Just when you think the industry is walking a little taller, our chins a bit higher, I get this example of marketing maroonery in my email – sent from a doctor, by the way. And we wonder why our giveaways are being outlawed…um, maybe there are more useful things we can provide doctors for their practice – the bar has been set fairly low.
*My thanks to Bugs Bunny and Bruce Grant for providing me a snappy title.
I’ve gotten invited to speak a fair amount over the years.  The deal was, I put on a great, educational presentation (no pimping One Eleven or our stuff) and the conference folks comped my attendance fee as well as expenses. Somewhere along the line, someone blew it for all of us and insisted on selling instead of educating in their presentation – from then on, vendors were put in the position to pony up “sponsorships” or worse, a half-ass booth with crappy brochures – and then the vendor was allowed to speak.
I got another one of these “invites” this morning:
Hey Janet,
Hope all is well. You and I have discussed our conferences in the past so I wanted to get in touch regarding our 3rd Annual XXXX meeting in October. Attached is last yearâs conference brochure for background as well as a draft agenda for this yearâs conference.
Below youâll find an updated list of confirmed and tentative speakers for this year; youâll see weâve already confirmed a bunch of great companies with more on the way. Would this be an appropriate venue for One Eleven Interactive to further spread the word about your services and work to the pharma marketers in our audience? If so there are a number of sponsorship/exhibit options available that could facilitate this, some including potential speaking roles at the conference.
See what I mean? Pay us and we’ll turn our heads while you bore our audience to death.
This model is old and broken and serves no one well – least of all, the folks who take time and money to try to actually learn something and engage with peers. So I guess I won’t be speaking for that group in October or any other time. If you want me to speak, I promise to rock it, entertain and educate, but save my sales pitch for the right time and place.
Our CEO, Janet Carlson, served as Chairperson and gave a presentation at the HCMA Regional Forum in Manhattan on May 7th, 2009 along with Bob Brooks (WEGO Health), Dan Hoffman (Medcafe) and Hugh Jediwell (Mobile Anthem).
