By Claire Herczeg

Black walls, red lights, antler candelabra, deep cushy leather seating, a painting of a nude over the DJ’s stage. Where are we?  This is a professional networking event, right? The ambience is more like that of a turn-of-the-century bordello, so we must be in the tenderloin district, but no, we’re in the SOMA district enjoying a cocktail at HARLOT as guests of the San Francisco American Marketing Association’s joint mixer with the Research Club. Roughly sixty area marketers, both familiar faces and new, gathered at HARLOT on July 24th to discuss the latest in marketing as low-key background music accompanied the buzz “Who do you work for. . .an animation school?. . .customer relationship intelligence. . .targeted video content on a budget. . .love your business card. . .medical market research” A multiplicity of discussion topics! Attendees noshed on delicious Greek-inspired appetizers and crudités and sipped intoxicating libations from the bar. Every attendee received a handy charger kit good for iPhone, iPad and Kindle from Focus Forums (http://www.focusforums.com). Toward the end of the evening, a number of lucky winners scored free sfAMA event tickets and some excellent imported wines from JJ Buckley Fine Wines (http://www.jjbuckley.com) just for showing up and dropping a business card in the bowl! If you weren’t there, you missed the vibe, the company, the conversation, the edibles, the spirits and the raffle . . . you just missed it!

However, there are future sfAMA mixers. Who knows WHERE we will meet next time? Keep an eye on our website and incoming emails to find out more about our upcoming networking mixers as well as our content events!

Claire Herczeg is the associate vice president of Membership for the sfAMA chapter. She is the former president of the Los Angeles AMA chapter. Claire is an experienced market researcher and marketing services account manager. You can reach Claire at claire.herczeg@sfama.org