• Cover all of the entry criteria to give the judges a full picture of your campaign
• Provide a separate application for each category – you can enter as many as you wish!
• Stand out from the crowd and get creative!
• Include testimonials and feedback as part of your supporting material
• Submit your entry online, don’t send separate hard copies

For the latest information, details about the categories and to enter, visit www.wimawards.co.uk

You can also visit the Women in Marketing pages on Facebook, Twitter and Linked In to keep up with the latest news.

Volunteers in the East of England region hosted The 4th Cambridge Digital Marketing Conference to explore what matters and what distracts in the world of digital marketing.

It covered everything digital; from mobile phone and smart technology, to social media and search. There wasn’t a stone left unturned.

When examining social media, a key message is the volume of online users of social networks. Mark Cook of Further Group talked about speed of change; quoting the much used statistic that radio took 38 years to get 50 million users. In comparison television took 13 years and Facebook took just 5 months. This rapid take up proves that organisations need to at least consider a social media strategy to make sure they’re reaching these online users.

Have you heard about the Linked In group for London members? It’s getting a lot of attention from members and plenty of discussions have been springing up daily, so it’s well worth a look.

The group is an online addition to the popular Meet with Drinks networking events that take place every month across the capital. So now, you can keep in touch between events and start topical discussions with like-minded marketers.

When you arrive on the Linked In website, you’ll need to search for the group called Meet with Drinks – Network for London Marketers and request to join. It’s that simple and you’ll be in touch with a whole host of opportunities to make good connections within your industry. What are you waiting for!

The Prostate Cancer Charity Marketing Industry Triathlon

The Prostate Cancer Charity Marketing Industry Triathlon is an event held specifically for those in the marketing and communications industries. As The Prostate Cancer Charity is the charity partner of The Chartered Institute of Marketing Greater London Region, it would be great for members to get involved.

Held in the beautiful setting of Dorney Lake at Windsor, the site of the 2012 Olympic Rowing Venue, this is an opportunity for you to take on your rivals in the marketing world.

Dorney Lake, Windsor. The site of the 2012 Olympic Rowing Venue.

Taking place on the 2 July, you can enter as an individual or in a relay as part of a team.

John Lunt, Managing Director of Human Race, the event organisers, says “This is a celebration of the marketing world through sport. Get involved at this fantastic venue!”

 This is a great networking opportunity for the marketing world to unite in healthy, fierce competition. The event is aimed at all levels of competitor, from complete novices to more seasoned triathletes, so there are different levels of difficulty for varying abilities.

Get involved!

If you would like more information about this event and how to sign up, please visit our website.

The Prostate Cancer Charity is the title sponsor and official charity of this event. Please sign up and get involved and help support the fight against prostate cancer.

Hi there!

We are well and truly into autumn now and it’s still dark at 5.30am now so harder to get out of bed in the mornings! But life is ticking along here down under.

For today’s update I thought I would give you an insight into the marketing industry here in Brisbane at the moment.

Marketing – smart recruitment or not?
On a marketing front things are slowly picking up work and employment wise but it is still proving a difficult nut to crack for marketing peeps out of work especially for those with many years of experience. It’s very much an employer’s market which is great for employers but not for people trying to get jobs. I would imagine it is the same in London?

Many people that I know are actually taking lower level jobs simply to pay the bills and what this is producing is very happy employers but not necessarily employees! Why you may ask…well my theory is they figure that they can get someone completely over qualified for a position which means they are not only filling the position but are then hiring someone that they can tap into for their higher level expertise, all for the grand cost of a lower level salary.

Will this backfire?

What about the employee?

As soon as the market picks up I am sure that employees will be on the lookout for bigger and better things that match their experience more. This then means that the company that originally thought they were smart in their recruitment strategy will have to recruit again.

I spoke to Victoria Pickard, Marketing & Communications Agent at Aquent an international recruitment consultancy about the current market situation for marketers, in relation to employees with a lot of experience working in lower level roles. Victoria said:

“Not only will these employees be the first to move as soon as the market picks up, there can be a number of other negative impacts. For one, if someone is reporting to a staff member who does not match or exceed their experience, this can cause frustration and dissatisfaction amongst the team. The detrimental effects of reporting to a supervisor who has less experience can impact on everyone. It can also lead to the new employee going above their immediate supervisor’s head, which in turn disrupts the reporting structure, and can leave existing staff feeling under appreciated.”

She continues “It may be an employer’s market, however cutting costs in recruitment, can often lead to short term fixes, and long term issues. Investing in a new employee costs both time and money, and if they are only accepting the role as a short term fix whilst looking for a more suitable role, it can end up costing the employer far more than expected. Using a specialist agency at least provides some safety net to employers in securing a replacement, should this happen.”

For more information, Tim McNamara also an agent at Aquent recently wrote an article about employee retention which you may find interesting.

Bye for now! Zoe Gell

Well what a weekend it has been. I went to the coast up to Bunderburg and my husband and I got caught in all the Tsunami warnings for South East Queensland. So on the way home we drove inland and discovered some tiny towns that we never even knew existed such as Goomeri – the winner of the ‘neatest town’ award, Ban Ban Springs which I got excited about and then discovered there were no springs, and Nanago which was a very small country town and made me feel like I was really in the outback!

The latest news in Australia hot off the press at the moment is that Kmart has decided it wants to go against tradition and open on Anzac Day which is a memorial day that Aussies take very seriously over here – so there is a public outcry at the moment. It will be interesting to see how it affects their brand in the long term.

Australian market recovery
Things are looking up here in Australia economy wise with Reserve Bank Governor Glenn Stevens recently reporting that Australia’s economy is stronger after the GFC which is very positive – see the article for more details.  In addition Stephen Long of ABC News recently reported that Australia is showing encouraging signs of economic strength, with new figures showing a 5.5 per cent increase in new business investment in the final quarter of last year. See link. At the end of his article Long remarks that the Reserve Bank is worried that Australia is entering a new economic upturn with spare capacity.