"Growth" has been the title that the Association of National Advertisers has used for its annual Masters of Marketing conferences since the financial crisis year of 2008.
And even with the rest of the U.S. economy struggling to provide much growth since then, the ANA has delivered it consistently. In his first presentation to the conference since 2008, marketing consultant and former Procter & Gamble Co. chief marketer Jim Stengel noted that noted that when he joined the ANA board in 2001, attendance at the conference was 250, a small fraction of this year's 2,800.