Event Details
China is widely expected to be an economic force in the global economy in the coming decades. The City of Chicago needs to have a clear understanding of how it is perceived in China in order to properly capitalize on this opportunity. Paul O'Connor, drawing upon his years of experience leading organizations in both the private and public sectors, will present the results of a brand positioning study of how to best market Chicago in China. What are the strategies that need to be employed by all Chicagoans in order to best brand Chicago in China? What steps is the City of Chicago taking? What can you do as an individual? Paul is uniquely positioned to address this topic as he founded World Business Chicago - a partnership of the City of Chicago and the private sector, and a co-founder of the City’s China office in Shanghai - after a distinguished career in advertising, where he rolled out branding and promotional campaigns for Fortune 100 companies for over 20 years. Paul’s presentation to the April roundtable on how Chicago is becoming a global city was enthusiastically received and he is back by popular demand. Do not miss this encore presentation!
Registration
Register Online
Register By Phone: 847 310 0412
At times, we need to upgrade the room size to accommodate you so registering in advance helps makes things go smoother.
Deadline: 5/15/2008
Program
6:00 PM-6:30 PM: networking
6:30 PM-8:00 PM: presentation
8:00 PM-9:00 PM: drinks at The Midway Club, Fifth Floor
Speaker Profiles
Paul O'Connor (Speaker)
Civic Leader and past Executive Director, World Business Chicago
Paul O’Connor is a city-builder with roots deep in Chicago’s mud. His great grandfather Patrick had a house at Taylor and Halsted, and mastered schooners rafting logs down the treacherous lakes to rebuild after the Fire. His grandfather John J. got as high as a Catholic could at the First National Bank of Chicago in his 47 years there. His father Len wore large his love for the city in 20 years of nightly TV news commentary. His mother Jane was an arts and culture builder. Paul spent a good deal of his life trying to escape Chicago for other cities, but….
Eventually he took a spot at the end of a colorful line of windy Chicago boosters, founding for Rich Daley economic-development nonprofit World Business Chicago whose data-based approach to urban marketing landed Boeing and led all U.S. metros in corporate capital investment for six of the past seven years. Financial Times’ worldwide fDi magazine ranked WBC the best city investment promotion operation in the U.S., and then for all North America.
Paul came to WBC, which he left last December, by a circuitous route through advertising, corporate communications, global economic development, and state government service in Washington State and Illinois. His core craft is journalism. As legman, he called columnist Mike Royko “boss.” He was John Callaway’s first hire to create a nightly news show on WTTW. And he was urban affairs writer (and restaurant critic) for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
He is on the board of CEO’s for Cities; is a founding board member of the Global Chicago Center; served on the executive committee for the Chicago Central Area Plan, and on the Mexican-American Economic Integration task force; and was co-founder of the City of Chicago’s Shanghai office.
His undergraduate time was spent in Classics at the University of Chicago. Followed by Czech at the Defense Language Institute; then color at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Questions
Karl Buschmann
847 310 0412