Well I'm sitting here on a Sunday morning wondering what to do today without any more football (yeah the NFL's Pro Bowl is on, but so what?) So I thought I'd do a little bit of housekeeping and update the sidebars in my blog which still had some old events posted.
I've also been trying to plan out what I'm doing the rest of this first quarter and where my travels will take me. Besides trying to slip in an extended weekend to see my parents in Myrtle Beach (and play some golf and feel some warmer air), there are a couple of conferences that I'm planning on attending.
First is PMA's Annual Integrated Marketing Conference that's always in Chicago and this year it's on March 10th and 11th at the Fairmont Hotel. I've been blogging about PMA events for the past two years since I started this blog and I wouldn't miss this event. Last year's was great and this year with a theme of "The Integrated Marketing Revolution: Change the Way You Think" it should be extremely relevant.
PMA will focus this event on integrated marketing planning as a discipline which is changing at cyber speed. With new categories, new media, new retail formats, and new social networks, the question they will try to answer is how do marketers plan for the new frontier?
Jackie Stone, SVP Promotions at Digitas, is back as conference co-chair along with Angie Bleck, Integrated Marketing Manager for Kimberly Clark. They have planned out a great balance from both the agency and the brand perspectives. So check out the agenda that has some great speakers from companies such as Dunkin Donuts, Nokia, Harley Davidson, Mindshare, Conagra Foods and more. Topics are diverse, which they should be if we're talking integrated marketing. So I hope to see you there.
Then a couple of weeks from this event is the Annual SES (Search Engine Strategies) Conference in New York which is again at the NY Hilton. I attended last year and now that I'm managing PPC search advertising campaigns for a wide variety of clients I'm really looking forward to this year's event. I won't be attending the basic sessions that I did last year, but now looking to take my knowledge to the next level.
This conference is all about how to generate traffic to your website through the search engines whether its through free "organic" traffic or through the paid "sponsored" search ads. It's hard to keep up with what's next in the constantly evolving world of web search, and this is one place to help you do that.
The conference takes place over a full week beginning on March 23 with workshops on Monday and Friday and sessions on Tuesday - Thursday. We get started with Tuesday morning's keynote speaker Guy Kawasaki talking about Twitter as a Tool for Social Media and then on Thursday we have John Gerzema from Young & Rubicam and best-selling author of The Brand Bubble: The Looming Crisis in Brand Value and How to Avoid It. And of course representatives from Google will be there as well as Yahoo. Check out the agenda and I hope to see you in New York!
So March is looking pretty busy. I better get down to Myrtle Beach before then! Let me know if any of you will be at either of these conferences. I would love to try and meet up.
Donna thanks for the support of the PMA Conference. This year's is going to be a great one, with 12+ CMOs and CEOs speaking about Integrated Marketing and addressing how their companies and departments are continuing to market and innovate in a down economy. I think we'll hear great startegies and tips throughout the two days.
Posted by: Kathleen Mulcahy | February 11, 2009 at 11:03 AM