March 20, 1998 CHARLES H. LUNDQUIST COLLEGE OF BUSINESS Contact Pauline Austin (541) 346-3129) Editors Note: To arrange for media coverage, contact UO professor Lynn Kahle, coordinator of the National Advertising and Consumer Psychology Conference, (541) 346-3373; e-mail <lkahle@oregon.uregon.edu>. EUGENE, Ore.--Advertising executives and academics will trade ideas about the latest trends in the $200 billion-a-year sports marketing industry at the 17th annual National Advertising and Consumer Psychology Conference, set for May 1-2 in Portland, Ore. Portland advertising agency Wieden & Kennedy, which creates advertising for NIKE, Coca-Cola, Miller Brewing Co. and ESPN, is sponsoring the conference in cooperation with the University of Oregon's James H. Warsaw Sports Marketing Center. The conference will open at 8 a.m. Friday, May 1, at the Fifth Avenue Suites Hotel, 506 S.W. Washington St. The registration fee is $375 prior to April 15 and $400 thereafter. To register, contact conference coordinator Lynn Kahle, (541) 346-3373, fax (541) 346-3341. "The real value of a conference such as this one is that it opens a stronger dialogue between academics and the professionals who are in tune with what is currently happening in the marketplace," says Kahle, the James H. Warsaw Professor of Sports Marketing at the UO's Charles H. Lundquist College of Business. Kahle says the dialogue will not only be helpful to those who attend the conference, but also will be widely available in a book about the conference presentations to be published later this year. Some of the world's top marketing scholars will speak at the gathering on topics that range from ambush marketing to the use of violence in sport-related advertising. Twenty-nine presenters from seven countries will speak, including Tony Meneaghan, a leading European sports marketing scholar who heads the Department of Marketing at University College in Dublin; and Nigel Pope, editor of the Cyber-Journal of Sport Marketing. The Warsaw Center, the nation's first sports marketing program housed in a college of business, also will send a number of representatives. The conference is one of several organized each year by the Society for Consumer Psychology, a national professional organization with approximately 1,000 members world-wide. Kahle is past president of the society. -30- #P-6074/OrDailies,OrD/Bus,PDX,Sports Marketing,Special