February 2009

You may have more UL Marks and labels in your home and office than any other product or service logo—including all the cans of diet Coke or Pepsi in your fridge.

You just don’t necessarily know it because they’re often out of the way—molded or printed on the backs of all kinds of consumer electronics and industrial equipment, present on hidden building materials and visible on consumer and industrial packaging.

As the granddaddy of the world’s notable ingredient (or component) brands—including Dolby, Intel and NutraSweet—the UL Mark is an essential ingredient in managing global industrial risk and making the business world go round.

Its continued use depends on it being accepted and meaningfully valued by an intricate chain of users and demand drivers, including regulatory authorities, manufacturers, retailers and other distribution channels—and consumers.

On Feb. 5, UL’s Suzanne Lavin will tell UL’s complex b-to-b brand management story, with an emphasis on the strategy, rationale and execution of their current consumer communications campaign, the largest in recent years by a factor of 10.

It should be a fascinating program, and I hope you will be there.

BMA Web Site Revamp Under Way

I want to thank BMA board member and Schneider Electric marketing executive Tom Insprucker for his Web site committee’s work this summer preparing for a revamp of our Web site.

As a result, BMA has secured the pro bono support of Symmetri Marketing Group to take Tom’s committee’s findings and implement many of the recommendations, including a design overhaul, over the coming months. Thank you Carl Triemstra, Mark Masseur and Michael Smethurst!

Thanks also to the tireless efforts of BMA member Stan Bond, CEO of Hamilton & Bond and BMA’s long-time Web master, who built BMA’s current Web site back in 2002 and who will work closely with Symmetri on the revamp.

The new site, which will include expanded Web 2.0 functionality, will be live by the end of Q1 2009, if not sooner. Watch, though, for some much quicker cosmetic improvements to be made within the next several months.

Important News on Event Registration!

BMA is converting this month to a new member database system, Computility, and we want you to be aware of one change.

Even if you have registered for past BMA events, the very next time you register, you will be asked to create an account. This step will enable us to better track what events you are attending and have attended.

Despite a little extra up-front work, here’s the benefit for you: You will no longer have to enter contact information each time you sign up for a BMA event. So far the system is working well, but please give us your feedback as you begin to use it.

If you are not already a member of BMA, please consider joining today. You can join, register for BMA programs and subscribe to the BMAIL through the BMA Web site.

We hope to many of you at our 2009 events.

Best Regards,