Here at BatesMeron, we work closely with several professional associations, such as the American Academy of Esthetic Dentistry (AAED), the American Osteopathic Association (AOA), the American Prosthodontic Society (APS) and the International Society of Appraisers (ISA). We partner with these associations to promote their membership initiatives, ongoing campaigns and annual meetings.
If you’ve ever been handed a program at a meeting or conference, you’re familiar with at least some of the materials we create for our association clients. However, you might not be aware of everything else that goes into promoting an annual meeting—or that we sometimes start working on the next year’s meeting before the current year’s meeting even rolls around. So here’s a short run-through of the lifecycle of one of these promotional projects, from start to meeting.
We often collaborate with the association’s internal team to create a theme for the annual meetings. This generates excitement and recognition amongst the association’s members about the location and meeting events. We then create a design to represent the theme and infuse it into a suite of collateral ranging from PowerPoint templates to meeting final programs—and all of the exciting materials in between.
We’re careful to create designs that can go the distance on the various marketing pieces needed to support and promote the big event. This creates a consistent, memorable message that sends members racing to register. Says Rachel Walsh of Sentergroup, an association management firm that works with many of the associations mentioned above, “Becka and her team consistently deliver innovative event collateral for our meetings, from websites to programs. Creating brands that work seamlessly throughout our marketing campaigns is their specialty.”
We’re currently developing the materials to promote the AAED Annual Meeting. AAED and Sentergroup are a joy to work with, and they tell us they really believe in the process too, knowing that BatesMeron will make their meeting stand out in a sea of options with collateral that will energize the masses.
We started the process by creating an initial cover design and incorporated that into an advance program, which highlighted the events that would be offered at the annual meeting. Next, we created a custom eblast header for them get some buzz flowing amongst their contacts. This was followed up with a custom PowerPoint template for their meeting speakers to use—creating a cohesive brand image at the meeting.
Again, it’s all about getting people excited about the meeting and reinforcing the look and messaging of the previous pieces. The last step in this process will be to design a final program, which will showcase everything that AAED has been doing all year to make their annual meeting memorable for their attendees.
This process has many steps from start to finish, but with BatesMeron’s help, associations are able to sit back and relax while reaping the benefits of a well thought out, well-designed marketing campaign that their attendees will soon not forget.
Ask us how you can make your event special—we’d love to show you samples of what we’ve done.