Google’s Advertising Head to Address Insurance Marketing Event

New meeting format features an opening day keynote address and workshop, and specialty workshop tracks in advertising, public relations, creative/marketing and technology

Jon Kaplan, head of financial services, advertising, for Google, Inc. and Roger Dawson, a nationally recognized speaker, negotiator and author, will headline the 2007 annual meeting of the Insurance Marketing Communication Association (IMCA), June 3-6, 2007.

The event, which this year will be held at the Newport Hyatt in Newport, R.I., brings together top insurance marketing and communication professionals. This year’s theme, “Taking the Helm,” focuses on the need for the insurance industry to do a better job of communicating with its various audiences and provide more effective tools and messages.

Jon Kaplan is responsible for setting the overall strategy for Google’s national advertising sales team and for enhancing product offering, as well as working with regional sales teams on strategic clients. Kaplan also is a member of the Google Grants screening committee, a program that supports nonprofit organizations with in-kind advertising.

Roger Dawson, a full-time speaker and author who travels around the world giving seminars to corporations and associations, is one of this country’s top experts in the art of negotiating. As a full-time speaker since 1982, Dawson has trained managers and salespeople at top companies and leading associations throughout the United States, Canada and Australia. He was inducted into the Speaker Hall of Fame in 1991.

Other featured speakers include Jeanne M. Salavatore, senior vice president, public affairs, Insurance Information Institute. She will “grade” the insurance industry on how well it is doing in its communications in her presentation, “Why Insurers Should Care About Communications.”

“Not only do we have an exciting lineup of nationally recognized speakers and experts, but we’ve improved the structure and format of the meeting to meet the specific needs of the many different marketing communications specialties,” said Cora Barran, president of IMCA.

Among the changes to the 2007 IMCA annual meeting: A keynote address and workshop were added to opening day, Sunday, June 3, and the conference will end after the Showcase Awards Gala on Tuesday evening. In addition, this year’s workshops are divided into specialty tracks: advertising, public relations, creative/marketing and technology.

The meeting features an insurance editors panel with Joe Treaster, insurance reporter of The New York Times, Sally Whitney, insurance editor of Best’s Review and Mitch Dunford, CEO of Insurance Journal; and “Disaster Mitigation & Risk-Based Pricing,” a panel discussion featuring Tiffany O’Shea, American Insurance Association, Kevin Barber, Institute of Business & Home Safety, and Ed Collins, Allstate Insurance and ProtectingAmerica.org.

Other featured speakers at the IMCA meeting include:
* Steven Schreibman, vice president, advertising and brand management, Nationwide Insurance, will present “Branding in the Insurance Business.”

* Ann Wylie, author, editor and president of Wylie Communications, Inc., will present “Start Making Sense – How to Take Out Insurance Jargon” and “Think Like a Reader – The Secret to Writing Copy that Gets Read.”

* William Cusick, president, Vox, Inc., will present “Satisfaction Surveys – What the Numbers Aren’t Telling You.”

* Kevin E. Barber, vice president and director of communications, Institute for Business & Home Safety, will discuss IBHS, which uses communication, education, engineering and research to help reduce the economic and social consequences of natural disasters and other property loss events.

Source: IMCA, www.imcanet.com