November 3, 2010 : Linchpins, Purple Cows, and other Godin-isms
Presented by: Kyle Sexton, director of member services for the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce
Seth Godin is leading industry leaders with his latest book LinchPin. Godin has written a dozen worldwide bestsellers that have been translated into more than 30 languages. His is among the most-read business bloggers on the web. Godin-isms include:
- The end of the TV-industrial complex means that marketers are no longer in control of consumer attention
- Consumers no longer tolerate lazy marketing such as spam, misleading advertising, and huge media buys for un-remarkable products
- Only remarkable “Purple Cow” products and services get sneezed, a term coined by Godin referring to how ideas get spread in Unleashing the Ideavirus.
Presented by: Kyle Sexton, director of member services for the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce
Kyle Sexton is marketing strategist and membership organizations, and director of member services for the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce. Kyle was recognized as the 2007 Chamber Staff Person of the Year for the Western Association of Chamber Executives. In 2008, he created what is now ChamberPeople.com, the largest online social network dedicated to chambers of commerce. He’s the creator of the Chamber SalesEngine, an online membership sales module for chambers of commerce, and Face2Face, the innovative regional business syndicator featured in The Wall Street Journal, Business On Main from MSN, and SmallBiz.com from Smart Money. Kyle is an international speaker on membership development and strategic marketing. More available at kylesexton.com.
October 6, 2010 : Creative Solutions for Transparent Communications
Your sustainability story has the potential to change the public’s perception of your company. Are you communicating it in ways that build loyalty and trust with customers, employees and the world at large? This workshop game attendees valuable tools to help them make the most of their corporate responsibility or sustainability efforts. The session used real-life examples to highlight key elements needed to craft a corporate responsibility story that is both authentic and engaging.
Presented by Betsy Henning, principal at AHA!, a marketing communications firm in Vancouver, Wash., helps clients develop compelling corporate responsibility stories and deepen engagement with their brands. She is an expert communications strategist, specializing in business development and consumer marketing. Betsy consults clients—from Fortune 100 high-tech giants to startups—on strategic communication, integrated messaging, and brand voice, tone and manner. For more than a dozen years, Betsy has been a consultant to Hewlett-Packard, Charles Schwab, the annual Pop!Tech conference, Columbia Land Trust and other organizations. She is a frequent guest speaker on entrepreneurship, creative communications and corporate responsibility storytelling. Betsy holds a bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and has completed integrated marketing communications coursework through its Kellogg Graduate School of Management.
September 1, 2010 : Harnessing Authenticity
Blogs hold great promise — both as a way to generate conversations in communities and as a means for communicators to spread their messages. We discussed the power of blogs to steer attitudes and sell products and how to navigate the tricky relationship between public relations professionals and bloggers, especially local ones.
Presented by Emily Grosvenor. Before moving to the Willamette Valley, magazine writer Emily Grosvenor worked as a public relations specialist for the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Washington, D.C., studied in Germany as a Fulbright scholar of book publishing, and earned an M.A. in Journalism from the University of Iowa. She keeps an award-winning, hyper-local personal blog called Desperately Seeking Salem and teaches magazine writing at the University of Oregon.
Tenth Anniversary Celebration
On August 20, 2010 the group gathered with some of the founding members to celebrate the Chapter’s tenth anniversary!
