Marketing & Communications Conference
Monday, December 03, 2007
I'm in Baltimore now at the Direct Selling Association's 2007 Marketing and Communications Conference. Today we heard from some excellent presenters, including Eric Yaverbaum, [corrected info] president of Ericho Communications and author of Public Relations for Dummies, among other books, plus Allen P. Adamson, author of BrandSimple. Tomorrow I will speak during the morning general session about Web communications, and I'm looking forward to sharing with conference attendees about having a dialog with our key audiences on the Web.
It's been a hectic couple of weeks, traveling to Wisconsin with family, to Florida for Achievers, and then directly to Baltimore for this conference, and I'm looking forward to rejoining my family in Michigan (late) tomorrow night.
Yesterday evening, after spending the day here in a cold and wet Baltimore I headed out of my room around 7 p.m. in search of dinner, as I'd hardly eaten all day. The elevator doors opened and there stood Stuart Johnson, owner of VideoPlus, the company that publishes Success From Home magazine. It was a total surprise, since I didn't know Stuart was attending the conference and since the hotel I'm staying at is not the one where the conference is being held. In any case, I had a very familiar and pleasant dinner companion and what could have otherwise been a somewhat lonely dinner on the road ended up being a vibrant discussion about the Quixtar business, what's happening in the VideoPlus world (they recently bought Success Magazine and some professional development companies) and what's happening in our personal lives.
Stuart's company essentially creates tools for many companies in the Direct Selling industry and is a good friend to direct sellers. I hope we're able to do more with them going forward, as they have a lot to offer us and other companies like ours.
Tonight I meet with the Communications Committee of the DSA and talk about some of the initiatives we lead, including the NBC Toy Drive. This morning Steve Lieberman appeared on The Today Show to present Quixtar's contribution of more than $500,000 worth of product, primarily cosmetics geared toward teen girls. I heard a report from Beth Dornan that all went well with the appearance and that she and Steve were headed back to Miami to rejoin Achievers, which continues the rest of this week.
But not for me. I'm headed back to GR after doing my talk tomorrow, and I can't wait to see my wife and kids again. But there's not a lot of time to relax once I get there. After all of the great feedback from the field at Achievers and new ideas from the DSA, I've got work to do! More on that another time!! Hope you're all having a good week.