPC campaigns and increase ROI. Anvil was tasked with two objectives. The primary objective was to create brand awareness and increasing traffic to the site, the secondary objective is to generate online orders.
The overall strategy for increasing online orders and generating additional site traffic is to optimize paid listings. Anvil researched keywords and optimized ad text for PPC launch. Conversion tracking allows Anvil to monitor page load rate. Hourly reports allowed Anvil to assess what time of day sales dominated in order to best allocate budget. After three months of search engine marketing (SEM) activity, Anvil was able to take meeting objectives to a new level.
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Shellie Yule
Market Research Analyst, Conkling, Fiskum and McCormick
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Volunteer of the Month
AMA volunteer and member Shellie Yule, is working hard to ensure that AMA has a successful spring conference. When asked about her role on the conference committee, Shellie said, “I am pulling together a dazzling list of speakers—you won’t want to miss this year’s conference. Mark date on your calendar.” Shellie finds volunteering for AMA a fun way to contribute to the marketing and research community in Portland.
Shellie Yule is a market research analyst for Conkling, Fiskum and McCormick, a local company that provides communications, research and public affairs services to its clients in the Pacific Northwest and Washington, D.C.
Shellie also spends time training for her next marathon, hanging out with her kids, and enjoying all the fun stuff there is to do in Portland.
Thanks Shellie for sharing your talents with AMA!
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AMA Members get discounts on trade publications! The Portland Business Journal and the Vancouver Business Journal are offering an association discount to our members. For the Portland Journal AMA Members receive a $70 subscription (vs. $90) and for the Vancouver Journal AMA members receive a $39 subscription (vs. $49.)
Call these numbers and mention your AMA membership to receive the special discounts:
Vancouver Business Journal - 360-695-2442
Portland Business Journal – 503-274-8733
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Thank You to New and Renewing Members
We would like to welcome the following new members who joined and the current members who renewed their membership to AMA Oregon since the last newsletter was published.
New Members
Alissa Barron Stranzl, EasyStreet Online Service
Jocelyn Brady
Tiffany Meyer, Numa PR and Marketing
Amber Moore
Richard Kwetchkenbaum
Eric Mann
Timothy Mantz
Curtis Nelson, Gary's Vacuflo
Suzi Santilli, WebTrends
Steven Boespflug
Jr Owen
Gustavo Velez
Patrick Wong
Lee Schmolke
Lori Brockman-Torres
Donald Sader
Whitney Lawrence
Christa James
Cynthia Morgan
Graham Keavney
Florence Chan
Renewing Members
Anne Ashley, Chown Hardware
Drew Blevins, TriMet
Tom Doll, Sato Labeling Solutions America Inc
Dana Howe, 5th Street Public Market
Justin Norman, Woodfold-Marco Mfg Inc
Tom Russell, Sage Software
Michael Thompson, Market Accelerators
Hal Wright, BNResearch
Kim Ziebell, Bushwacker Inc
William Nesbit, Graphix Plus
Emily Hascall, Pac/West Communications
Cris Schulz, Daily Journal of Commerce
Joshua Kermisch, Oregon Imaging Centers
Staci McAdams, HemCon Medical Technologies Inc
Margaret Kern, Kern Marketing
Kathy Hartshorn
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Drew Blevins
Director of Marketing, TriMet
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Member Profile
AMA caught up with renewing member Drew Blevins at a very busy time. Blevins, TriMet’s director of marketing, is right in the throes of the Portland Mall renovation, which expands Light Rail on the Portland Mall, and temporarily reroutes downtown Portland buses from 5th and 6th avenues.
“Change is always potentially painful,” Blevins acknowledged, but he and his team, in cooperation with other TriMet staff and partners, have been working for months to communicate the new routes and stops to downtown businesses and riders to ensure that everyone is fully informed about the changes, using an integrated campaign with a heavy focus on direct marketing.
“They’ve been really busy keeping customer information current and updating schedules,” Blevins said of his on-street information team, which he oversees alongside promotional, creative services and marketing research groups.
TriMet calls the mall’s renovation “The Next Big Thing Downtown” and promotes it as a renaissance for the central city. A series of events, including block parties, will encourage people to visit downtown to witness and celebrate each milestone until the grand opening in September 2009. As the construction progresses, riders can stay up-to-date through a TriMet-managed web site, www.portlandmall.org, that is filled with updates, promotions and tips for commuters.
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Marketing Moments
The Agony of (and Lack of Data on) Choosing New Site Colors
If you have ever had to choose site colors, you’ll understand completely. The three biggest problems:
1. Everything’s subjective
2. Everything looks slightly different on differing computers
3. There’s virtually no data on marketing and color
Read more about Marketing Sherpa's web color dilemma.
Inspired by the variety and scope of the local marketing industry, this new web site is designed to be a resource for Portland and SW Washington marketers and marketing-related professionals.
- Stay on top of local trends and happenings
- Access quick links to local organizations such as PRSA, PAF, pdxMindshare and more
- Connect to market researchers, marketing managers, graphic designers, web developers, media directors, public relations experts, copywriters and other professionals
You can find a link to the Marketer's Trends web page on the AMA Oregon "News" page.
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Announcements
Professional Development Workshop | April 3 2007
Topic: "Cut the clutter and get to the point!"
5:30 - 7 p.m. | The Portland Art Museum
Click here for details.
eMarketing Forum at InnoTech 2007 | April 26 2007
AMA Oregon is sponsoring the luncheon keynote for this event.
Topic:
"Trends and Outlook 2007 |
Consumer 2.0"
Speaker: Murray Gaylord, previously vice president, brand marketing for Yahoo! Inc., was named vice president, marketing for NYTimes.com effective January 8, 2007. In his new role, Mr. Gaylord is a member of the NYTimes.com senior management team and oversees marketing, customer service, research and Web analytics.
AMA Members can register for the luncheon at a special rate, and attend the afternoon sessions free of charge. Click here to register.
11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. | Oregon Convention Center
Click here for details.
The AMA strives to offer topical resources to help in your professional development and career advancement in today’s competitive environment. We want to make sure we are serving your interests and adding value to you. Tell us how the AMA has helped you and how we can improve. We would love to hear from you.
Have a topic to share with fellow marketers? Submit an article or case study to be featured in our next newsletter.
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"Marketing Pulse" is a monthly publication of the American Marketing Association - Portland, Oregon Chapter
Visit us at www.ama-pdx.org
P.O. Box 82 , Portland, OR 97207 | Phone: 503.222.9204 | Email: info@ama-pdx.org |
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