54th Annual St. Louis AMA Conference & Agency Crawl Recap

By: Kathryn Todd
On Friday, Feburary 20th, students from UMSL’s marketing club joined St. Louis marketing professionals at the American Marketing Association’s St. Louis chapter’s annual conference. Students have been working on the AMA’s Case Competition and plan to attend the Collegiate Case Conference in March. This organization is America’s largest marketing associations, and is a great way to make connections, gain experience and opportunity, and receive education and training.
Students arrived at the St. Louis zoo where they heard from multiple marketing professionals. Carlos Gil, digital marketing executive at Save a Lot, spoke on “Digital Marketing in 2015” showed how to connect solutions and needs and influencing people. Gil spoke on the importance of being social vs. being on social media and being “all in” on social media involvement.  Scott Crothers of Kinetic presented on “Localization and Your Global Marketing Content”, and highlighted the importance of using translators. In a world where 15% of languages account for 92% of the world’s GDP, it is important to invest in a translator while avoiding hidden costs. A summary of the AMA’s round table gave job seekers advice including showing results in resumes and positioning yourself by being open to experiences. Pat Gibbons of Walker presented “Roadmap to 2020” which highlighted his skills as a customer experience consultant. Gibbons stated the importance of having a personalized, proactive, seamless experience without being too “creepy”. This presentation was interactive and also featured clips from ABC’s “Modern Family”. Keynote Speaker David Levitt, VP Marketing at Hostess Brands, presented “The Hostess Story – Sweetest Comeback Ever”. After the company’s bankruptcy, Leavitt and colleagues had the opportunity to reenter the market. In a very short amount of time, Hostess launched a “show me your cake face” campaign and countdown to relaunch. This  campaign resulted in a 185% increase in sales.
After a networking lunch, attendees had the opportunity to attend an “Ad Agency Crawl” in midtown. Toky (toky.com) emphasized the statement “logic is beautiful” by basing all their projects on research and logic. Owner Eric Thoelke told visitors “good creatives are omnivores: they want to feed their minds constantly”. Atomic Dust, a branding, interactive, and marketing agency, was also featured in this program. Owners noted the difference between experience and expertise. The final stop on this crawl was at CIC St. Louis (http://stl.cic.us/), a coworking and entrepreneurial community. Hearing from entrepreneurs and touring the space gave attendees information on the challenges in starting a business as well as the many opportunities in the St. Louis Community. This space hosts “Thursdays @ Venture Café (http://vencaf.org/venture-cafe-st-louis-2/)” and T-REX is another incubator which hosts evens fostering technology and entrepreneurship locally.
Check out pictures below from the conference: