Description: MediaFest is an annual tradeshow created by Retail Alliance to showcase Hampton Roads media and marketing companies and provide exposure to local businesses. Local retailers are always looking for new customers and new ways to reach untapped markets. This event is designed to introduce local businesses to advertising, marketing and media opportunities throughout the area, to help drive traffic and increase their bottom line.

This year’s tradeshow will feature an extensive variety of advertising opportunities ranging from traditional media to unique marketing approaches, numerous networking opportunities, entertainment, media exposure, delicious food provided by local restaurants, and two educational seminars on “Customer Service Marketing” and “How to Measure ROI on Advertising.”

Description: Join HRAMA on February 9th at our educational luncheon given by Jack Ankerson, the Executive Director of Hampton Roads Sports Commission. Ankerson will give us an insiders point of view of how they market Hampton Roads as a sports community. This is a must attend event for all sports enthusiast and Hampton Roads lovers. There is proof in the pudding that we live in such a thriving area of the country.

Jack Ankerson has an extensive past with the sports community in Hampton Roads, including the Admirals Hockey team, Mariners Soccer team, ODU Mens/Womens Basketball team, the Norfolk Tides, and numerous media outlets in the area. Jack is very active in the Hampton Roads community and serves on a number of boards including, Norfolk Festevents, Norfolk Convention and Visitor’s Bureau’s Tourism Research and many more.

Description: Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer Starr Oliver will tell how TowneBank built a hometown brand to market dominance and lessons learned along the way. Ramp up your marketing game in 2012 with this view from the top.

About U. Starr Oliver
Ms. Oliver is a founding member of TowneBank’s executive team, currently serving as chief marketing and human resource officer. Under her guidance, the Towne brand has grown to 26 branches in 15 cities across Hampton Roads and northeastern North Carolina. Ms. Oliver’s banking career spans more than 30 years, beginning at Citizens Trust Bank and Commerce Bank, where she held increasing positions of leadership in retail banking and marketing.

Ms. Oliver is an active member of Churchland Baptist Church, where she has served in numerous leadership positions, Christian education and in ministry to the homeless. She has served on the boards of the United Way, PARC, American Red Cross, Virginia State Baptist Association and the Portsmouth General Hospital Foundation.

RSVP>> http://events.constantcontact.com/register/event?llr=tkt7lzdab&oeidk=a07e5gi0j1z3695b526

Description:Come Mingle with HRAMA members and guests on December 8th from 5:30pm to 8:30pm at Red Star Tavern in Virginia Beach for our holiday social. AAF, PRSA, Ad2 and SMEI will be joining us for this festive occasion. Happy Hour specials with light fare will be provided by Red Star Tavern. We will be raffling off prizes throughout the night. Receive one raffle ticket upon check in.

Here are some ways to earn more raffle tickets:

• Bring a friend!
• Wear Holiday festive attire
• Bring canned goods or donations to the Foodbank

RSVP Today>> https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07e5b0j34w3ed31cb3&oseq=

Description: Join us and our expert panelists for an open discussion about how to market to the military.

The military and their families contribute a lot to our local community here in Hampton Roads. Gain some insight on how companies market to this target audience.

In celebration of Veterans Day, we will be having Chipotle Mango Barbeque Pork Medallion with Garlic Mashed Potatoes and Grilled Vegetable. Please note on your registration if you would like a vegetarian option.

Thank you to our event sponsor Troopswap. Register Now!

About the Moderator

Bianca Martinez, Anchor/Reporter of WTKR-TV and Regional Vice President NATAS-National Capital Chesapeake Bay Chapter

You can catch Bianca anchoring the 6 o’clock p.m. and 11 o’clock p.m. newscasts with Kurt Williams during the work week. You can also follow her laughter, stress and tears as a military wife in her blog, “Married to the Military,” right here on NewsChannel 3′s website. Bianca was featured on the cover of “Military Spouse” and “My Time” magazines with articles and received a 2010 Emmy Award, 2010 Toastmasters Regional Community Service Award, and First Lady’s (VA) Initiative Team Effort for military advocacy.

Bianca joined NewsChannel 3  as a traffic reporter in July 2003. A Navy wife, new to Hampton Roads, she took a position as an Associate Producer to get her foot in the door and shortly thereafter became a traffic reporter. Bianca’s work in the traffic center changed the way WTKR did traffic. Instead of doing everything from the studio, she went on location when the job required it. Instead of sitting in the studio during Hurricane Isabel, she was out in the elements at our area bridge tunnels, bringing viewers the story right from the scene.

While reporting traffic was great for honing her live reporting skills, Bianca was a news junkie at heart and was anxious to get out and spend more time in the field and put her journalism skills to work. In January 2005, Bianca hit the street and made the jump to full-time reporter. Not much later she joined the NewsChannel 3 morning team as co-anchor.

Before coming to WTKR, Bianca was a producer at KITV4 in Honolulu, Hawaii. She was responsible for writing, editing, even punching/directing her morning newscasts airing on the ABC affiliate and CNN Headline News. On top of her producing responsibilities, she served as the station voice and interviewed and told the stories of families for the Kapiolani Children’s Hospital and Children’s Miracle Network. She followed her husband to Hawaii after studying journalism and U.S military history at Penn State University and working a year as a field producer at the NBC affiliate in Washington, DC. The encouragement she received as a fresh faced kid in television has stuck with her for the past eleven years. The reporting experiences there solidified her commitment to telling stories.

It was not the first time Bianca worked with NBC4. In fact, she got her start in the business at that station at the age of 14 as a Teen TV reporter. The work done by the Teen TV team for a special focusing on Teen Violence in 1994 earned the station a large amount of recognition and accolades. She was even featured in the station’s 50th Anniversary celebration.

When she’s not anchoring or working on her feature, “Do My Military Job,” Bianca spends her free time with her husband and their two children. Lucas and Sophia keep her busy with soccer, Taekwondo, and lots of quality family fun!!

*The panel of experts is subject to change due to availability.

RSVP: https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07e4vwzxp8f95c73c3&oseq=

Description: It’s time for another joint networking event with the Hampton Roads American Marketing Association (HRAMA) and the American Advertising Federation of Hampton Roads (AAFHR)!

This face-to-face social networking event is FREE to attend, provides delicious food, and is hosted by some very fun people. Come mingle with some of the top marketing professionals in Hampton Roads — and bring a guest or two if you want!

Paradocks East Coast Grille is supplying complimentary appetizers and happy hour specials for the duration of our event.

HRAMA is delighted to partner with the AAFHR (aka the Ad Federation) for these bi-monthly networking opportunities as an added value to our members. Come out and network, enjoy a cocktail or two and munch on delicious food. We look forward to seeing you all there!

Event attire is Business Casual

Come out for a night of fun and support your local AMA chapter!

Description: There’s no doubt that digital media have altered the way marketers spend their dollars. Print media have seen more than one-third of their revenues evaporate, and radio and direct mail are struggling. As the Internet becomes more video-oriented, could TV and cable be next? Gordon Borrell, CEO of Williamsburg-based Borrell Associates, has had an uncanny record of accuracy in predicting media trends over the past 10 years. In this session, he’ll show how a broad historical perspective helps us understand the future – and he’ll offer his five-year forecast for how local businesses in Hampton Roads will be adjusting their marketing dials over the next five years.

About Gordon Borrell, CEO
Gordon Borrell is one of the media industry’s leading analysts and is ranked in the top 2% among Gerson Lehrman Group’s 150,000 consultants worldwide. He is quoted frequently in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Ad Age, Forbes and other publications and has appeared on CNN and other TV and radio programs discussing trends in local media. Prior to starting Borrell Associates, Gordon was vice president for new media for Landmark Communications, where he worked for 22 years. He started his career as a reporter and editor for Landmark’s newspaper, The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Virginia. In 1989 he began pioneering interactive ventures for Landmark and helped the company establish the first TV and newspaper Web sites on the Internet. Mr. Borrell conceptualized and helped create InfiNet, an Internet access and hosting company now owned by Gannett Co. He is past president of the Newspaper Association of America’s New Media Federation and was nominated for the NAA’s New Media Pioneer of the Year in 2002. He is married, has five children, and lives in Portsmouth, Virginia, where he has been active on boards and organizations supporting public education and community sports.

Description: The most powerful way to penetrate and stick in the human mind is to tell a story. Today, you just have to tell it in a sentence or less! And you can—when you know the Micro-Script Rules.

First introduced in his highly acclaimed book, Bill Schley will show that Micro-Scripts aren’t just sound bites, they’re story bites, custom made for us to remember and repeat. Great communicators have used them for 1,000 years; great brands for decades.

That’s how:

• A new product seized 50% of its market in 2 years by using 7 perfect words.
• A lawyer won the murder trial of the century with 8 simple words.
• Ernest Hemingway thought his greatest story ever was 6 words long.
• A presidential election turned on a 4 word phrase.

Imagine the power of magic words like these on your company, your website or business plan. With attention spans down to 9 seconds and 300 billion messages going by per minute, human brains want less data, not more. They want us to package it for them–in Micro-Scripts. This entertaining and thought provoking HRAMA meeting will show you how.

What they’re saying:

DAVID MEERMAN SCOTT – author of the New Rules of Marketing and PR
“Micro-Scripts are big marketing…Now anyone can dominate a market with a few well placed words…So what are you waiting for?

JACK TROUT—co-author of legendary  ‘Positioning, The Battle for Your Mind’
“The Micro-Script Rules are dead on. It’s how to verbalize a point of difference. Without one, you better have a low price.”

AL RIES—co-author of legendary ‘Positioning, The Battle for Your Mind’
“The missing ingredient in most marketing is memorability… Bill Schley’s Micro-Script Rules solve that problem.”

DAN GOODGAME—former Washington Bureau Chief, TIME Magazine
“Schley’s insights and examples are invaluable to anyone selling a new candidate, a new tax law, a new product or a new brand.”

JASON JENNINGS—bestselling author of ‘Think BIG-Act Small’
“WOW, one of the most important books you will read in your lifetime!”

Bill Schley Bio

Bill Schley is a life-long entrepreneur, award-winning marketer, author and speaker on branding and communications. He’s known for creating the Dominant Selling Idea at companies ranging from early stage to global giants. He was a founder and chief brand developer at two successful start-ups that became industry-leading brands. One was later sold to a NYSE company. He is author of The Micro-Script Rules: It’s not what people hear. It’s what they repeat…and also Why Johnny Can’t Brand: Rediscovering the lost art of the big idea which won a “Best 5 Marketing Books Award” from Strategy + Business Magazine. Bill has appeared on CNBC’s Street Signs, TV News Network’s 12 On the Money, CNN Money Online and numerous syndicated radio programs. He began as a writer at Ted Bates, the legendary New York Ad Agency. He is a graduate of Harvard University, a trans-Atlantic sailor and avid skydiver.

Contact: bill@billschley.com 203-623-2779 or learn more at www.billschley.com

Register: http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?llr=tkt7lzdab&oeidk=a07e4lzvqer1079a07a

Register Today!