June 2019
ABBA-sociation
At the end of day one, delegates were
taken on a coach tour of Gothenburg city
centre, before being dropped off at events
venue Kajskjul 8 for a raucous dinner
party. We were treated to performances
from a children’s choir and musician
Timo Räisänen, who also gave us a live
demonstration on how to eat the rather
spiky langoustines (or Norwegian lobsters)
which were delivered to our tables on
enormous platters.
As the wine and food kept flowing, an
impromptu sing-off broke loose in the
venue, with each long table taking turns
to stand and belt out a national tune while
toasting their glasses. AEM was placed
on a table full of Scots, and subsequently
roped into a rendition of The Proclaimers
500 miles. You can watch a video of our
X-Factor worthy performance over on the
Conference News Twitter page, if you so
desire.
Once the singing was over, AAE
executive director Damian Hutt took to
the stage to begin the 2019 Association
Awards, recognising excellence in a number
of categories. Association of the Year went
to the European Society of Endocrinology,
which generated possibly more excitement
than the field of endocrinology has ever
Marketing
seen before.
If there was any doubt as to what
country we were in, the evening ended
with a thoroughly Swedish ABBA medley,
delivered by the returning children’s
choir. An entire room full of association
eventprofs joined voices to sing ‘Dancing
Queen’, then wandered back to their hotels
before day two of the event got under way.
“Associations think
that marketing doesn’t
apply to them”
On day two, Tamlynne Wiltons-Gurney of
South African agency idna touched upon
an important issue which seems to be a bit
of a missing link in the association world:
marketing. Many associations, she said,
do a poor job of selling the benefits they
provide to members, and are particularly
bad at speaking to a younger audience.
She commented: “In my experience,
associations don’t think that branding
and marketing principles apply to them.
They have this idea that membership is
separate to marketing and that they don’t
need to build a strong brand to compete.
I have heard things like ‘we don’t need
to do marketing, our members have been
15
members for years and will always be
members’.
“Many associations also don’t embrace
digital – they don’t have strategies and
think digital just means having a website
and a Facebook page. They depend on
death by newsletter and emails as the be-all
and end-all of their marketing efforts. And
again, they are not conceptualised to make
the most of its content or communicating
the right message. Instead, those
newsletters and e-mails become junk mail
fodder.
She added: “The survival of associations
depends on them getting with the times.
This is the information age - if you can’t
prove your value, you become irrelevant,
and that is exactly what associations can’t
afford to be.
“Associations are at their core driven
by content, but if they don’t know how
to properly drive that content through
strategic brand communication, the
membership loyalty they think they have
means nothing.”
“An entire room full of
association eventprofs
joined voiced to sing
‘Dancing Queen’”