PMA responds to Industry Demand: expands mission to assume Integrated Marketing Positioning.

The Promotion Marketing Association (PMA) unveiled its new brand identity, which includes expanding its mission to assume integrated marketing.

Following a two-year strategic planning process, which included significant membership and industry research, the 96-year-old organization will reveal its new brand positioning, logo, and platform for growth on Thursday to the over 500 marketers and legal counsel who will gather in Chicago for its 29th Annual Law Conference.

At the same time, the organization is publicly announcing the permanent appointment to PMA president of Bonnie Carlson, who had been serving the
organization as Interim president since March of this year. Carlson previously served as Vice President of Integrated Marketing for ConAgra Foods, where she created the integrated marketing function and launched the shopper marketing discipline across all four divisions and a portfolio of
70 brands.

The chief tenet for PMA’s new brand will be its expanded mission: To be the primary source for integrated marketing solutions; helping marketers
achieve specific and measurable brand-building goals via resources, education, networking, and community.

“For nearly a century, the Promotion Marketing Association has defined and furthered a variety of measurable brand-building tactics and promotion
has been considered the most strategic of marketing disciplines,” said Mark Mears, PMA Chairman of the Board. “It only made sense for the PMA to
formally broaden its charter to reflect the emergence of integrated marketing within the communities it has already been representing for decades.”

The move of C-suite leadership’s interest in and reliance on integrated marketing is mirrored in the PMA’s selection of its own leadership.

Carlson’s distinguished career in integrated marketing has included consumer promotion, market research, package design, database marketing,
sponsorships, experiential marketing, public relations, and advertising at such organizations as Nestle, Unilever, General Foods, Euro-RSCG, and
Carlson Draddy & Associates, her own agency.

“As a 22-year member of the PMA, I have worked with many marketer members whose responsibilities included multiple marketing disciplines, who
came to the association for guidance in integration best practices. The organization has resources beyond classic sales promotion techniques, and
this re-branding is a way to demonstrate what already exists and a promise for more to come,” said Bonnie Carlson, PMA president.

The PMA’s platform for growth includes five Centers of Excellence (COE) guided by industry professionals on staff and with volunteer leadership.
These COEs include Marketing Law, Experiential Marketing, Digital Marketing, Entertainment Marketing and Shopper Marketing. Each of these
centers will provide research and education as well as networking opportunities to the PMA membership community at large. The PMA will also
align itself strategically other industry resources to provide full resources to it membership in all disciplines.

The organization’s new logo is only a small change in its rebranding approach. The organization’s programming, while always broad, will now
regularly consider its defined disciplines of integrated marketing to include:

— Consumer Promotion
— Trade Promotion
— Advertising
— Public Relations
— Database or Direct Marketing
— Loyalty Marketing
— Experiential Marketing
— Sponsorships
— Celebrity Endorsements/Product Spokespersons
— Shopper Marketing
— Cause-Related Marketing
— Grass Roots Marketing
— Corporate Communications (incentive programs, employee communications)
— Digital Marketing
— Package Design
— In-Store Marketing
— Market Research
— Branded Entertainment

“It’s natural to see a growing number of disciplines included in integrated marketing,” added Mears. “With a growing number of both strategic and tactical approaches available today, what marketers need now is sage counsel and real tools to put these disciplines together in a way that provides the best return on investment. The PMA will continue to be the voice of the promotion and integrated marketing industries, providing those tools of information, education, resources, networking and community as the art and science of marketing evolves over the next 96 years.”