Recently I was invited to speak at the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies (NAMIC) Annual Convention in San Diego. It was a robust agenda, with a few standout presentations including my own on crisis communications where I talked about threat awareness and shared best practices to help every comms or marketing professional better protect their organizations.

Increased capacity among reinsurers and much improved balance sheets for mutual insurers were the underlying themes of most conversations at the NAMIC Convention. Another topic that bubbled up among attendees, media interviews and breakout sessions, included the talent challenge faced by insurers. As senior leaders across the industry retire, recruiting new talent—from the high school level upward—as well as succession planning, are becoming clearer priorities for many insurers.

Getting the Most Out of Your Conference Attendance

NAMIC’s Convention is one of several conferences on my calendar this year. While conferences like this one offer a range of benefits to attendees and the companies for which they work, one of the most overlooked benefits I see as a communications professional, is the opportunity for industry leaders to take advantage of a captive and often eager conference audience: journalists. Media attendance at most conferences across a range of industries has expanded significantly since 2021 and for companies who don’t proactively engage with them, I see missed opportunities.

Our team works closely with trade and business media. They are there to interview well-versed subject matter experts (SME), not merely to produce a summary of the conference agenda. These discussions are sometimes on background, often on the record and frequently include interviews that result in print/online stories, podcasts, video streaming interviews and more. They also help build critical relationships with the media, for the SME and their employers.

For companies interested in burnishing their reputations and raising their brand visibility, these on-site media conversations are potentially the best and most productive opportunities to do so. Yet so many organizations fail to prioritize these meetings despite leadership-mandated reputational goals for the business. Those same leaders, however, must insist that their non-sales executives make time for these interviews. Lacking a leadership mandate, these opportunities will continue to be missed as these same organizations otherwise strive to increase their reputational awareness.

I urge all business leaders: As you plan your 2026 conference schedules, require each of your attending non-sales executives to block one to two hours (not much in the grand scheme of a conference) for media opportunities. The return on investment can be significant and propel your new or existing public relations efforts well beyond what you thought possible both during and after these events.