Love was in the air at this year's Association for Accounting Marketing Summit in Chicago.
While consultant Jennifer Wilson spent a large portion of her session on accountability, fielding the frustrations of her 30-something attendees, she helped the marketing professionals flip their aggravations into proactive emotion. Marketers looking to improve the response from top brass should enter future meetings, she stressed, from a place of "love of the other party, a love of the firm."
Motivational speaker Jon Gordon took a similar angle during his keynote. "Showing people you care about them is the best marketing you can do," he said.
The mostly Midwest-based marketers I dined with one night were not lacking in passion. Maybe it was the Cabernet, but the L-word floated freely around the table. The only time this positivity dimmed was when discussing elements of the manager/marketer dynamic.
One young marketer shared with me that after hounding management to take action on items, she goes through periods of "giving up" on certain non-responders, only to circle back and hope for a change after a few rows of ignored Outlook calendar boxes have passed.
Another confided that after a partner in her firm embraced the idea of social media, he released a thick report on why they should create a blog - in which he got the fundamental definition wrong.
Still, the mood was overwhelmingly convivial over those few days.
By the time former Chicago Bulls player Bob Love made a surprise keynote introduction to talk about a severe stuttering problem that kept him out of work post-basketball until his current position as the Bulls' director of community affairs, a strong case could be made for a summit #Love hashtag.
Do you feel the marketing love at your firm?
Let me know @ATomorrow.
- Danielle Lee
