PCC-Meeting-Notes-Oct-2013

PCC Meeting Notes

October 4-6, 2013

IH Update

Chapter Growth Initiative– Nancy Costopulos, Christopher Barnes, Ric Sweeney

AMA’s primary audience is a marketer with 5-15 years of experience at small-to-medium-sized companies.
Growth Initiative Research Methodology:
Online bulletin boards open for 3 days.
Recruited members from professional chapters of a variety of sizes.
“Migrated” group started out engaged in either the chapter or national and then migrated to be more engaged in the other.
Research Findings:
Chapters and AMA Global serve different purposes:
Members don’t see chapters as a knowledge resource. This is how they see AMA Global. Members want chapters for networking and social events. Educational/learning content will still remain an important way to bring people together locally where they can network. Networking with purpose.
Both chapters and national need to tell both sides of the story – we sell each other. National organizations give local chapters legitimacy.
AMA value prop for members is too generic:
It needs to be more emotive – what’s in it for me. It should encapsulate that people want to be part of the marketing community, they want idea networking, and they want education.
Proposed value prop rewrite will go before OCOB. One possibleiteration is:The American Marketing Association is a global marketing community whose members are engaged by forward-thinking networking opportunities as well as a wealth of educational and best practice resources for continual professional growth.
AMA Global need to add a question to membership registration asking what someone needs/wants from the AMA. This would need to be asked again later todetermine if needs/wants are being met. Could then drive the answers down to the chapter level.
1st year members strongly dislike expenses beyond membership fees.
What do chapters do with this information? It could be too costly for chapters to make all local programs free for members, but some less-costly options could be to:
give each member get one free program with their membership
make happy-hours free for members
offer a free event to those who are nearing renewal and haven’t engaged for a while
Need to better sell companies on the value of the AMA to them:
How do we best convince companies that paying for an employee’s membership benefits the company?
Does national arm prospects/members with tools they can use with their management?
Does national arm chapters with tools to sell directly to companies?
Does national reach out to companies directly?
Group Membership sell sheet is an example of communications focused on a company. We also have collected best practices from chapters that have successfully recruited many group memberships.
The research has allowed the AMA to identify the following key priorities:
Enhance chapter communication
Strengthen value proposition
Develop needs based guidance process
Use high touch personalization
Create more engagement opportunities
Improve marcom
Chapter Task Forceplan:
Now: Christine Mathers is identifying 5-6 former past-presidents from highly-successful chapters who are highly-engaged. Already confirmed: Ann Kostopanagiotou – Chicago, Robin Toombs – Houston, Amy Quigley – Boston.
Late October: AMA Global will provide this group with the Growth Initiative research and have an in-person meeting in Chicago.
November: Once the task force begins to develop some ideas, AMA Global will hold Chapter Chatsconference callswith additional chapter leaders to further ideate.
Late December: Pilot plan will be finalized and chapter support materials defined to be sharedwith chapters at Regional Retreats.

Councils – Carol Arnold

Boardmeeting participation: Board really benefits from knowing what the councils are doing getting their perspectives. Council leaders will meeting during board meeting October 10 to provide input on two important topics:
What should AMA be in 5-10 years, and how can we get there?
How can AMA increase its relevance in the marketplace?
Marketing Practitioner Council:AMA already has a council for academics and one for researchers, but none for general marketing practitioners, so we are developing a newMarketing Practitioner Council to advise on this segment.
Former PCC members are engaging in other areas of the AMA:
Kevin is on the Collegiate Chapters Council
Stacy is on the Finance Committee
Kevin and Amy are on the Non-Profit Conference Committee

Next Steps (Lori Janson, All PCC)

By October 9, PCC to send Lori answers to Board Meeting questions listed above.

Website Launch Plan – Carol Arnold

Now: Currently migrating content into the new site.
Mid-December: Will launch a test environment for the new campaign in December 15. Would like chapter leaders to test it out and give feedback on particular aspects.
Mid: January Will officially launch the Website to the public January 17.

Chapter Bylaws Guidance – Megan Backes

AMA Global has created a template for Chapter Bylaws and will be developing some guidelines to help chapters update their current bylaws to make them more sound.

Fall Membership Acquisition Campaign – Megan Backes

Research of previous campaigns shows that direct promotion from chapters returns the greatest results, so the Fall 2013 Campaign is being refocused on this. The referral-based campaign will allow chapters to earn rewards by recruiting certain numbers of members.

Membership Team

Chapter Updates

PCC Reps need parameters around what they should spend more of their time on:
Assisting struggling chapters: Are there certain chapters, such of those in bigger markets, who the PCC should more time mentoring than others? Often need to assess on a case-by-case basis.
Assisting good/great chapters: PCC calls all chapters at the beginning of the chapter and provide resources like conference calls and CR tools for chapters throughout the year. It might also be helpful to call good/great chapters mid-year to provide an additional touch-point and gather highlights for Regional Retreats.
Repeat Watch/Intervention Chapters: Akron/Canton, Central Illinois, Central Florida, New York Capital Region, Orange County, South Florida, Southeast New England.
Notable Chapters:
Los Angeles – They are moving in a positive direction and the strategic planning facilitation that Brian provided seems to be paying off.
Silicon Valley – Not on the watch/intervention list, but we are still trying to set up a conference call with the Pres. and Ex. Dir. because President has been in that role for 3 years, there is no Pres-Elect, and the Ex. Dir. takes on most of the board work for the chapter.
Tulsa – They are celebrating a milestone anniversary and Carol will attend their event this fall. The PCC signed a birthday card for them.
Utah – They are quite unengaged with IH and not meeting a lot of criteria. Is the business model still working? Might need to reach out to Christian to try to get him to help.

Next Steps (Katherine Brockman, PCC Membership Team)

By October 31, Katherine to reach out to founding president Christian Rytting about Utah’s difficulties if they haven’t engaged more and met most criteria.
By November 15, PCC Membership Team to email good/great (ie – not watch/intervention) chapters to check-in and gather highlights to give to Brian for possible use at Regional Retreats.
By January PCC Conference Call, PCC Membership Team to develop some criteria for how to engage with different types of chapters.

Conference Calls

Nearly half of chapter presidents said they would like to have regular conference calls with other chapter presidents. Amy helped start the process to facilitate calls between smaller groups of like-sized chapters.
Proposed Virtual Roundtable Call schedule:
July – CEA Submittal – Katherine – done
October – Don’t Freak Out! What to do if a Board Member Leaves – Angela
November – Sponsorships – April
January – Board Recruitment – Kevin
March – When to Hire Help/And ED – Brian
April – Summit Prep – Amy
June – Technology/Improving Legacy Building – Will

Chapter Operating Standards Update

PCC recommends thatPresident and Pres-Elect terms be limited to two years per position.
PCC recommends that chapters be required to submit monthly financials.

Next Steps (Megan Backes)

By November 15, Megan to update Chapter Officers’ Guide with new operating standards and begin communicating to chapters.

Chapter Engagement– Karen Stone

Research Plan

Created a framework for dividing chapters and determining which to study. Categories and study chapters are:
Sustained Engagement – Houston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Austin, Lincoln
Fairly Engaged – Atlanta, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Tampa Bay, Minnesota
Newly Engaged – Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia
Unengaged – New York, Las Vegas, Milwaukee
Former PCC members Kevin Hohnbaum, Tim Sheridan and Pat Frew have volunteered to interview chapters.
Have already interviewed Presidents and Immediate Past Presidents at 6 chaptersacross the categories.
Questions revolve around chapters engaging with AMA Global and the PCC – how are they connecting, are they using resources and what do they want, what are their perceptions, why are they personally involved, etc.
Will share the research results back out with study chapters once it is complete.

Initial Feedback

Chapter leaders can be overwhelmed by the number of resources available. They are asking for resources that already exist, so we might not be marketing these resources in the right way. How do we get them to know about these resources, help them navigate through everything, and prioritize what to focus on?
There is some confusion on what the Chapter Officers’ Guide is and how they should be using it. Should we rename and rebrand it?

Engagement Leadership Skill Building

Note: See Regional Retreats section for notes and next steps.

Recommended Resources

Jennifer Schultz’s team has completed the Sponsorship section, is currently working on the Communications and Membership sections, will do the Programming section next, and finallytackle the Leadership section.
Goal is to have all sections complete in January.
Jennifer will be able to provide good insights into how various national volunteers were to work with.

Next Steps (Megan Backes)

By February 28, Megan to have all Recommended Resources posted on CR and promoted to chapters.

Awards Toolkit– Karen Stone

Lincoln volunteer Brooke Rogers will take over management of the project from where Atlanta’s Jennifer Beech left off. Steve Kim of British Columbia will assist.
PCC Recommendations:
Don’t want it named “In a Box” or structured like this with fundamentals and accelerators. It is more of a how-to guide.
Should remain a word document.
Once complete, it will be included under Programming Recommended Resources section of CR.

Next Steps (Karen Stone, Angela Brutsche, April Schmaltz and Will Krieger)

By October 31, Angela, April and Will to review initial Awards Toolkit draft and provide feedback to Karen S.
By November 15, Karen S to provide guidance to Brooke and recommend January as a potential goal for completion of Awards Toolkit.

SIGsToolkit – Lori Janson

There is currently no national volunteer managing this project.
PCC Recommendations:
Don’t want it named “In a Box.”
There is some good content, but it needs to be taken out of PPT form.
Some of the content might need to be tweaked slightly as well.
Once complete, it will be included under a Recommended Resources section of CR.

Next Steps (Lori Janson, Megan Backes, All PCC)

By October 15, Megan to have Georgia Knapp to put this in a Word document form to send to Lori.
By October 31, Lori to reach out to Tom Dennis to share PCC appreciation for his workand inform him that we are using the content in the SIGs Toolkit.
By October 31, Lori to ask Paul Stark to serve as a national volunteer to review the SIGs Toolkit content and provide related sample documents.
By November 30, Lori to send updated SIGs Toolkit to PCC for review.
By January PCC Conference Call, PCC to provide feedback to Lori on updated SIGs Toolkit.

Leadership Skill Building Webcasts – Will Krieger

Plan is to record past Leadership Skill Building presentations as webcasts using ReadyTalk soon. There won’t be a live audience.
Chapter leaders will only be able to access the webcasts from the Chapter Resources site, which keeps this a chapter leader benefit.
If presenters are interested in in-person chapter speaking opportunities, their contact info can be listed next to the webcastson the Chapter Resources site:
Once Leadership Skill Building presentations are recorded, then PCC can begin identifying Ted Talks to add to the chapter leader webcast resource bank.

Next Steps (Will Krieger, Megan Backes)

By Leadership Summit, Will and Megan to record and post all Leadership Skill Building webcasts on CR.

Leadership Summit– Colleen Chappell, Kim Verros

Research

Should we create a survey that goes in the market earlier to guide programming decisions? Or could past pre-surveys be aggregated to give us the information we want instead of doing another survey?
Note: see additional notes and next steps under Survey Fatigue section.

Branding

PPT template and email template are complete.
Will be working on the Website, social media and opening video.
Developing an infographic on the value of Leadership Summit and a pre-Summit teaser video.