Boston Marketing Club Launch

As Immediate Past President of the Boston Chapter of the American Marketing Association I was happy to attend the inaugural event of the Boston Marketing Club, a networking event produced by the AMA Boston Chapter on a monthly basis. Not your typical networking event, the Boston Marketing Club aims to combine a networking atmosphere with some serious marketing thinking. Rather than a speaker talking to the crowd, we wanted to have the crowd talk to each other and us.

In between sharing business cards and a drink at Flat Top Johnny's at Kendall Square in Cambridge tonight, the attendees were asked two questions.

1) Would you ban all alcohol advertising?
2) Have you ever worked for a company in marketing, where you would not buy the company's products and services for yourself, family or company?

We had a number of volunteers called Connectors, with clipboards, gather small groups of attendees together and ask everyone in the room the two questions; the Connectors facilitated discussion about the questions. After everyone had been asked the two questions, we added up the results and Steve Halling, the President of the chapter read them out to the room.

On this particular night 17% voted yes to ban advertising, and 83% no.

While 60% of people said they had worked for companies where they would not buy the company's products and 40% said no.

We had a packed event with lots of people; I really enjoyed meeting everyone, thanks to all the volunteers who helped put the event together!

This picture is of Andrea Caldwell, the chapter's office manager with Donnie Baker the chapter's VP of Nonprofit SIG and Interim VP of Programming. Donnie was gracious enough to conduct an interview with me for my blog a while ago. He now works in marketing for the Appalachian Mountain Club