Ade Onilude, Event Organiser

Finally I’ve been inspired by the amazing women I’ve met since conception of the Women in Marketing event in 2004. From the team who represent the various branches of the Greater London Region, to the speakers and distinguished guests we’ve had over the 5 events. My greatest inspiration has been the attendees – some who have become friends, so launching the awards is for them.

The winners will be announced when you join us for a glamorous ceremony with distinguished guests, in November at the May Fair Hotel, London. You are still welcome to attend if you have not entered the awards. Download a brochure for more information about the Awards, and we look forward to receiving your entry – good luck!

Ade Onilude, Event Organiser.

Hi from Brisbane.

Well, we finally got our air conditioning put in, but can you believe two of the guys that installed it fell through the ceiling!!

It was very similar to an RACQ Insurance advertisement going around here but believe me very real!! So as a result we are now waiting for the plasterer to come and fix our hole so still don’t have air conditioning and it’s 36 celcius today!!!

So how is your Christmas shopping going? I’ve done mine now phew! So now I am ready for the silly season to begin.

Scanning the shops for presents!

I wanted to tell you this week about a new marketing craze that has hit the shops targeting children for Christmas. I don’t know if they are doing it in the UK but the offline wish list craze seems to have really taken off here in the form of scanning. See this article for more info

Children can now go racing round the toy departments of stores zapping away the barcodes of the toys that they want for Christmas!  Why didn’t they have this when I was a child I wonder – it would have saved lots of ‘thank you’s’ for jumpers and clothes I just really didn’t like!!!

But I think they may be onto something. Children are so switched on when it comes to media, consumerism, spending and computers that it’s the perfect way for a business to ensure that children get to choose what they want and in the form of their products rather than just pointing something out to mum or dad that they will probably forget down the line.

Is it a good thing?

I guess there are the sceptics that say – what about the surprises and the element of Christmas itself, but children don’t really think like that – for some it is still about Santa and for others it’s about what they can get. Like the article says it saves the hassle for aunts and uncles who think they have it right but don’t. I guess the only down side is for those parents that don’t have the disposable income to spend much on their children for Christmas, therefore the element of disappointment.

So I guess at some point some clever store is going to roll out a scanner for adult gift lists. I mean you can already do it online, and in the form of wedding gift registry’s so why not for birthdays and Christmas…..Gone is the element of surprise!

Santa bringing the shoppers in ….ker ching!

Talking of Santa though, maybe I have been out of the loop too long but I could not believe how much it costs to see Santa! I remember when I was little being dragged into some bright red igloo type thing by a scary looking elf to sit on some fat mans knee and being given a tiny toy all for £1.50. Nowadays the shopping centre marketing for Santa is huge just like in the UK. I think the cheapest was $17.50 to see Santa and have a picture taken with him, but of course there are the Santa ‘bonus packages’ which cost anything up to $50!

On a business front, I am sure it works, pulling customers in who might also wander around the shops and buy at the same time and after all; Santa was a part- creation of Coca Cola in terms of colours…..

Hi from Brisbane.

I am sat here wishing for cooler weather would you believe? It is 35 celcius here today and my husband still hasn’t sorted our air conditioner!! I’ve got every single window open, my fans going and I feel like I am sat in a sauna! But hey I guess you are sat in London thinking shut up and enjoy the warm weather…

This week over here marketing news wise, Virgin Blue’s loyalty program team are in trouble for ‘accidently’ sending out an upgrade offer to more than 1 million members. See  for more details. I think the moral of the story here is always double check your emails you are sending out along with your mailing list!

I’ve just finished a contract working for a big multi national company and am back to my volunteering work until something else comes up. The market seems to be looking a bit healthier and my recruitment consultant thinks that January will be a good month, so we shall see as it was reported a month or so ago that unemployment was set to hit 6.8% so it is still a tough market.

I am busy organising a Christmas drinks and nibbles here in Brisbane for fellow CIM members which will be nice. The CIM isn’t that big here in Australia but they are really starting to grow now so it is great to be a part of it all.

Mailed out!

So I have a bit of a gripe this week! And the culprits are direct mail and telemarketers! I used to live in Southfields and the direct mail was pretty intense there but here I have never known anything like it! You empty your mailbox and it is literally full of magazines and companies selling anything from food to dog hydrobaths to telling me what I should be buying my husband for Christmas.

On a smaller scale, I love direct mail and have done many campaigns myself – but every day we have bunches and bunches of mail which a lot of the time is duplicated or out of date stuck in our mailbox.  Now it just goes into the bin without my even looking at it, so my thought on this is would I want my brand to be one of those that  is associated with such a mail out and potentially is annoying its target market??

Don’t call me!

And as for telemarketers, Optus for me (a phone provider) is the most resilient and annoying telemarketer!!

I have had the same woman from Optus call me now on 6 occasions in the last 2 months. Each time I have told her that I am not interested and each time she has said she won’t call me again….and then 10 or so days later I get a call from her. I ask her why she is calling when she says she won’t bother me again, and she then proceeds to tell me that before she goes, she has a new offer for me!

Arghhh. I mean telemarketing must work, otherwise people wouldn’t do it but how far does the telemarketer have to go before they understand that people like me do not want their services – No means no right?, and if it wasn’t for the fact that I am tied in for two years with my iPhone I wouldn’t be using Optus anymore! Many people I know feel the same way so on a larger scale, so what does that say about the brand?

Right, I’m off to sit under the fan! Bye for now

In the Greater London Region, The Institute partners with several charities. One of them is the Prostate Cancer Charity . Their recent Tour of Britain Event was a huge success with over 1,200 riders taking part in Stoke and over 500 in London. But it doesn’t stop there. This year’s Movember event promises to be the best ever.  We’ll keep you posted.

From February 2010, members will be able to study for the Professional Certificate in Marketing and the Professional Diploma in Marketing using new interactive tutorials and live virtual classroom sessions. There’ll be no need to travel to a classroom. It’s a flexible, remote way of learning that’s perfect for people with tight schedules and an interest in using the latest digital tools. Find out more from the CIM Academy Team.

Zoe Gell

The social media scene in Brisbane is rife with Facebook, MySpace and Twitter groups to join and get involved with and jobs are also advertised this way. In fact I read when I first arrived into Brisbane that it is the Facebook capital of Australia, and more recently a survey by Scientific American Mind revealed that Australians rank 17^th in a worldwide study of top social networking users. 

Digital Marketing in Australia

Australia is really embracing the digital age especially where marketing is concerned, with many companies now expecting to see digital resumes with examples of work in the marketing arena as well as candidates with their own websites and wacky ideas about how to get themselves noticed. I haven’t had to send my CV out on a baked bean can yet but it did cross my mind when I was searching for work … how can I be more creative than all the other people looking. How can I get my CV noticed?

Changing economy, changing demand

I was chatting to Tim McNamara who works for Aquent – an international creative, marketing and digital recruitment company and he believes it’s now more important than ever to stand out from the crowd when applying for positions, particularly when competition is so fierce.He can validate my remarks about the employment market and said that the employment market in Brisbane – and indeed Australia wide – has changed remarkably over the last 12 months. He also said that ‘between 2002 and 2007, Australia experienced chronic skills shortages in a number of industries, but particularly within marketing and creative. The current economic downturn, however, has seen demand for marketing and creative professionals drop significantly, and fast. For the first time in recent memory, these professionals find themselves in ample supply but relatively modest demand.’

I have heard the same from my marketing chums in the UK.

Depressing! But he did have something optimistic to say- .. ‘that the lull will not last forever; indeed, we are seeing some encouraging signs emerge as we head into 2010 and our recent Aquent Market Eye Survey indicates permanent hiring intentions are on the way up now, but in the current environment it is imperative to shine through a polished application.’Refining your strategy

He gave some advice to anyone currently looking for a job whether it is in the UK or in Australia ; ‘Emailing a generic cover letter and resume and expecting the job offers to flood in is not going to prove effective in this market; those who succeed are the ones who go that extra mile, do research on and show an interest in the company they are applying to.’

Things are starting to pick up here though with an interest rate rise predicted shortly and I am noticing  that more and more marketing jobs are starting to pop up which was not the case earlier in the year.  So all is not lost and there is a mood of optimism out here at the moment.

If you are interested in how to stand out above the rest when applying for a new job, I found a recent article that Tim wrote really useful so here is the link if you would like to read it for yourself..

 Bye for now

 Z

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Don’t forget to take part in The Institute’s Marketing Trends Survey.  T he study is being undertaken amongst The Institute’s UK members and other professional marketers, and covers a number of issues, including the current economic climate, the impact of the recession, views on the Government’s engagement with businesses and how marketing spend is changing.

Katharine Wilson looks at mentoring.

Talking about your ‘career’ always makes it sound terribly grown-up; like you’ve thought everything through and have a long term plan about what you want to do and where you want to go.

I don’t think I’ve ever had a career plan. I couldn’t say that it was my explicit intention to work in marketing when I left university with a degree in American Studies. Like many people, it was more luck than judgement that I fell into marketing as a result of a natural evolution of roles; starting with my first job working for a publishing and events company.

Over the years, I’ve enjoyed the challenges and variety that marketing in the voluntary and public sector provides and would consider myself to have built a career in marketing. Yet I’d reached a point where I felt that I needed to change and progress but didn’t know how. All I knew was that I wasn’t immediately seeking a new job.

Getting to grip with the issue

So when I heard about GLR’s mentoring scheme it seemed a great opportunity to get some insight and constructive advice from a more senior and experienced colleague. Also, I may have had a ten-year career in marketing; in practice, I have only worked for a small number of organisations (well two really!) and getting a fresh perspective would be beneficial.

Getting started

My first step was to get in contact with GLR’s mentoring scheme. They sent me a list (anonymised) of potential mentors and I selected two or three suitable candidates. The scheme contacted my first choice. Luckily they were happy to oblige.

After a brief flurry of emails we arranged to meet at my mentor’s office on the university campus where he lectures. It was bright sunny day so I chose to walk from the station and arrived feeling rather hot and bothered. The university campus looked lovely glorious in the sunshine though so we started the visit with a little tour. This was interesting and meant we had something to talk about straightaway.

After the tour, we headed for the coffee shop where we talked about our current roles and in particular marketing in the NHS. It was very much a ‘getting to know one another’ meeting and I felt quite comfortable. It was interesting to hear about my mentor’s background and he was already able to provide some useful tips about MBAs as I was about to embark on my own. After about an hour and an half, I had to head back to the office so we agreed to email about arranging another potential meeting and that this time he would come to me.

Next steps

It’s early days but I feel quite positive about the mentoring scheme. I envision it being a great support to me as I seek to develop my career and complete an MBA. Plus, at the outset, I expressed an interest in potentially becoming a mentor myself one day so I am also going to be watching and learning in the hope that one day I will feel able to offer the same level of support to another marketer.

The GLR has plans to put together a new speed mentoring initiative. Watch this blog for updates.

Zoe Gell

Hello again from sunny Brisbane. It’s been all go here – dust storms for starters!! It was like the Sahara here for a while….

I have to say I am actually missing the cooler London weather, the heat here is starting to really drive me crazy and my husband has been consulting numerous air conditioning companies to sort some out for our house – but as of yet can’t decide which to go for, so in the mean time I am frying like a proper English breakfast!

So last time I was telling you how I had packed up, left my lovely marcomms job and moved my life down under to Brisbane. I thought it would be so easy to breeze into a new marketing job but as I soon discovered I couldn’t have arrived at a worse time.

The recruitment consultancy I registered with at the time said had I arrived six months earlier I would have been fighting off employers with a stick! But I had arrived in the middle of what was described as the worst economic crisis in a very long time!! I did manage to get work but it wasn’t that easy. I was so used to the plethora of marketing recruiters in London that I suddenly found that it is a lot smaller and personal here in Brisbane, with the general rule being that you stick to one recruitment agency and not register with several like everyone does in London.

What doesn’t kill you…

It got quite depressing at one point as I was applying for job after job and not even getting a ‘no’ letter let alone an interview. I started to think something was wrong with me and that maybe I had imagined all the things I had done and the skills that I had. I changed my attitude and decided I needed to see what was out there and to do some more investigating into how people get jobs in Brisbane.

I did get a job and am enjoying the contracting scene, seeing what is out there. I have started to do some volunteer work for charities when not working on a contract which I have found rewarding and also a good way to network and find out about jobs that aren’t advertised.

Building a network

It seems to be a lot about networking here in Brisbane at the moment. Who you know counts for a lot. There are a lot of networking groups in Brisbane which I have duly noted and promised myself I will attend at some point such as Babes in Business, Network Marketing and Brisbane Women – (sorry for the guys out there!) there are other non single gender networking groups too such as the Meet-up groups… and I have heard from a lot of colleagues that they find networking the best way to get new contracts and to move up in business.

Bye for now

From Zoe Gell

I’m in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. How on earth did that happen?

I was very happy living and and working in London. Then I met my blonde-haired blue-eyed, sweep-me-off-my feet guy! He just happened to be Australian and he took me to Norway and proposed with a nice sparkly ring. We’ve been married for nearly three years!

I left my nice job as Head of Marketing for a property company and travelled all the way to Brisbane where my husband assured me that we were going to paradise and it would be really easy to fit in, find a new marketing job and live a fabulous life down under! He even agreed to travel for six months on the way as a sweetener – so I got to see most of south east Asia, Russia and Europe!

OK so now I am here. Is it the same as the UK? No. It’s actually very different.

Just subtle things really like having to pay to see the doctor, not being able to buy alcohol in the supermarket(!!) – in Queensland – I think you can in other states, having to show ID to send a parcel overseas – going to the local hotel which is not a traditional hotel here, they are hotels i.e. a place with a bar but no bedrooms! (Confused? Yes I was too!)

And trying to find a job in Australia has had its ups and downs. The marketing industry is quite similar yet very different. More on that in my next post.

I’ll be back in touch soon.