THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY

The Marketing Association has over 6,000 individual members. And like all good businesses, we listen to our customers to ensure we are meeting their needs. We measure this regularly when people attend our events, professional courses and in our annual survey.

So how are we doing?

The good news is that we are doing a lot of things well. Our events rate high on content and delivery. Professional development courses consistently receive positive feedback and everyone values the expertise we deliver around advocacy and compliancy through Keith Norris.

Networking rates high on the list for marketers. Our Network of Executive Marketers (NEM) delivers unique opportunities at a senior level. The group meets regularly and we’ve had some impressive guest speakers, including Theresa Gattung, cofounder, My Food Bag; Mike Bennetts, CEO, Z Energy and Philip Poole, CMO, J.H. Whittaker & Sons.

And being the Marketing Association where marketers like to ‘associate’, we are working on delivering smarter networking opportunities for the industry - nationally and in the regions. Our plan for 2016 is to focus on national events such as Digital Day Out and the TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards and deliver tailored content for the regions. Our Knowledge Bites sessions consistently sell out in Christchurch and Wellington and they’ve told us they want more.

While our CIM professional development programme delivers comprehensive content we are also launching our first Digital Bootcamp in October. The series of eight modules will be run by various senior industry practitioners and delivered in practical, quick “chunks”. The objective is to send attendees back to work the following day with at least one practical piece of knowledge they can immediately implement.

We are also creating core packages of exclusive free and discounted member benefits tailored to business type and their requirements launching early next year.

What do we need to do better?

Our recent survey highlighted, the majority of our members are not aware of the many benefits available. We’ve started showcasing these in our weekly newsletter, Inbox, (subscribe via marketing. org.nz) and we are launching an awareness campaign. Our members have told us they want us to be practical, local and smart marketers. At the core of all our marketing activity is our database. Somewhat clunky and incomplete, but this challenge is no different from a lot of our members. In order to become smart marketers, we need to align our technology with our needs and we’re already working on this so we can improve our communications.

Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western masterpiece,

turned 50 this year and its influence can still be felt in films made today. The Marketing Association is a mere 42 years old and will continue to educate, inspire and advise our community of marketing and business professionals so that together, we foster the evolution of successful, market-led New Zealand businesses. Thanks Clint.