Your agency’s best work — and the ROI to prove it — begins with you

CMOs, marketing directors and business owners underestimate the enormous impact they play in creating powerful advertising and marketing for their company. Greg Fine, principal and creative director at Ding Communications, offers a few thoughts on how you can wring the very best work from your advertising agency and get the most from your marketing budget by playing a lead role in steering your agency’s efforts.

Our Speaker:
As a principal and creative director for Ding Communications, Greg has had the opportunity to worked with an array of clients. Currently, he oversees marketing for Western Nevada College, Greater Nevada Credit Union, UNR’s Cooperative Extension, Urology Nevada,  Bidart & Ross, and others.

A native Nevadan and graduate of UNR (BA Journalism), Greg held publicist positions at both Harrah’s Lake Tahoe and the Reno-Sparks Convention & Visitors Authority, before joining another Reno-based ad agency as copywriter.

Previous work includes strategic marketing for Bay area newspapers, travel and hospitality, (Reno-Sparks Convention & Visitors Authority, North Lake Tahoe Visitors Authority), technology (Oski Energy), general and professional services (Reno Lawn and Landscape, Signatures Landscapes), real estate (Schwartz-Stanton Group, Ticor Title of Northern Nevada), and several non-profit partnerships, including the Komen Race for Cure, the Reno Philharmonic and Girl Scouts of the Sierra Nevada.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Atlantis Hotel Casino
Networking: 11:30 AM – Noon
Lunch: Noon – 1:00 PM
RSVP by 12pm, Monday, July 19

Luncheon Pricing
$25 – AMA, A2N2, PRSA Members with RSVP
$30 – Non-Members with RSVP
$35 – Without RSVP (Seating is on a space-available, first-come, first-serve basis)
$10 – Students with RSVP

Staying outside the recycle bin.

It’s been said that marketing is 1% inspiration, 29% perspiration, 70% plagiarism. If Shakespeare were writing today, he’d probably be in trouble for all his borrowed plots and characters. But – trademarks, copyrights, plagiarism, oh my. What can get us into trouble and how can we stay safe while maintaining our creative edge?

And what about the intellectual property that’s a vital asset to any business? Securing rights to your company’s name, logo, images, trade secrets and trademarks is as important as protecting any other valuable business asset. Join us and hear what you need to know before ‘recycling’.

• Finding out if it belongs to someone else.
• Giving credit where credit is due, when and how.
• If it sounds like a duck, is it?
• When in doubt, what to do?

Our Speaker: Bonnie Drinkwater is a high energy, and yes, entertaining attorney who is well known in Reno for her down to earth, practical legal services. She practices in the areas of corporate, employment, and intellectual property law, and her firm prides itself in its straight-forward communication. A native Nevadan, Bonnie holds dual degrees in Finance and International Management from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. and a law degree from the University of Notre Dame. She was admitted into the Nevada Bar in 1994.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Atlantis Hotel Casino
Networking: 11:30 AM – Noon
Lunch: Noon – 1:00 PM
RSVP by 12pm, Monday, June 14

Luncheon Pricing
$25 – AMA, A2N2, PRSA Members with RSVP
$30 – Non-Members with RSVP
$35 – Without RSVP (Seating is on a space-available, first-come, first-serve basis)
$10 – Students with RSVP

Say you’re a marketing department of one, tasked with writing, designing, and telling your customers everything about your company’s products and services, from print to web to social media. Where do you start? According to branding agency owner David Branby, “Work from the brand forward. If your brand is in the right place, everything else becomes easy.”

Find out how branding agencies help companies of all sizes to create compelling names and powerful brand identities—and how you can use tips and techniques from the pros to create your own. Award-winning writer and creative director David Branby will show how it’s the size of your ideas, not the size of your wallet that counts.

Our Speaker: In the past year, David Branby’s firm has successfully re-branded Dickson Realty, Crisis Call Center, H+K Architects and Dinter Engineering. David is an imaginative writer and visual thinker with 23 years of strategic marketing experience and a penchant for brand development. He established his branding and web design agency, David Branby Advertising, Inc., in 2003. David is the recipient of a Clio® Award, a Silver Microphone Award for radio advertising and more than 100 ADDY awards.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Atlantis Hotel Casino
Networking: 11:30 AM – Noon
Lunch: Noon – 1:00 PM
RSVP by 12pm, Monday, May 17

Luncheon Pricing
$25 – AMA, A2N2, PRSA Members with RSVP
$30 – Non-Members with RSVP
$35 – Without RSVP (Seating is on a space-available, first-come, first-serve basis)
$10 – Students with RSVP