Acronym

On Twitter this morning someone said "ASAE was great but I'm glad it's over" and I half agree. Maybe part of it has been dipping a toe in the water with the event-driven social media, or for treating myself to actually staying through Tuesday night, but it felt as if the Annual Meeting this year had much more 'event-ness.' (Ending the general session yesterday afternoon with a reprise of the "Association Happy Dance" video made me wish that someone would leak this onto YouTube.) But not only was this a great conference, it exceeded what for me were already heightened expectations.

Yesterday two programs stood out in my mind. I decided to check out Ron Rosenberg's regular marketing session and enjoyed it immensely from a front-row seat. Whereas a few years ago I almost resented the incursion of speakers with a slicker stage presence (Ron is a part-time magician) and the more self-promotional, packaged DVD instructional approach, I have definitely come around to thinking everybody benefits--obviously the room is packed, and people learn while being entertained. I suspect many of us who speak could benefit from watching folks like Ron to learn how to impart a better learning experience--more content, more direct analysis, more grounded examples. So many of Ron's examples reflected the experiences of SMALL associations, far outside the Beltway, with small staff lurching from deadline to deadline. It resonated very well. (I wonder how often our association staff and consultant speakers presenting case studies and lessons learned from large well-funded associations inadvertently make their examples feel irrelevant to the types of associations that comprise the majority of ASAE membership.)

His approaches to marketing were simple and profound, comprehensive and jam-packed into the session: the magic marker and 'so what?' approach to critiquing existing copy, refocusing the messaging from I to you, evocative testimonials, varying letters to match a single brochure, listing a series of must-haves in any marketing piece ('with no deadline you have no offer'), and emphasizing the importance of a money-back guarantee. Many in the audience clearly had seen him at past state society meetings and/or ASAE and I hope they are at least part of the way on a journey of practicing as he preaches. (In style he also reminds me a bit of HG Lewis, a famous commercial copywriter who still speaks at DMA events and who also had a side career as an infamous pioneer in the early years of horror movies. Apparently directing "Buckets of Blood" and writing Colgate toothpaste ads are transferrable skills!)

As Ron (and HG) point out, these marketing tips are free to implement--especially in the sense that doing a bad job in marketing takes just as long or longer than doing a good job! And of course, any association that experiences near-100% growth in revenue or a 1500% increase in attendance by implementing these ideas was also previously incurring a huge opportunity cost through bad marketing. The program also did a great job of overcoming the 'sales objections' many associations have in making their marketing effective. Whereas someone might have done an entire session on 'defining and overcoming the barriers to your marketing culture,' Ron included it in his program as a nice, well-covered five minute 'bonus round' inside a very tight and well-packaged talk. Definitely the best and most applied session I attended, particularly compared to the blue ocean strategy closing session which, based on hall talk later, either you got into or tuned out on immediately.

The second program that hit home for far more personal reasons was the session on community-building. It featured DC and Chicago staff and volunteers who have formed and managed regular programs/communities of association execs. As an occasional attendee of Talisa's Old Town Brown Bag, a frequent attendee of the free Greater Washington Network Idea Swaps, and a participant and leader within the GWN's Member Action Team, none of the DC case studies were news to me, although learning about the scope and sophistication of the Assn Forum of Chicagoland was. We heard from the group of state society association executives present that the real challenges exist in creating community in settings where distance and population density simply don't allow groups to cluster and form easily. DC has 8,500 or 9,000 members from Frederick to Fredericksburg. The Forum has 4,000. What can and should you do when you have 250 members mostly clustered around a smaller state capital and scattered elsewhere?

It definitely helps promote the necessity of having a viable online community. Most of us are well on the way of converting communications from print to online, education from podiums to distance learning; now we see more movement from networking in-person to online. In all cases we are near or have passed a tipping point. As Greg Fine noted, you can reasonably expect 10% of your members will participate in the communities that were described in the session, maybe 1% will be avid users of the more leading edge technology. Would we normally build new services knowing we will reach 1%, or 10%? No, but these people represent the early adopters and influentials that consumer marketers seek to influence. And we would meet and do social media anyway--through our association or on our own. Either way, there is a great change in management thinking accompanying this, accepting that in this area the market is unpredictable, fast moving, hard to 'manage.' It's great to see such flexible thinking, acceptance and promotion of the newer wave of activities.

It's been wonderful to take a break, see everyone again, and to see things with a broader perspective than most of us get in our own offices. Now, back to work!