For decades, PPAI’s North American Leadership Conference has been known as a gathering of C-level executives and key decision makers from many of the top companies in promotional products.

This year, some of those firms’ status as the industry leaders will be officially recognized.

NALC will be held June 4-6 in Washington, D.C. As part of the executive level content, which includes legendary Beltway insider Bob Woodward delivering keynote remarks, the event will feature an important first for PPAI.

During the conference, the Association will reveal the first annual PPAI 100, a ranking of the industry’s leading companies. The list – which ranks 50 exemplary distributors and 50 exemplary suppliers – is unlike any ever produced in the promo market.

Fully backed by research, PPAI 100 will not only track the previous year’s sales for ranking companies, but weigh many additional factors relevant to corporate leadership.

Revenue remains a key aspect of the scoring, but also considered are business growth over time, corporate social responsibility and technology practices, the strength of firms’ workforces, employee happiness, industry faith and beyond.

Placement on the yearly PPAI 100 will become the highest recognition PPAI bestows on its most exemplary member companies. It is slated to be released to the full industry later in June via PPAI Media and reported in the July issue of PPAI Magazine.

Industry pros eager to be among the first to find out which companies made the inaugural PPAI 100 list and where they rank are welcome to register for NALC. The event has sold out, but a waiting list is being collected.

During the conference, PPAI will unveil the rankings on both sides of the industry to NALC attendees, and content from the stage will dive into the data.

Scheduled to speak on the second day of the conference is Scott Berinato, senior editor of Harvard Business Review and the author of Good Charts: The HBR Guide to Making Smarter, More Persuasive Data Visualizations. In a conversation with PPAI Media’s Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Josh Ellis, Berinato will lay out the nitty gritty data behind the PPAI 100, and what companies of all sizes can learn from this new initiative.

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