2011 ANA Financial Management Conference

The 2011 ANA Financial Management Conference was recently held at the Biltmore hotel in Phoenix May 1st - May 4th. With 500 attendees, and all hotel rooms completely sold out, this event is the rising star on the ANA conference schedule. This a clear indicator of how important marketing procurement and agency management has become.

As breakfast sponsors we were proud to have Steven Wales, Business Director at Decideware, provide the opening remarks and kick things off in his usual energetic style!

The two and a half day conference covered the full spectrum of marketing procurement and agency financial management, with attendees very impressed with the level of both content and presentation.

Some Highlights

There were many new topics (and some refreshers) covered this year, including highlights:-

Jeff Gabel from Partners + Napier, in an outstanding presentation, gave insights into how his agency has applied process management techniques to enhance agency efficiency, and thus give the creative process more time and space to operate in the campaign lifecycle.

Kate Short from Intel provided an insight into a massive change they made in their agency model, moving from a "holding company" model to one where they access agency services using an "open source" philosophy, using the agency best suited to a piece of work.

Sarah Armstrong from The Coca-Cola Company presented an update on their Value-based Compentation program, which has now been extended widely on a global basis. We highly commend Sarah for being so open and providing deep insights into their program.

The Rock God!

And of course we must applaud the enthusiastic host, Brett Colbert from Anheuser-Busch InBev, who acquired the new name of "The Rock God". He provided both energy and insightful questions during the conference. As we know events like this are often made or broken by those that act as the master-of-ceremonies. In Brett this year, and Jim Akers from Pfizer last year, we have respected leaders in the industry adding to the lustre of the ANA.

See you next year!

And finally we would like to thank the hard-working team at the Association of National Advertisers for putting on the event. We can't wait till next year!

Author: Richard Benyon