WASHINGTON—With 930 attendees and 60 booths at the 2014 Marketing, Membership, & Communications Conference (MMCC), June 16-18 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, it was the highest attended conference in its history. With more than 45 learning labs, two general sessions, and express learning sessions, participants discovered new ideas, case studies, and strategies to implement the right formula for success in their associations.

New this year, ASAE hosted two pre-conference programs on June 16, which provided high-level content around marketing and communications as well as membership and component relations. It focused on strategic-level thinking on how to best leverage data, engagement, and remain relevant for organizations’ members.

On June 17, Anthony Shop kicked off as the Opening General Session speaker, and he stressed how attendees need to have a driver mentality, care about the culture, and make connections with their members. He asked attendees to focus on three things: put people in the center, innovate don’t replicate, and align culture around it. Shop co-founded Social Driver, which is a digital agency that designs websites, builds apps and launches social campaigns.

During the Closing General Session, Joe Pulizzi discussed how content marketing has changed and attendees need to shift their thinking about the communication model. He outlined five elements for association professionals to focus on to take advantage of content marketing including: asking why you are creating your current content, develop a mission statement, how to leverage influencers, and to be careful where you host your content. Pulizzi is founder of Content Marketing Institute, an education and training organization for content marketing and author of three books including his latest, Epic Content Marketing.

On June 17, ASAE hosted the Gold Circle Awards ceremony and recognized the 2014 Gold Circle Award winners. The Gold Circle Award for Overall Excellence winner is the National Multifamily Housing Council and National Apartment Association for its “Apartments. We Live Here” campaign.

A special thank you to our strategic partner Personify for continuing support of the conference. For more information about the MMCC conference, please visit www.asaecenter.org/MMCC.
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MEDIA CONTACT: Sabrina Kidwai, APR, CAE skidwai@asaecenter.org, 202-326-9505.

About ASAE: The Center for Association Leadership
ASAE is a membership organization of more than 21,000 association executives and industry partners representing 10,000 organizations. Its members manage leading trade associations, individual membership societies and voluntary organizations across the United States and in nearly 50 countries around the world. With support of the ASAE Foundation, a separate nonprofit entity, ASAE is the premier source of learning, knowledge and future-oriented research for the association and nonprofit profession, and provides resources, education, ideas and advocacy to enhance the power and performance of the association and nonprofit community. For more information about ASAE, visit www.asaecenter.org.

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