Upcoming Events Archived Events Before and After: Mar 15 - Feb 15 - Jan 19

Location: Metropolitan Ballroom, Hwy 394 & 100 - 5418 Wayzata Blvd. Minneapolis
Directions

SME Members Only Roundtable
Topic TBD by Zoomerang prior to event
Facilitated by Don Johnson, Managing Partner, Don L. Johnson Enterprises

Morning Workshop
Branding, Schmanding: Internet Advertising That Brings Results
George Burr, Vice President, Performance Marketing & Jim Sandstrom, Vice President, Media – MARKnETING; Rick Houpt, Vice President, Channel Sales, Be Free, Inc.

If you have run any ad campaigns on the Internet, then you have probably had these headaches too:

• Your budgets were spent for “impressions” (“eyeballs”) when what you were looking for was actions or sales.
• Your cost per transaction at your Web site or your cost per customer gained was so high you’ll never be able to pay back or justify the expense of the campaign.
• The click-through rate for your banners and graphic links was what was blamed for the campaign’s poor performance. And then you heard: “But don’t worry … this campaign was great for branding.”
• You know that the Internet is “worldwide,” but what you want is a much smaller piece – maybe one or two metro areas, a few states, or a particular region…and you were told that this couldn’t be done.
• You are in a business-to-business industry looking to get the most out of your trade print dollars while reaching your distributors and end users efficiently on the Internet.

If any or all of these headaches are keeping you up at night, then this SME Morning Workshop can help you! You will learn about some totally new ways of getting more efficiencies out of typically tight online ad budgets and results which are measurable, trackable, and – best of all – positively impact your campaign’s ROI. Branding is always important…but what the Internet is about is getting results. And you’ll find another way to do just that.

Senior executives from Be Free, Inc., the leading provider of integrated solutions for online businesses, and MARKnETING, specialists in the area of pay-for-performance marketing, will present this new, effective approach to Internet advertising. Together, they co-developed leading-edge, turnkey ways to cost-effectively plan, manage, track, and measure Internet ad campaigns which help drive business from hard-to-reach, narrowly targeted audiences.

George Burr, Vice President – Performance Marketing a MARKnETING, has a 30+ year background in marketing, advertising and sales promotion, both on the agency/consultant and in-house client side, and among all types of industries from consumer packaged goods and services to commercial/industrial durables. Most recently, he has spent the past 6 years in the world of Internet marketing, working with the likes of large corporations like 3M, U.S. Bank and Reliant Energy, to mid-size organizations and dot-coms both large and small. During this most recent phase of his business career, George has helped pioneer and build out the general area of pay-for-performance Internet marketing, in which a client’s marketing expenditures may be most cost-effectively spent and tracked, all resulting in improved ROI and faster payback of a client’s Web investment.

Jim Sandstrom, Vice President – Media at MARKnETING, has a 30+ year background in advertising media planning and buying, both on the ad agency and in-house client side. He has planned and placed everything from local-market newspaper and radio schedules for clients like Dairy Queen…to network TV Olympic Games sponsorship packages for Lee Jeans. Jim has extensive experience in the food/packaged goods arena. Among his account experience is Hormel (Grocery Products and Meats…consumer as well as trade), Golden Plump Chicken, General Mills (various cereals…new product introductions to national roll-outs), Malt-O-Meal Cereals, Land-O-Lakes Margarine, Creamette Pasta and Bushel Boy Tomatoes. Jim has most recently been busy adding online/Internet-based media planning and buying to his expertise…and can leverage a client’s traditional media spending for a cost-effective online presence on the Web sites serving those same traditional vehicles.

Rick Houpt is a Vice President in Be Free’s Worldwide Sales group, specifically responsible for managing the Channel Sales team that builds and maintains partnerships for the company with companies that can complement and materially improve its partner and site marketing services. Be Free partners with a variety of third-party firms, from Internet Integrators, Internet Consultants, Interactive Agencies, Web Developers, Internet Marketers and E-Commerce Specialists. Many work with Be Free to reach prospective customers through collaborative marketing efforts, and others partner with Be Free to provide technology and services seamlessly to mutual customers. Rick has more than twenty years experience across a variety of sales and marketing positions at high technology firms. Prior to joining Be Free in 1998, Rick served Open Market as Director, Channel Sales. Prior to Open Market, Rick held the position of Director of Sales and Marketing at Distributed Technologies Corp. In addition, Rick has built his expertise in management and sales at a variety of companies from Digital Equipment Corporation to Phillips NV.

Luncheon Presentation
Conventional vs. Non-conventional Wisdom: Why the US Economy Looks Bright
Arthur Rolnick, Sr. VP & Director of Research; Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis

The U.S. economy grew at a 3.5 percent annual rate in 2000, which most economic commentators said was unsustainable. The conventional wisdom is that our economy is fragile and faces such serious economic perils that, within a very short period of time, the economic expansion could turn into a recession. Recent economic history, however, suggests that the conventional wisdom about the U.S. economy needs to be replaced. Over the last 18 years, in the face of several major economic shocks, the U.S. economy has proven to be much stronger and more resilient than is often portrayed. Moreover, there is a good chance that the U.S. economy will continue performing that way well into the foreseeable future.

Arthur J. Rolnick is a senior vice president and director of Research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, as well as an associate economist with the Federal Open Market Committee. He has served as an adjunct professor of Law and Economics at the University of Minnesota and was also a visiting professor at Boston College.

Dr. Rolnick has worked with the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis as an economist and officer since 1970. He is a member of the Minnesota Council of Economic Advisors, the Minneapolis Star and Tribune Board of Economists, the Minnesota Council of Economic Education, and the Center for Women's Economic Progress.

His research interests have focused most recently on the economic folly of corporate tax incentives, reform of the nation's deposit insurance system, and the lessons to be learned from history of banking.