Keynote luncheon

MetroRAP, PIANY’s first event of the year, took networking to a new level, some 500 professionals turned out for education and discourse about the newest ways the insurance industry communicates with clients and colleagues, including a keynote address from Jill Griffin, senior vice president of Strategy and Innovation, Starcom MediaVest Group. Griffin discussed real-world strategies and solutions for harnessing the power of social media and putting it to work for today’s agencies. Griffin reinforced the event’s theme that social media is not just the way of the future, but a necessary activity now for any agency to be successful. Kicking off her presentation with a YouTube video called Social Media Revolution, by Erik Qualman, Griffin urged the audience to get started, if they haven’t already, and provided advice on protocol for microblogging media such as Facebook, Twitter and Yelp!, stressing the importance of engaging customers and prospects positively and proactively in the digital realm with real examples.

“This is all about communicating, folks,” MetroRAP Chair F. Michael Conte reminded the MetroRAP crowd about the importance of joining the social-media trend. “You can’t ignore the importance of participating in the conversation.”