'RevTalks’ in San Francisco shakes up marketing management!

Revenue Marketers: Are you in?

RevTalks, The Revenue Marketing™ Summit, finished up Monday, January 27, at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in San Francisco.  There were 36 speakers, about 15 exhibitors, and the same number of sponsors.  Created and hosted by the Pedowitz Group’s Debbie Qaqish and Jeff Pedowitz, this program was startlingly different in its content and approach.   The program easily fit two days’ worth of content into 8 jam-packed hours.  The SLMA Radio program on January 30^th will have selected interviews with Qaqish and Pedowitz, as well as exhibitors and attendees. 

‘Different’ is an understatement in describing RevTalks.   Usually, marketing ROI subjects are relegated to one or two spots on a conference program filled with web and email subjects ad nauseam.  This program had a solid 36 speakers with honed-down messages (15-minute TED Talks style) about how marketing is creating revenue, taking credit for it, and becoming a peer with sales.  If there were 400 people this year, next year there will be 800. 

While I have preached for years the equality of marketing with sales in creating revenue, the Pedowitz Group,  with the publishing of Debbie’s Book, Rise of the Revenue Marketer (review)and now this conference, have set themselves apart as surely as Reis and Trout did with their book, Positioning, and Geoffrey Moore did with Crossing The Chasm.   I talked about it; they did it.  Revenue marketing titles will begin to explode, and new conferences will wisely make this subject a huge part of their program. 

The speakers were from the corporate world; real life doers who walk the talk.   There were leadership presentations and accountability pleas (one aggressive speaker strutted her stuff in leather pants and exhorted the attendees to grow some balls). 

If anything, this was a conference that laid down the gauntlet to marketers everywhere to step up and be counted; to take credit for their contributions to revenue and stop hiding in the shadows.

Yes, for me it was inspiring, thrilling, and even electrifying.   I don’t know what the Pedowitz Group plans for releasing copies of the presentations.  Why not send them an email and ask them?    Why wait until next year to learn what every marketer should know?

I am glad the SLMA was a media sponsor and doubly glad that we placed our mark of approval on it.