Marketing summit brings industry leaders together to discuss shared vision for Scotland
Perhaps for the first time ever, yesterday saw Edinburgh play host to an Industry Summit meeting, which saw marketing association leaders gather to discuss creating a brighter future for Scotland's marketing industry.
The industry summit was organised by Creative Brief as part of the Edinburgh International Marketing Festival, which also saw The Ogilvy Debate take place yesterday at The Scotsman offices and The Festival Reception at Waverley Gate, where some 500 members of the marketing community gathered.
The Industry Summit meeting was facilitated by Kenny Harris of HeadSurf and the organisations present included Graeme Atha, Glen Gribbon and Rebecca Heany of the Marketing Society, Murray Calder and Sara Robertson of the IPA, Richard Draycott of MiNetwork, Deborah Dawton and Simon Farrell of the DBA, Justin Armsworth and Jo Scobie of the DMA, Justin Cooke of BIMA, Caroline Binnie and Nikki Sturzaker of the CIPR, Nikki Bell of the MRS, Tim Lefroy and William Blomefield of the Advertising Association and Cathy Crawford and Helen Gilmour of the PPA Scotland.
During the meeting association leaders debated on the creation of a shared vision for the industry in Scotland and all agreed that they would work more collaboratively in the future. Those present decided on a number of key areas that need to be developed in order to position Scotland as a world class marketing industry covering areas such as research and information, training and development, government lobbying, promotion of the industry both nationally and internationally and increased engagement with academia.
Speaking before the industry summit Paul Duncanson of Creative Brief said: “The objective behind this new initiative is to create a common vision leading to building a world class marketing community in Scotland. We hope to achieve this by, in the first instance, bringing together the leading representatives of our industry, client and agency alike, to share ideas, views and perspectives on our industry.The output we hope for would be a summit charter and agreed next actions around further research, communications or other activity.”
The next stage of this process is set to take place in October when a smaller meeting will take place with just one representative from each association present, so that areas for development can be assigned and moved forward with each association’s membership.