Blog o' RAMA

Golisano Shows His Charitable Side at RAMA Event

Hello everyone,

To those of you who weren't there, you won't believe what happened at our event today yesterday. As you know, RAMA chooses a charity for each event, and we donate $1 for every person who attends.  Our charity for this event was Rotary Camp Onseyawa.

Well, we were one-upped in a big way by our presenter,Tom Golisano. He raised $3,000 auctioning off an autographed Ryan Miller jersey, and $5,000 by offering a game and dinner for 8 people in his personal suite at a Sabres game. There were 2 representatives from the charity at the event, and they were ecstatic!

Tom's talk was great. I loved the way he used his business savvy to make the changes needed to bring the franchise around, and it is a great example of how to turn a business around.

Thanks to everyone who worked on this event to bring it to fruition. I am very proud of how RAMA was represented today.

Welcome new RAMA Members!

RAMA (Rochester Chapter, American Marketing Association), welcomes our new members for October.  We are very fortunate to have a strong professional and student membership base that is growing.  If you are not a member, why not?  You can join AMA and RAMA on the web.

Welcome to our new Professional members:
Joan Aiello
Alice Witherow
Jeannine Rossignol
Laurie Dwyer
Julia Price

Welcome to our new Student members:
William Brosi
Nicholas Angeline
David Koster
Revay Wilson
Brian Agro

If you want to learn more about membership in RAMA please email Barb Cote who can provide more information.

How Does Diversity Impact Your Marketing Plans?

Recently my employer, Eastman Kodak Company , hosted Luke Visconti, one of the founders of DiversityInc.  Quoting from the website, "DiversityInc's mission is to bring education and clarity to the business benefits of diversity."  Kodak has been active in their thinking about diversity for over ten years now, and for good reason.
As Luke presented, I made a few notes that you might find interesting as marketers.  One of his assertions is that "mainstream marketing" is dying.  Companies who are most successful today have adapted to understand the needs of diverse consumers, while other companies are stuck in the past, creating products that cater to the traditional "mainstream" market which are not of interest to the fastest growing ethnic groups in the U.S.

Did you know that children in our country are already five times more racially diverse than our population who is over 70 years of age?  Did you know that the incidence of families in the U.S. that are multi-racial have increased significantly over the past ten years?

I'm amazed at how quickly this transformation is taking place.  I had been sensitized to this transformation a few years ago, and this recent update by Luke showed I've been out of the loop and not paying enough attention to this.

What is your business doing to recognize and adjust as the U.S. becomes more diverse?

Hear Ye! Hear Ye! Announcing the 2007-2008 RAMA Board of Directors

The Rochester Chapter, American Marketing Association (RAMA) is fortunate to have great volunteers willing to give their time to advance the stature of marketing in Upstate New York.  As incoming President I present to you with great pride the incoming Board of Directors for the 2007 - 2008 year:

President: Denis Caysinger - Eastman Kodak Co.

President Elect:  Dawn McWilliams - William E. Simon School of Business

Secretary:  Rebecca Menendez - Wall Street Financial Group

Treasurer:  Tom Agnello - Deloitte & Touche

Past President:  John Richelsen - Eric Mower & Associates

Director Membership:  Barb Cote - Sigma Marketing

Director Programming:  Jennifer Young - Young Ideas

Director Venues & Hospitality:  Katharine McMahon - StormFrog

Director Public Relations:  D-D Flannery - Flannery PR

Director Web Communications:  Yvonne DiVita - WME Books

Director Direct Marketing SIG:  Jennifer Favata - Butler Till

Director Non-Profit SIG:  Jennifer Bacci - Hillside Family of Agencies

Director Awards:  Suzanne Seldes - Rochester Business Journal

Director Collegiate Relations:  Bill Ward - Alfred University

Please join me in congratulating these terrific people on their election to our Board of Directors.

Microsoft & Yahoo! A match made in ????

At RAMA we want to be more attentive to what is going on not only in Rochester, but the marketing world in general.  This potential deal for Microsoft to buy Yahoo! looks very interesting to me. 

Microsoft is clearly watching Google increase their reach through acquisitions such as DoubleClick, realizing they are getting left behind.  Up until now Microsoft has tended to "grow" their internet search capabilities inside the organization, without great success.  I would guess Microsoft is a distant number 3 in the search engine business behind Google and Yahoo!.  I would also think that Microsoft is worried about being outdone in the area of advertising revenue with the Google / DoubleClick merger when that happens.

I'll bet that Microsoft deciding to go after Yahoo! was a gut-wrenching decision for Bill Gates and company. Do you agree with me?  Let's get a dialog started on this.

We're Back!

Back from the AMA Leadership Summit, Mission Possible.  What a great experience! 
The theme, Mission Possible, was very appropriate and left us all very energized about how to make RAMA (Rochester Chapter, American Marketing Association) an even better chapter in 2007-2008. 

As incoming President of RAMA, I had the pleasure of traveling to Chicago with five RAMA Board Members, Dawn McWilliams, D-D Flannery, Katharine McMahon, Yvonne DiVita, and Bill Ward.
Our team learned a lot about developing and putting on winning programs, ways to improve our communications, and we networked with other chapter leaders to find out what has been successful for them, and what we should avoid. 
The Summit was also a great opportunity for the Board members to learn more about each other, and how we can work more effectively.

RAMA is very fortunate to have such committed volunteers, and I am looking forward to working with them in 2007-2008.

Taking Time to Learn

Ever think you're too busy to learn?  In these days of instant messaging, work pressures, and hectic schedules it is easy to put aside our discipline to learn.

As incoming President of RAMA (Rochester Chapter, American Marketing Association), I'm excited to be taking time this upcoming weekend with some of my fellow board members to learn. AMA is hosting the annual Leadership Summit in Chicago this weekend, which is a gathering of leaders from the 75 AMA chapters in North America.  RAMA is one of the best chapters in North America, and we are taking six board members to this year's Summit to get even better!

The experience is always energizing, and I'll report back next week on the Summit, and how RAMA is going to be better next year because we took time to learn.

When did you last carve out some dedicated time to learn?

Go Red for the American Heart Association!

On Thursday January 25 RAMA (Rochester Chapter, American Marketing Association) was fortunate to have representatives from the American Heart Association come and talk to us about their Go Red for Women campaign.  Talk about a marketing success story!    The campaign is designed to raise awareness with women (and men) about the risks women have for heart disease.  In just three short years this campaign has increased awareness of the problem among U.S. women four-fold!

I was one of about 90 attendees who learned that heart disease is the number 1 killer of U.S. women.

February 2, 2007 is national Go Red for Women Day.  Many landmarks around the country will be lit up in red light to mark this important day.  There will also be many companies nationally who will encourage their employees to wear red that day.

Let's light up Rochester in red, and recognize this important cause!

Who wants to do a survey like this?

Here at RAMA (Rochester Chapter, American Marketing Association) we are always looking for innovations in marketing.  I just read about an interesting new way to conduct surveys - via cell phone.

Market Tools, a market research supplier, announced that they are now able to conduct surveys with consumers via the consumer's cell phone. They go on to say that Warner Brothers has used this technology to survey moviegoers.

Being in the research business, this got my gears turning. Who pays for the cell airtime?  Who pays for the text messages flying back and forth?  How do you get people to agree to do this?

After my initial surprise, I started thinking differently. Who is into text messaging?  Mostly people  younger than me. This could be a great way to connect with consumers under 25 years of age.

Just goes to show that world moves fast, and there are lots of opportunities in the white space to commercialize products based on cell phone technology.

What do you think about this?

Mplanet was boss!

I was fortunate to be able to attend the Mplanet conference in Orlando, and it was one of the best conferences I've ever been to!  The speakers were top notch.  As President-Elect of the Rochester Chapter, American Marketing Association (RAMA), I had several motivations for attending.  First, to learn about the best-in-class marketing and innovation that is being practices, and second, to network.  I wasn't disappointed.

The meeting was kicked off by Dennis Dunlap, CEO of AMA.  Dennis set the stage for the event, explaining that they had some great speakers for us.  Dennis was