Chicago wins with social media

It's pretty clear that Chicago is going to win our poll this week, "Would you prefer to attend NPE2012 in Chicago or Orlando, Fla.?" As I noted yesterday, it became obvious in the middle of the week that the folks at Chicago's McCormick Place discovered our Web poll, and they called out the troops to get out the vote. As of today, nearly 2,000 people have voted, and Chicago is winning in a landslide. Yesterday I informally credited Kathy Knusta, project coordinator with the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority (which owns McCormick Place) with the get-out-the-vote effort. But let's spread the credit around a little. Today I heard from Meghan Risch, director of public relations for the Chicago Convention & Tourism Bureau, who shined some more light on the effort. "As you can see from your latest poll, Chicago is very passionate about its meetings and convention industry," she wrote. "It's social media at its best. On Wednesday, I posted a 'discussion' on LinkedIn for the Chicago Convention & Tourism Bureau's Members Only group -- more than 600 of our 1,100 members are part of this group. That, coupled with the CCTB staff and McCormick Place staff, definitely contributed to a spike in votes -- we're committed to keeping Plastics in Chicago." Isn't it interesting how she used social media to generate such a quick and overwhelming response to a timely question? There's a lesson there for all the B2B marketing pros in The Plastics Blog's audience. The poll results don't bother me. The survey is unscientific, so readers should always take it with a grain of salt. It's interesting to see how people feel, and to get a rough idea of what issues readers consider important. In this case, many of our readers are very interested in the debate -- as well as the hundreds of non-plastics industry people who voted on PlasticsNews.com this week. (And if you don't agree with the vote, the polls are still open). Look at it this way -- Chicago's convention officials are putting on a full-court press to keep NPE -- just like Orlando's did last week. By the way, I took the opportunity to ask Risch about Chicago's revised proposal that forestalled the vote on where to hold the 2012 and 2015 shows, but she didn't offer any details. "Chicago is glad to have been part of the process and we look forward to continued discussions with SPI," Risch said.