Bennie F. Johnson, CEO of the American Marketing Association, was the guest on July 28 for Member Mondays, PRSA’s twice-monthly webinar hosted by 2025 Chair Ray Day, APR, Stagwell vice chair, and Allison Worldwide executive chair.
Day asked Johnson about the theory, advanced by some, that professional associations are in decline today.
“When you see professional organizations in decline, sometimes they mirror the profession, which is not evolving to what’s next,” Johnson said. “Like any business, you can choose irrelevance. And you can also choose progressive growth and dynamism.”
What’s wonderful about marketing and strategic communications, Johnson said, is that “we’re always on the cutting edge of growth. It’s in our DNA. And so, as a professional association, if we internalize that idea, there are opportunities for growth.”
The communications and marketing professions face “ominous, technology-driven challenges,” along with other challenges that “are intimate and nuanced, about our changing culture and responsibility,” Johnson said.
For PR and marketing, the dedication of volunteer Chapter leaders in associations such as PRSA and the American Marketing Association helps find solutions to the challenges facing those professions, he said.
“It’s this gathering of our friends and colleagues that pushes and explores new learnings, new ideas that drive relevance,” Johnson said. “If you’re coming up with new ideas, and you’re solving both consistent and new challenges, and you’re expanding, [then] you are achieving growth.”
‘Relevance is a badge’
As professional associations, “We need to make sure that the work we do reinforces mission and meaning,” Johnson said. For the American Marketing Association, the mission is “to be the essential community of marketing, providing resources and support. Growth needs to be in concert with our mission. And it all needs to wrap around relevance and impact.”
Relevance is a badge that professional associations have to earn, he said. And being relevant as an association means understanding and meeting the needs of people in the field that the association represents.
At the American Marketing Association, “Our superpower is the dynamism of our community,” he said.
Joining organizations such as PRSA and the American Marketing Association “changes people’s lives and careers,” Johnson said.
Watch a replay of the July 28 session below:
Illustration credit: thomas bethge
