Board Chair's Point of View

A View fom the NorCalBMA Board's Chair
April 2007 Letter

Dear BMA Members and Colleagues,
The April 25th luncheon meeting of BMA will be an important event.

First, we are very excited that Diane Quinlisk will be joining us from Kodak Corporation in Rochester, New York. Diane is a well-known speaker on the topic of corporate transformation. If you are seeking new perspectives on how to accomplish change within your company, Diane will be a rich resource to tap for information gained from global experience.

There is another reason I urge you to attend this event.. I’ll be presenting the slate of nominees for the 2007 – 2008 Northern California Board of Directors. This is the team that will lead BMA and determine the programs and policies that will shape the organization over the next year.

Many of you may not know the Board members. We actually take that as a compliment, because it means that the organization is running smoothly and meeting your needs. Other times, we hear from members and nonmembers with comments on meetings, our communications, and recommendations for speakers and topics.

There are some things you should know about your Board of Directors. The first is that this is a dedicated group of marketing professionals who are at the top of their careers. They are all experienced, successful professionals who want to make their profession and B2B marketing even better than it is today, and are committed to continuing the NorCal BMA tradition of excellence. (Take a look at the web page http://norcalbma.org/aboutus/board_html and read the biographies of our current board members.)

Our local organization has done an outstanding job of communicating with members and colleagues alike. Our chapter hosts seven meetings a month: a luncheon and six Roundtables, dedicated to specific topics – PR and publicity, E-marketing, international marketing, design, career development, and events and promotions.

The Roundtables are a great value to members and the topics have been tremendously successful. Each RT manager creates a monthly program and hosts the meetings. Take time to attend and meet the managers: Laurie Beasley, Laura Ceccato, Nancy Coleman, Carol Kantor, Susanne Khawand, and Katherine Van Diepen.

The Board team that supports these events consists of Carole Coleman, communications VP and the voice of BMA in our documents; George Szymkiewicz, web director, and the vision of BMA; Janice Wojdula, Board Secretary and the designer of our printed documents; Michele Kinman, PR and publicity director; and Jeff Shelton, the BMA executive administrator.

Consider that these five people screen virtually every event that is hosted and promoted by BMA, and they disseminate it to the membership, colleagues, other organizations and in the media every month to schedule and like clockwork! That is no easy task.

Every month, when you attend a luncheon, another team is in place for you. Vipul Chitalia, president, has been working nonstop to bring in speakers. whose expertise is sufficiently strategic to address our senior membership, and who at the same time off real solutions that you can implement in your office today.

Mike Tubbs, BMA’s facility director, coordinates all the venue details so that the meetings run smoothly. Mike works with David’s Banquet Facility to prepare and decorate the meeting room; select a menu based on feedback from our survey forms; hang banners and signs; prepare the audio-visual and oversee everything from seating to service during the meeting. Mike arrives at David’s by 11:00 am every month, and is the last person to leave—at about 3:00 pm. He consistently shows real dedication to assuring each of you has a pleasant meeting experience.

Jeff Shelton is always at the front desk checking in attendees and handling dozens of tasks necessary for sponsors and companies looking to have an extra presence at the meeting.

The unseen Board members are Regina Munroe, our VP, finance and Janice Wojdula, Board Secretary. As Board Secretary, Janice is essential to keeping the record of our monthly Board meetings and ensuring that we are following association by-laws in running BMA responsibly and successfully.

Although BMA is a not-for-profit association, revenue growth is essential to our ability to offer you programs, purchase outside services necessary to running the organization, and carrying out that most routine task…filing annual taxes!

As chairperson, it is my privilege to work with professionals who take ownership of tasks and view their roles as serving others while adding value to business-to-business marketing.

Best of all, some of these folks are returning to next year’s board of directors. Together with a new group of fresh talent full of enthusiasm, BMA will continue to bring you programs designed to help you work better, learn more, and build networks for success.

Kind regards,
Barbara Kalkis
Chair
Northern California Chapter
Business Marketing Association

Ron Wilson personalized this point by stating that journalists must be relevant to readers because while media forms come and go quickly, journalists remain a constant in delivering news.  

Craig Matsumoto stated that in some cases news sources were now bloggers and, therefore, competitors to journalists.  In some cases, the emergence of bloggers has even eroded the number of news sources for journalists as bloggers now write the news themselves, instead of calling it in to their contacts.  Craig wondered if readers care where their news comes from.  

According to a survey I did, the answer was a resounding ‘yes’.  Industry executives and engineers all believed in the value of industry media and industry journalists in particular.  They saw journalists filling four distinct roles:

1. Aggregators of news
2. Reporters of news
3. Filters of news, seeking what is relevant, meaningful and worthy of reading
4. Credibility factors in delivering news that is trustworthy

A few audience members felt that access to ‘raw news’ offered by bloggers was refreshing because it was untouched by corporate review hands. These folks also felt that bloggers presented an unbiased opinion and that it was up to the reader to evaluate the credibility of news on their own.  Others felt that this made bloggers less credible, and the concept of credibility remained a lingering doubt in the minds of the majority of attendees.  

The VITA (www.vita.com) audience strongly voiced that fact that they liked the fact that news was reviewed, researched for accuracy and veracity and could therefore be trusted.  In summary on this topic, panelists and participants agreed that the way news is disseminated and accessed has changed forever because of the web.

Chris Ciufo from VMENow (www.vmenow.com) summarized the changes by declaring that “The consumer now chooses the way he/she got news,  and it is up to the publisher to ensure that readers got the news they wanted by using a variety of methods to deliver it.”

Rich Nass took this point one step further by adding that CMP routinely directed readers to other portals, sites and publications both inside and outside of the CMP Media family, even directing readers to competitive websites, because they know that by being a source of valuable information, engineers will return to their site again and again as a source of information.

Rich’s comments included CMP’s view of associations as being complementary news sources rather than competitors.  Ray Alderman, head of VITA, concurred saying that news dissemination, conferences and their close relationships with publications provided a valuable service to member companies who were seeking a variety of avenues to disseminate news.

While the relationship is certainly complementary, my own sense is that associations and consortia will become stronger voices for and about their membership and step into the roles of vetting news and ensuring its credibility as the number of traditional B2B journalists evaporates.  Industry organizations will also provide traditional media and companies with the holy grail of prospective customers known as sales leads.

Dave Lesser took the middle road, saying “With the plethora of options offered off- and online, agencies must first help clients outline their marketing goals and then chose the best channel for reaching customers through an integrated program.”

ROI was a sticking point in both sessions. One Bus Board audience member said he wanted to know the ROI on his expenditures on the web before committing dollars. Another declared that this wasn’t possible because one could not measure the value of brand, image, value, or overall perception of the reader looking at an ad, whether in print or online.  This opinion mirrored the panel in reiterating that industry purchasers researched, analyzed and reviewed options before selecting and purchasing electronics.  Especially in the B&B industry where life cycles are 12 years and product development times are 2 years or longer.

Another hot subject that could not be resolved was the business model for ensuring the healthy future of the industry media.  Companies must play a part in the success of the very publications that observe and report on the news of the industry, giving both an outlet and a look into the industry’s overall health. Increasingly, we are seeing business models that call on companies to pay for postings of their news releases.

Peggy Aycinena warned, “News must be vetted, but not controlled by companies”. Picking up on the consumer-magazine-like character of her website, Peggy added that, “News needed to be wrapped in a human envelope.”

The one area that everyone agreed upon was the value of the company website. As Dave Lesser said, "The company website is the center of the universe." Nurturing the site and its content was essential to the success of any company.

The news release still holds value as the premier corporate document.  Key words, once the domain of PR professionals and wire services, are now crucial marketing tools as search engine optimization and search engine marketing flourish.  Careful selection of keywords translated into leads, clicks through to micrcosites and landing pages, and position on search engines such as Google and Yahoo!.

The bottom line in succeeding in web marketing?  Rich Nass recommended partnering with an expert on the web and leverage that expertise. Dave Lesser suggested getting listed on industry sites such as Thomas Register and Global Spec to draw leads.  Chris Ciufo reiterated the need for using keywords and microsites to communicate.  Barbara Kalkis recommended news releases, contributed articles and viewpoints that could be disseminated worldwide to build the company’s role as an industry visionary.

Debra Vogler cautioned BMA attendees to not be bound by text, but to look at the possibilities of video in communicating messages. “Video will not replace text - it's complementary,” she stated. “There are things you can do with video you can't do with text. You can cover a lot of material in a very short period of time because a picture is worth a thousand words.”

Debra continued, saying, “We will start to see specialists. For example, there are some people who can write ‘funny’ or are good storytellers; they will be good at blogging. Others who can report a story quickly and coherently will have a spot, and those who love to do video will have their day. (And so on.) There will be many opportunities for a lot of people and some will find more than one niche.”

Debra viewed video as a still untapped area of the web and urged journalists and marketers to be as comfortable in front of a camera as they are behind a keyboard.

What conclusions can be drawn from these discussions? I think there are several points.

• News must be credible. Regardless of the source or the news channel, information must have value and relevance to readers.
• News sources must be credible.  If someone assumes the task of being a journalist or commentator for the public, they must be objective and trustworthy, or face the wrath of the public.
  
• Video communications will continue to grab greater web share in web reporting.
• A successful B2B news business model has yet to be defined.  If we want our companies to market online via third-party sources, we need a template that allows everyone to make money and be successful at it.
• Commonly held values and beliefs will crumble as bloggers, citizen journalists and traditional journalists all report news on the web and build idea communities.  “Belief clusters”  -- small groups that share common interests and views – will proliferate.  Reaching these groups will be more difficult.
  
• In B2B marketing, I believe the “journalist” – regardless of the title or form that person takes  --  will be the key to bringing sense and consensus among readers.