As a professional trade association, Photo Marketing Association (PMA) assists the worldwide photo imaging community of 15,000 members in 100-plus countries. PMA was established in 1924. The membership of PMA continued to grow for many years by providing general business and retail information, products, programs, and services that assisted retailers to run more efficient businesses. Another way to look at it is “helping our members expand their market share and profitability.”

In recent years, one of the challenges of a trade association is remaining relevant to members 365 days a year. In these trying economic times, it has become increasingly difficult to maintain membership loyalty. Do you provide relevant, substantial member benefits that will assist in either maintaining or growing both your member renewal and new members obtained? Can your members gather all the information they need in an electronic format?

During our spring 2009 committee meetings, we were beginning to hear that in some cases, we were not relevant. We also were asked if PMA disappeared, what effect would that have on the photo/imaging industry? This was a wakeup call!

Our reaction after soliciting input from our key stakeholders has been to launch PMA+. We have continued our traditional PMA member services (assist members’ business operations) while launching PMA+. PMA+ will provide members who pay the extra fee, regularly updated, turnkey solutions that facilitate consumer interaction with member companies and consumer spending. Each quarter, we will provide marketing templates for retailers to utilize to drive more consumer traffic into their retail outlets. Each quarter, the ready-to-use marketing tools will be calendar event-driven. Each quarter, participating members will have up-to-date market-driven promotional tools to help remind their customers who they are and what they have to offer. The majority of our membership does not have the skill set or the financial reserves to pay an ad agency to develop the materials.

One of our goals (measured by data and matrixes) is to change a perception that our membership’s portfolio of services was out of date. By increasing current membership benefits and offering in tandem a new membership program, we have altered the perception outlined.

I recently asked a number of prominent trade association CEOs “How will your association be different in two to three years to be relevant 365 days a year?”

Tim DeWitt, Executive Director of Michigan Manufactured Housing, RV & Campground Association said, “The future for our industry association will be ‘coalition and partnerships.’ Our members are downsizing and we have to create value for smaller members.”

Bryan Silberman, President & CEO of Produce Marketing Association stated “We need to provide a better understanding of what is on the horizon through trends and research, and help guide our members toward the future. Also, we need a blending of traditional association management skills and the addition of subject/topic experts from our industry. Silberman added that “We need to add the best of the best to address the issues our members expect answers to.”

“We should continue to do what we do, but do it better. said Ralph Nappi, President of the Association for Supplier of Printing, Publishing and Converting Technologies. “We must focus on our core competencies which are providing networking through trade shows and conventions, gathering statistics, international activities and publishing newsletters.” Nappi believes associations will be relevant as long as they deliver what the industry expects, but continue to improve what they do.

William Harley, President & CEO of Outdoor Power Equipment Institute believes the future of his association will contain:

• Continued consolidation of member and non-member companies
• More diversified membership into non-traditional products
• Absorption of niche associations in the outdoor power equipment universe and/or providing association management services to those niche associations
• Continued expansion of public affairs/government relations efforts via additional staff or target outsourcing
• Major turnover in board of directors as boomers retire
• More co-location with other, smaller trade shows

Jay Karen, President & CEO of Professional Association of Innkeepers International sums up his thoughts: “I think we will continue to separate ourselves from the “one size fits all” approach with regard to the choices we provide members and even non-members. As long as the technology and other resources we use as association executives allow us to manage personalization and the ability to offer a wide range of options to our members, we should do our best to accommodate individual needs and desires. This applies to membership and membership benefit choices, the way attendees register for and consume events, the ability for members to create and participate in custom communities, and even the way they volunteer to support the association. Our menu will start looking more like the Greek diner menu with hundreds of choices and something for everyone, and less like the local restaurant’s prix fixe menu.”

Gary LaBranche, President & CEO of Association for Corporate Growth (ACG) believes the way forward for members of the ACG is not as clear as has been in the past. ACG members – middle-market private equity professionals and others involved in providing capital to growing companies – are facing unprecedented regulation and legislation. The leadership of ACG has responded by venturing into public policy efforts for the first time in the association’s 55-year history. While ACG’s traditional focus of networking will remain a priority, crafting policy positions, strategies and efforts will be a larger part of his job as CEO over the next two years. While this is new for ACG, it is increasingly critical to members, and vital to the health and prosperity of the global economy.

“It seems that every association has been impacted by the recession by downsizing staff, downsizing salaries and benefits, and in many cases, downsizing member expectations,” states Jim Carney, Executive Director of National Truck Equipment Association. “The association community will not recover quickly form this situation. For many organizations, it will take at least two to three years before funds recover to what they were a few years ago as the U.S. economy struggles to return to its glory days. As a result, organizations will need to adjust to doing as much as possible with stagnant or slowly increasing revenues. Because of this predicament, associations of the future will be lean and will be run more productively – more like for-profit companies with key benchmarks and performance standards. Staff will be expected to do more with less. This will likely mean that associations will have to enter into partnerships and strategic alliances with other organizations and for-profit firms to fulfill their missions.

Carney continues, “This also means that associations, especially those that serve industries whose supply chains are going through rapid consolidation, will have to revise their strategies to serve a broader customer base. Providing services and programs for an audience outside the core membership constituents will be a must to survive. In this environment, hit-and-miss programs will not work anymore. They will have to be well-planned, deftly marketed and executed to maintain relevance in a more changing world.”

And finally, Doug Woods, President of The Association for Manufacturing Technology (AMT), believes that his association will need to be more collaborative and inclusive of other manufacturing-related associations and groups. “Our industry is very fractionalized and there are a lot of very similar associations all attempting to do very similar things for our members, but with manufacturing declining in the U.S., many of these organizations are getting smaller and smaller.  This causes many of them to focus more on how to make money to survive as an association vs. how to provide more value to the members! I think AMT will try to bring several of these closely related associations “under one umbrella” to remove the costs of duplication and provide more of a united front when advocating for the industry and collaborating on member initiatives.“ 

Woods goes on to say that AMT will also be gearing their services to more directly provide business and technology services to their members that directly improve their business operations.

As we continue to examine how we can be relevant and service our members, PMA will continue to talk with our association colleagues and learn from each other. That service alone solidifies ASAE as a key for us all.

Bruce Aldrich, CAE
Senior Operations Officer
Photo Marketing Association
The Worldwide Community of Imaging Associations