June 2021

Insights from Steve Pacheco

President & CEO, American Advertising Federation

Let’s Get Back to What We’re Great At

America is opening back up!

The Advertising industry is picking up!

Let the rebound and recovery begin!

All across our great country, millions of vaccines have been administered, state by state mask mandates have been lifted, Social Distancing restrictions and capacity limits are being revisited and many localities have stated that it’s now “back to business as usual.”

Agencies are prepping for back to the office plans and scheduling face to face meetings for the first time in over a year. Clients are committing to ad budgets and media schedules for this Fall and beyond. And industry suppliers and partners are staffing back up and rolling up their sleeves getting ready for an onslaught of new assignments and production work.

The goal was always to resume some sense of normalcy over the Summer of 2021, and Americans started making long pent-up travel and vacation plans for the Fourth of July and Labor Day.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently advised that fully vaccinated people could go without masks in most indoor and outdoor settings, paving the way for many to resume their pre-pandemic routines.

We have followed all of these developments with much anticipation—and we’ve heard directly from many of you about just how ready you are to get back to business! We hear you, and we share in your desire to reboot and start again. As we have said often at the AAF, “We are building back and building better!”

The AAF has been cautiously planning for this great news over the past 6-8 months. And as we prepared new operational budgets for our new fiscal year and reset the latest timelines and updated our calendars and made even more contingency plans—just to be safe—we were always focused on priority one – the health and safety of our staff and all AAF Members.

We had an outstanding “virtual” ADMERICA in June—and with over 530 registrations—it was one of the best attended ADMERICA’s ever!  But it was missing something…face to face with real live People!

After all, we are the “Unifying Voice for Advertising.” And we’re our best at unifying when we are all together.

The AAF is really great at putting on LIVE EVENTS & EXPERIENCES! Events & Experiences are one of our four strategic pillars along with Advocacy, Education, and Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion.

You know all about our signature events like the Advertising Hall of Achievement which acknowledge and recognizes the rising Rock Stars of the Advertising, Media and Marketing industries each November.

And the AAF's Advertising Hall of Fame— “The Biggest Night in Advertising” always salutes the “living legends of Advertising” at a grand Black-Tie gala in New York each April.  After two years of NO live Hall of Fame in 2020 and 2021—I’m really happy to tell you that we go back to a LIVE Hall of Fame on April 26, 2022 where we will honor the Class of 2020. 

The AAF Central Region has announce that they will hold their Central Region Conference LIVE from September 23-25 in Amarillo. They are opening registrations to ALL AAF Regions. More info on this Conference can be found here.

The AAF Western Region has booked Las Vegas from October 14-16 for their Western Region Conference. Las Vegas!

And our first LIVE AAF National event (in over 18 months) will be the Advertising Hall of Achievement on November 17 in New York City. This will be preceded by our Council of Governors Meeting and Fall Board Meeting. 

Just seeing this on my calendar gets me stoked about all that’s just ahead. Doesn’t that sound awesome!

I can’t wait.

I look forward to personally welcoming you back to a LIVE AAF Event soon.

—Steve