We’re excited to announce our first round of keynote speakers for our upcoming 2010 Annual Integrated Marketing Conference, Blur: Where Icons & Innovators Cross The Line.  This year’s theme conveys that integrated marketing has forever blurred the line between traditional promotional marketing, often referred to as Below the Line, and Advertising and other paid media or Above the Line.  The event is set to take place March 23-24 at the Fairmont Hotel in Chicago.

We’re honored to have the following as speakers:

• Icon Don Schultz (above, left)–widely regarded as the “father of integrated marketing”–will deliver the March 24 opening presentation and will share the most up-to-date media consumption research that was derived from a methodology, co-developed with BIGresearch, which offers a new way for marketers to look at budgeting their precious marketing dollars.

• Seth Godin (center), an innovator, marketing guru and bestselling author, joins us for lunch on March 24 and will offer ways that marketers can erase the lines. And it all starts by reminding marketers that consumers don’t see lines in the first place.

• Expert practitioner Dean Barrett (right), the Luncheon Keynote on March 23, will bring the perspective of a major global marketer to bear as he takes the audience through ways McDonald’s blurs the lines and boundaries daily, successfully communicating brand messages in 118 countries, many without TV, radio, newspapers or magazines as we know them.

The PMA’s 2010 Integrated Marketing Conference brings together icons from brands and agencies that have always looked to blur the lines with their creativity and forward thinking approach with the Innovators who are changing our business every day with new media delivery options, new uses for existing channels and new places and reasons to buy traditional products and services.

The Blur Conference will feature 10 general sessions that feature industry-leading keynote speakers and 3 breakout tracks with 21 additional sessions featuring the building blocks of Integrated Marketing: Consumer Promotion, Shopper Marketing and Digital Marketing.  Other sessions of note include:

• Procter & Gamble’s Samantha Avivi talks about how the marketer’s new Store Back policy is fundamentally changing and elevating the role of shopper marketing.
• Target’s Mark Bennett joins Parade Magazine’s Jim Hackett and others to debate the question “Is Media the Message or is the Message the Media?”  It’s a faceoff between the traditional and the new media, and sparks will fly!
• Campbell Soup’s Geoff Jackson on how the company revises and refreshes one of the longest-running programs in the promotions industry, Campbell Soup’s Labels For Education.
• Pepsico’s Sonja Matthews and 7-Eleven’s Rita Bargerhuff on the consumer’s evolving path to purchase.  It’s anything but a straight line and these two marketers will take attendees through all the twists and turns.
• Deloitte’s Arthur Ash shares new research into the power of a brand advocate, along with real life examples of how consumers are fully able to make or break brands.

Stay tuned for more speaker announcements.  Early registration ends January 26, 2010, so reserve your seat now!

Additional links:

• Session and registration info for the Annual Conference
• Don Schultz’s company, Agora
• Seth Godin