The CMA's blog's latest post announces two more keynotes at this year's Digital Marketing Conference in Toronto. C.C. Chapman and David Weinberger join the already announced keynotes of Mitch Joel, Joseph Jaffe, and Brian Eisenberg.
So basically ...
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join 
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Or, White meets Bread at the DMC.
Here's the thing. These guys are all really smart. And I intend no disparagement of their quality or their ideas. I either know, have met, or heard speak 60% of them. I link to them, schill their books and wax philosophic about their cool ideas. So, I am, in no way, concerned about the quality of their content or their innovative ideas.
What I am concerned about is this:
As marketers, we need to reach out to all types of people. Men, poor, women, black, Asian, fat, immigrant, lesbian, socialite, tween, Tory, labourer, hippie, zippie and yuppie. And to do that we need to hear from a variety of voices - voices that reflect the reality of the world back to us. So that our thinking and our ideas are enriched by perspectives other than our own. And that we can engage in authentic conversations with our customers. I'm concerned that five, middle-aged white guys can't do that as well as a slate of keynotes that included more than one gender, race and age-group.
And I know we can do that without sacrificing quality of ideas or presentations. So what if the line-up looked something like this:
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It looks a little more like the customers that I'm trying to engage. And in the above group of people, in addition to David Weinberger, you have the Chief Experience Officer at JWT (Colleen DeCourcy), Manging Director for Garage Technology Adventures and customer advocate (Guy Kawasaki), the president of Publicis Groupe's new "Future's Practice" (Nick Pahade) and the VP and director of account management at Vidal Partnership (Sandra Alfaro). Smart, snappy, innovative people.
So, how do we get this lineup at conferences like the Digital Marketing Conference or MSN's Digital Ad Summit (which was great, but a case study in middle-aged white men speaker symdrome)?
We need to start saying that a more diverse slate of speakers matters to us. To our business. To our relationships with our customers. Tell the Digital Marketing Conference Committee that you're not going to pay $743.65 for white bread.
Bonus Link: AdvertisingAge (you might have to register to see some of this content) has a feature each year, "Women to Watch". This year, they are celebrating the 10th year of it. It features talented, smart, innovative marketers who happen to be women. I'm glad they put it together and applaud them for doing so. But I long for the day when they don't have to.
Tags: Women in Marketing, CMA, Digital Marketing Conference, toronto, white bread