Paul Bellantone, CAE

This year, we moved The PPAI® Expo from excellent to exceptional!

One of our goals this past year was to take The PPAI Expo from great to extraordinary. As the post-show feedback filters through, I’m proud to say we’ve succeeded. Thanks in large part to you, our members, volunteers and partners, The PPAI Expo remains the gold standard of what a trade show should be. As part of […]

The AMA, the largest professional marketing association in the world, is trusted by nearly a million marketing and sales professionals worldwide. It has more than 70 professional chapters and over 350 collegiate chapters throughout North America and in select international locations.

By the time you read this, we will have enjoyed a successful kick-off to our major buyer outreach season at the American Marketing Association’s annual conference in Las Vegas, and at Advertising Week in New York City. Over the past few weeks, PPAI, like many other businesses, has been planning, budgeting and allocating resources for next year. […]

Over the years, I have often been asked my thoughts on the real, total sales revenue of our industry. My standard answer is to recite findings from PPAI’s most recent Distributor Sales Volume survey. If you ask me today I would tell you that distributor sales reached $21.3 billion in 2016. (See page 46 for PPAI’s annual […]

In January’s column, I shared a high-level update on our progress toward implementing PPAI’s new mission to be the trusted leader delivering essential knowledge, resources and community to ensure the success of our members and the industry. Toward this end, the PPAI Board of Directors and staff are working on numerous strategies to help us deliver on our promise that is further defined by these four goals: drive member value and engagement; advocate for the industry; deliver and leverage strategic foresight; and manage an efficient and progressive organization.

In the November issue of PPB, Chair Tom Goos, MAS, summarized his term over the past 12 months. In that column, he talked about the Association’s undertaking of a strategic planning session and his pride in the work of the PPAI Board and staff on the resulting strategic plan. He mentioned a new mission statement and the idea that the plan focused on taking the Association from transactional to relational.