This year’s Annual Direct Marketing Association Exhibition and Conference is in the history books. The Boston Convention Center is in clean-up mode and all of the exhibitors have packed up and left town. For team-Structural, the show felt different this year. I wasn’t sure what it was until I sat down in my quiet hotel room and reflected on the previous three days.

I don’t have the statistics to backup my claim, but it felt like this year’s show was busier. I know in years past it seemed that most of the people that walked the exhibit hall were exhibitors themselves, almost as if we were putting on the show for each other. But this year the quantity and quality of traffic seemed better.

For the past three years, since the economic downturn, we have (as a nation) talked ourselves into a recession. Every day the major news outlets are keeping score on unemployment numbers, telling heart-wrenching stories of foreclosures and reminding us that times are tough. This is not to say these news outlets are entirely wrong, or make light of it at all. I don’t have my head buried in the sand. However, the news has a strong influence on perception and a negative perception of the economy seems to create a continuous cycle of negative thinking and negative results.

At this year’s DMA conference thousands of marketers from around the globe gathered to learn, share ideas and get motivated. From the response we had at our modest ten-foot island, in a sea of exhibitors, it felt like a renewed sense of excitement was in the air. People from a wide variety of companies visited the booth to tell us about their marketing challenges. The stories ranged from, “we want to do something more exciting”, to, “we need to boost response and find more leads.” In previous years the story was always about shrinking advertising budgets and doing more with less. Not that those aren’t important considerations, but those are defensive strategies, not offensive marketing strategies. This year the tone was positive, forward-thinking and all about trying something new to get better results.

One thing we always love seeing is people bringing by our pre-show mailer and telling us they kept it. We always send out a dimensional pre-show mailer because we practice what we preach. This year we had a pretty exciting offer. We invited marketers to bring us their current campaigns and allow us to bring them back to the office with us. Then, at no cost or obligation to the marketer, our designers and marketing strategists would put together a demo campaign, allowing them to see what they could be doing. Since we did get a nice response and really appreciated those of you who brought by your work, we wanted to invite others to take advantage of this offer. Simply send me an email and I will put you in touch with someone who can coordinate the demo project for you.

For the friends, clients and prospects we talked to, we want to thank you for the motivating and uplifting energy you brought to the show this year. As marketers, we feel rejuvenated and we hope you do to. We know there are still very real challenges in today’s economic climate. But one thing I hope we left for people who visited our booth was a sense of our passion and commitment to the marketing industry. It is this passion that enables us to strive for great results in everything we do.