I had a great time at this year’s Cause Marketing Forum Conference. Did you? Here’s what I liked about this year’s event. A few things I didn’t. And some suggestions for next year.
Then it will be your turn.
Hospital Corporate Development Summit. Now, I’m bias here, because I taught the session with two outstanding colleagues, Maureen Carlson and Phil McCarty, but I believe the program really has some great potential. Corporate development is big area of opportunity for hospitals, especially with cause marketing. We had over 30 hospitals participate in the summit this year. I hope David keeps the summit going.
Opening Reception. Boy, was it great to see everyone again. And a highlight of the reception was seeing my friend Michael Hoffman speak and show his favorite cause videos….until the dreaded moment that he showed the Pink Glove Dance (thankfully, Michael forewarned me). I threatened to pelt him with every roll from the bread basket on my table, but I somehow found restraint.
Halo Awards. There were two rounds of these on the full-day of the conference. I’m not sure how I feel about the Halo Awards. I definitely think we should be celebrating the top campaigns within our field, like those from Macy’s & Feeding America, but it seems like there are too many and it dilutes the impact of the award. Instead of profiling every winner, just profile the gold winner and acknowledge the rest.
Cause Marketing Meets Social Media. There was way too much talking by the presenters in this session. What was suppose to be a panel discussion devolved instead into long-winded speeches that left moderator Chris Noble with no time to pose questions from the audience.
This brings me to my main point on conference presentations: let’s follow TED’s lead and limit preso’s to 18 minutes or less. Just as 140 character on Twitter forces you to be clear, brief and to write actively, limiting presentations to 18 minutes would force people to get to their FRICKEN POINT. It would also allow for more presentations, questions and conversations. And that’s what conferences should be all about!!
I really like Chris Anderson’s perspective on The Art of the TED Talk.
Where’s the Nonprofit? I only saw the end of this session and Komen’s lame defense of their cause marketing pact with KFC. You already know how I feel about KFC/Komen. To hear how other attendees viewed it, check out these posts by Estrella Rosenberg and Megan Strand.
Cause Marketing Legal Issues. A great example of an outstanding talk at CMF10 was Ed Chansky’s talk on legal issues. People were eager to hear about this topic (kudos to David for fulfilling the needs of his audience) and Ed delivered. He had a speech and PowerPoint prepared but didn’t get through much of it. He focused on telling people what they absolutely needed to know and answering as many questions as possible. He gave me a great packet of info afterwards clearly explaining everything he had talked about, and pledged to electronically send it to everyone who gave him their business card. While Ed’s whole presentation was nearly an hour, it certainly didn’t feel like it. That’s a great presentation.
Cause Marketing’s Dirty Little Secret: Transparency. This was another great presentation that dovetailed nicely with Ed’s talk. Mike Lawrence from Cone showed that even if you got away with bending the law, a poorly executed cause marketing program would break your reputation.
Mike talked about transparency in his 3BL interview at the conference. Skip ahead to the 4:40 mark.
Overall, I thought the conference was great. I also think the experienced team of people David brought with him deserve a rounding applause for their work. These are the unsung champions of the event who were always friendly and helpful.
Now it’s your turn. What did you think?
Did you attend one of the other pre-conference seminars, Cause Marketing for Nonprofits or Cause Marketing for Businesses? What did you think? If you were a participant in the Hospital Corporate Development Summit, did you enjoy it as much as I did?
What did you think of CMF’s new Powerful Discussions Groups? There were a ton of different groups to choose from. I wish I had time to go to more. Which ones did you go to? Did you like them?
Finally, I want to thank David Hessekiel for founding Cause Marketing Forum and for putting on the conference for all these years. I imagine it’s rarely ever easy. Nothing worth doing ever is. But David brings a passion and fortitude to the conference that has made it a pleasure to attend every year I’ve gone. I’m glad he was rewarded with a capacity crowd at this year’s event!
It’s nice to see that sometimes people do get what they deserve.
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Thanks for the kind words Joe. A highlight for me was seeing you and the others in our cohort of Cause Marketing folks.
Overall, I had a great time. A big part of that was seeing friends and meeting some amazing people. This year I met wonderful people from big businesses, Target, Cheesecake Factory, Best Buy. Really interesting for me to learn more about how they are thinking about cause marketing inside the enterprise.
I agree on the awards — I was wondering, didn't those people already win something? The categories seemed to all blend together.
I also agree on the time speaking. No one wanted to tell the Nike guy to shut up, but someone should have. What he was talking about was interesting, but when you have a panel with 4 people on it you have to keep it brief.
For me, speaking at the dinner meant I only had a few minutes, so I was able to show some video and toss some food-for-thought tidbits. More presentations should be shorter, it focuses the mind.
Hope to see you again before next year.
Great review, Joe! I truly enjoyed the CMF conference this year and I honestly wish it was two full separate days, there were so many fantastic presenters that I was almost overwhelmed by my choices.
Love the suggestion that speakers are limited to 18 minutes and also heard someone say the entire conference should be focused on "lessons learned". It's fully awesome to hear about the programs folks are running, but it would be even more useful to hear what they learned and what they'd do differently next time.
I'd also like the opportunity to hear from more people like Chris Noble w/ Cause Media Group, who have been putting campaigns together for years and years across different sectors and different brands. While it's great to hear from brands themselves, they're much more singularly-focused and it strikes me that having that birds eye view might be useful as well (so more presentations like the one from Mike Lawrence from Cone).
And yeah, I do have to admit that the sunshine was calling my name during the HALO awards – that was the only time during the entire conferenced I stepped out because it ran a bit long. Let's just say I wasn't alone outside.
Great write up – great meeting you and look forward to more great CMF conferences in the future. Thanks to David for a job well done.
Good recap Joe. I generally find as I've gained experience that there fewer "ah-hah" moments during conference presentations and more excitement in side conversations & discussions with colleagues as Michael mentions. 100% agree on the need for presenters to stop spending so much time recapping their programs (we already know what you did, we saw it when it happened). Instead how about answering 3 questions: 1) What were your goals? 2) What really worked? 3) What would you do differently?
I wasn't able to attend any, but heard good things about the "Powerful Discussions" sessions and would love to see more of those. With so many options it was tough to choose only two. I'd suggest trimming the awards a bit (perhaps even go to video highlights of each winning campaign vs. having everyone walk up for the photos, etc) and also the afternoon closing session too, in order to free up some time for more smaller discussions.
I've got some more thoughts that I'll hope to post later this week on Cone's blog and look forward to continuing the conversation.
As a first time CMF attendee, I was definitely impressed by the 2 days and by all of the great people I was able to meet and network with – thanks so much David for organizing such a fabulous event! I found Scott and Dawn 's (Allison & Partners) session on the first day filled with some great information and tips about running a successful CM campaign from soup to nuts. It was also a great way to meet other corporations in the same space and hear how/what they were doing successfully.
Totally agree on the presentations – and on the panel comments made by others. Shorten the presos and highlight the "insights & learnings" rather than discussing the entire program. The point of a panel is to have an engaged conversation between all parties to share good/bad stories. Next time there needs to be more interaction and Q&A in order for the audience to take away helpful tips.
The awards were great – and of course well deserving by all recipients – but it was a long ceremony that may have been better served during the evening when there was no time constraint for moving into group sessions (which were extremely helpful and much more intimate than sitting in the huge conference room)
Looking forward to next year!
I appreciate the comment, Joe. I found the conference very interesting- especially the case studies, and your assessment will no doubt help David (who clearly worked his heart out on this) for the future.
You gave a great preso, Mike! But like Ed's it filled me with me with trepidation! But that's one way of getting a person's attention. Nice to finally meet you. Joe
As usual, Joe offers a great snapshot of the event. I was in the Cause Marketing 101 for Non-Profits and found it to be very useful but my overriding frustration was the recap of large, successful campaigns without getting into lessons learned for smaller or newer organizations to the CM field. As someone who works in the colon cancer community, very few companies (to date) have been eager to have their company aligned with that cause. I would love to hear how other, less sexy causes find appropriate partners.
The Halo Awards would be more interesting to segment them differently and showcase work from smaller groups who successfully implemented a campaign. I think Sun Chips, for example, did a great job but how hard is it to put that campaign together with large budgets and other resources.
I still find the Komen defense to ring hollow but I made my point on Twitter last week, so I promise to shut up about it now. Mike Lawrence did a great job in his Transparency session and it was a great reminder for us all to make it easy to find AND understand where the money is going.
The Powerful Conversations were interesting but it was hard to choose with so many choices. Having them available a couple more times would have been great since I cannot be the only one who would have done that over a couple of the large group sessions. David and his team made the event look easy and that is no small feat. Joe–every time I saw you, you were surrounded by your groupies, so I will have to be bolder next time we are at a conference together. I enjoyed meeting Chris Mann in person since he was kind enough to speak to me by phone last year.
This was my first time at the conference, and I have to say what really blew me away was the community. I called David H to figure out if the conf was for me and he gave me a very warm reception. He convinced me to go and I never looked back. In the days leading up to it, the genuine excitement on blogs and twitter was palpable. And at the conference itself, I came in knowing close to no one and left feeling connected, with new friends and a community of people who really want to make a difference. And even David followed through by meeting me at the conference when he had some many people to talk to. For all that I'm grateful.
As for the conference content – everything was great. My only suggestions would be:
1. Agree on 18 min or some similar framework.
2. Spend some time on smaller orgs. As much as it's great that Nike, Macy's, Pepsi, Feeding America, and Komen can contribute so much, the lessons learned are not super applicable to most mortals.
3. Provide more info in the "powerful discussions" to help make decisions. Even intended audience would be helpful… since there are nonprofits, companies, and agencies in attendance.
4. Organize the roster by organization.
Hope this is helpful!
Great suggestions, Ian! It was great to meet you.
As always Joe – your comments are spot on. As a first-timer, I really enjoyed the conference and had a great time meeting everyone. The best session I attended was the Activation Strategies discussion led by Karen White, Komen – BUT it wasn't because of what Karen said, it was because she let others contribute. I learned more from the stories shared by the group than I did in any presentation.
I also agree with Megan's comment above – I think it would be great to hear from Chris regarding his experience putting together various campaigns.
Thanks for the recap and for introing me around to the CMF veterans!
Thanks, Mary. Great points. A key part of CMF's success is keeping first-timers like you coming back!
[...] Waters had 2 great posts. His first, a Review of Cause Marketing Forum Conference. The second, Raising Cause Marketing, more of a lessons learned and [...]