Mid-Atlantic Marketing and PR Summit

Topics from how to make an attention-grabbing TikTok video to strategies for handling a cybersecurity PR crisis were on the agenda at this year’s combined Mid-Atlantic Marketing Summit and PR Summit DC, which was held at the Capital One Hall in Tysons, VA on Nov. 10.

The in-person crowd of 400 chose from 25 sessions and more than 80 speakers that were offered at the event, giving attendees the chance to learn about the latest high-tech communications and marketing products and services. Overall, there were 40 sponsors and 30 exhibitors from the marketing and PR industries contributing to the Summits. O’Dwyer’s was one of the strategic partners.

Hosted by Capitol Communicator, a media and events company serving marketing, public relations, digital and media communications pros in the mid-Atlantic region, this was the first time the Summits were held as a live event since the beginning of the pandemic.

Among the event’s presenters were Axios co-founder and president Roy Schwartz and Mitch Marovitz, director and professor in the communications, journalism and speech program at the University of Maryland, who presented the seminar “Using Smart Brevity for Effective Internal Communications.”

Schwartz spoke about how communications that are short and to the point can help a client’s message stand out from the enormous amount of content—from news stories to client e-mails, memos, and reports and correspondence from their companies—that people receive each day.

“CEOs are seeing that the need for great communication is probably the most important thing that they can do,” he added. Because of that, he predicted that communications will take an increasingly important role in a company’s basic operations. “In the past, the right-hand person of the CEO was either the CFO or the COO and I think in the future it’s going to be the CCO. Because everything is going to be about communications.”

Other presentations at the event included “CMO and Communications Directors Round Table: The Big Picture,” “How Covid Changed Communicating and the Way Federal Contractors Work with PR Agencies,” “ESG: Data Informed Communications” and “Meet the Media: Top Tips for Working with Government Defense Media.”

With strict Covid protocols in place, PR Summit DC co-producer Robert Udowitz said feedback was excellent.

He added, “We were overwhelmed by the interest from the PR and marketing communities to come to a live conference to discuss and learn about topics that focused on the present and future and look forward to producing it again in 2022.”