2024 has been a stacked year at AMA-Madison.  Across 10 events—including workshops, panels, and interactive presentations—we’ve welcomed 19 marketing experts who generously shared their ideas and experiences. And along the way, we’ve had countless meaningful conversations informed new connections that will last well past 2024. 

Whether you attended all 10 events or just a few, this blog is your chance to revisit the highlights. Keep reading as we count down the top 10 takeaways from our 2024 events, starting at our first event of the year and counting all the way down to the most recent one.

❄️ But before we move onto the blog, we’re thrilled to invite you to our final event of 2024, the Snowflake Soiree: A Holiday Collaboration Event on Tuesday, December 3 at 4:30 PM.

As we wrap up an incredible year of learning, growing, and connecting, this event is a celebration of the vibrant, supportive marketing community we’ve build together throughout 2024. 

This festive evening (emphasis on festive: our dress code is everything from ugly sweaters to sleek holiday threads) is the perfect opportunity to reflect on the marketing tips we’ve shared, reconnect with the relationships we’ve formed and form new ones, and raise a glass to new opportunities waiting for us in the new year. You can find more info and register here.

Now, onto the countdown.

The Top 10 Marketing Takeaway Countdown

Event #1. January 16: Exploring Inclusive Marketing and AI featuring Laura Hulleman, Karen Baker, and Peter Prodromou 

This workshop taught us that if we want to effectively strengthen our brand relationships, we need to take care of these practices:

• Integrate AI with Human Intelligence: As Peter explained, AI and human intelligence must work together to unlock AI’s full potential—and that’s where you come in. It’s truly a partnership: AI can gather and analyze data to help us understand and shape our brands’ narratives, while human intelligence remains essential for interpreting these insights and making informed decisions.
• Customize Branding to Align with Small Business Identities: Laura Hulleman recommended streamlining small business branding using the Endotype Formula. This approach aligns the brand with the business owner’s personality, making it more intuitive and easier to implement.
• Practice Inclusive Marketing by Prioritizing Community Impact and Diverse Representation: Karen Baker emphasized the importance of inclusive marketing practices, advocating especially for the integration of Design Justice principles. These principles focus on prioritizing community impact and amplifying diverse voices throughout the design process.

Get more insights from Laura, Karen, and Peter in the full event recap blog here.

Event #2. January 30: Using Lead Magnets and Email Automation to Deliver the Right Message at the Right Time featuring Eagan Heath

This presentation emphasized that effective marketing combines focused channels, strategic messaging, and automation. 

Specifically, Eagan taught us that to maximize your marketing impact, it’s best to focus on 1-3 key channels, craft precise messages for your target audience, and use lead magnets and email automation. What makes lead magnets so powerful is they can attract and nurture your prospects by addressing their needs, no matter which buyer journey stage they might be at. Email automation’s impact can’t be downplayed either, as it makes it relatively easy for you to deliver personalized communication and build trust over time. With this targeted approach, marketing teams big and small can yield measurable results and repeatable success while making the most of their resources.

Get more insights from Eagan in the full event recap blog here.

Event #3. February 27: 4 Tips to Stay Agile in Today’s Complex Consumer Journey featuring Dave Florin

This presentation taught us that the modern buyer journey is basically just a squiggly line.

In other words, consumers move unpredictably between exploration, evaluation, and decision making. And this complexity demands us as marketers to rethink traditional funnel strategies and embrace multi-touchpoint storytelling that spans the entire journey. Dave introduced “the pre-trigger phase,” a valuable point in time many marketers ignore, being when early brand awareness builds trust and credibility. If a potential customer hears about your brand from a friend or sees a particularly memorable ad, they might not have any need for your goods or services yet, but you’re more likely to pop into their mind the second they do need them, and that’s gold. And lastly, Dave emphasized the need for tailored content that adapts to specific journey stages as well as the power behind dipping into diverse media platforms to meet consumers where they are.

Get more insights from Dave in the full event recap blog here.

Event #4. March 26: 4 Tips for a Successful Rebrand: Insights from Lake Ridge Bank’s Journey featuring Paul Hoffman

This presentation taught us that rebranding is more than a visual update—it’s a strategic opportunity to redefine your organization’s identity while honoring its legacy and community. And that couldn’t have been more true to Paul’s experience rebranding Lake Ridge Bank, which involved merging two separate legacy brands together. Paul emphasized the importance of thoughtful planning across four critical areas: 

1. Naming: Crafting a meaningful brand name requires a deep dive into the heritage and values of the organizations involved, as shown by Lake Ridge Bank’s fusion of “Lake” and “Ridge” to represent its roots. 
2. Culture Integration: Successfully merging distinct company cultures calls for celebrating both legacies equally to foster employee and customer loyalty. 
3. Partnerships: Strategic partnerships—whether with design teams, employees, or local organizations—enhance the brand’s connection to its audience. 
4. Communication: Finally, prioritizing clear communication and decisive project management ensures deadlines are met and collaboration thrives. By balancing these elements, a rebrand can transform challenges into opportunities, creating a cohesive, impactful identity.

Get more insights from Paul in the full event recap blog here. 

Event #5. April 9: Navigating the Social Surge featuring Aron Caruso and Jodie Minton Skoropad

This panel dove into the transformative role that data and insights can have in driving effective social media strategies. Aron explained that as marketers, we can use analytics to craft personalized messaging, optimize our strategies, and engage our target audiences at the precise right moments. Jodie then emphasized that the best way we can stay relevant as brands in this rapidly changing social landscape is through continuous learning, experimenting with content, and diversifying our platform presence. The two also pointed to common pitfalls being failing to understand the nuances of different social platforms and putting together an incomplete social strategy. 

Get more insights from Jodie in our 1-on-1 interview with her here.

Event #6. April 30: Belonging Matters: How Greater Madison Turned Community Connections and Immersive Experiences into Brand Success featuring Erik Greenfield

This presentation outlined the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce’s innovative efforts to strengthen Madison’s brand to recruit the next generation of Madisonians and amplify Madison’s story to all. And in addition to getting to learn about the city many of us call home, we learned some marketing lessons along the way. Erik explained his process of authentically aligning Madison’s unique attributes with the desires of its target audience, including the use of virtual reality, and how it’s effectively resonated with recruits in the years since. All in all, Erik’s experience showed that whether you’re marketing a product, a service, or a city, understanding your audience deeply and creatively showcasing your brand’s genuine strengths can inspire emotional connections and loyalty, ultimately driving lasting impact.

Get more insights from Erik in the full event recap blog here. 

Event #7. May 15: Elevating Agency Collaboration & Project Management featuring Lisa Caras and McKenna Erickson

In this workshop, we got to hear from both Lisa and McKenna on the importance of communication and clarity in fostering successful collaboration and strategic marketing. McKenna pointed to the importance of understanding diverse communication styles, whether among team members or clients. After all, misunderstandings are easy territory to get into when managing projects, but understanding communication styles can be an effective way to get everyone on the same page. Lisa and McKenna also advised us to avoid setting unrealistic expectations, which can be done by keeping an open dialogue about capacity and timelines. As for setting measurable marketing objectives, McKenna stresses the need to align metrics directly with business goals, keeping them focused and actionable.

Get more insights from McKenna in our 1-on-1 interview with her here.

Event #8. September 10: Science Has a Marketing Problem: The Branding of Science (And What All Marketers Can Learn) featuring Todd Newman

In our first event after our summer break, we dug into the world of science, and how its branding can offer lessons regarding our own branding efforts. Todd stressed the importance of understanding how your audience perceives your brand, because it may differ significantly from your own perception. In the case of science, Todd’s research has shown that basically, the public views it more in terms of “hope” for future benefits, while scientists focus on the excitement of the process. For us marketers, this disconnect highlights the need to align messaging with how customers emotionally connect with our brands. And we can do this by conducting customer surveys or analyzing social media sentiment, which can help us understand their perceptions and inspire us to tailor our messaging and offerings to better meet their expectations and desires.

Get more insights from Todd in the full event recap blog here. 

Event #9. October 1: How to Amplify Your Business with Podcasting: (Almost) Everything You Need to Know featuring Bennie Johnson, Meaghan Ziemba, Bianca Martin, and Wesley Morgan

We got a wide range of insights from our four panelists for this panel event all about podcasting:

• Bennie Johnson highlighted the value of authenticity in interviews, sharing that he achieves this both by striving to make his guests feel as comfortable and open with him as possible and by avoiding prior exposure to guests’ past podcast appearances in his pre-show research to keep his questions fresh. 
• Meaghan Ziemba stressed the importance of having a clear mission with your podcast, with one of hers being inspiring girls to get into STEM fields. She shared that among all the metrics one could track, one of the most fulfilling for her is when she hears from young listeners, who she can connect with in real time since her podcast is live streamed.
• Bianca Martin advised against focusing solely on views, as it’ll leave just about any podcaster disappointed, even if you have a huge newsletter subscriber list or social media following. These numbers just don’t always transfer. Instead, she recommended building a highly engaged, loyal audience.
• Wesley Morgan shared how his team pivoted to a biweekly podcast schedule after listener feedback, which demonstrates the importance of being adaptable in podcasting. It’s a lot of work, so it’s wise to optimize as you go to make the most of your efforts. He also pointed out that podcasting can be a strong sales tool that’s worth integrating into our sales funnels. 

Get more insights from Bennie, Meaghan, Bianca, and Wesley in the full event recap blog here. 

Event #10. November 11: Navigating the Landscape of AI featuring Spencer X Smith, Jo Phillip, and Michael DeNunzio

In this panel, we got to hear from three marketing in AI experts who all had unique ideas and strategies to share:

• Spencer suggested asking AI to rate your prompts. With this, you could say, “Rate the prompt below on a scale of 1 to 10 and explain any weak points.” This will help you quickly refine your prompts and learn how to partner with AI more effectively in general.
• Jo shared that beyond just recording interviews or meetings to grab their transcripts, you can use AI to digest and apply that information more effectively. She uploads the transcripts into the AI to scan for repeated themes, key phrases, or unique ideas, which allows her to catch details she might have otherwise missed, and it makes it easy to spot insightful quotes for video snippets and other content.
• Michael recommended creating fictional AI advisory panels during the market research process. Here, you ask the AI to create a panel of specialists in various disciplines, like “a social media expert” or “someone who’s a world class *fill in the blank*”, and ask the AI to create fictional names and bios for them, and then you can run all of your analysis through the panel and ask it to discuss and debate the information. 

Get more insights from Spencer, Jo, and Michael in the full event recap blog here. 

Wow, what a year! We can’t wait to reveal what’s coming up in 2025, but until then, don’t forget to register for the Snowflake Soiree Holiday Social Event on Tuesday, December 3 at 4:30 PM – 8:00 PM. We’d love to see you there!

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