Scottish Marketing Association

The SMA exhibition, which introduced the SMA, its objectives and its membership to the wider advertising and marketing community, formed a part of the Scottish Advertising Awards Nominations Exhibition, which attracted great interest.

Twenty of the Scottish Marketing Association’s members took the opportunity to use this exhibition to show some of the creative work that they had created in the last year or to illustrate the quality of marketing campaigns that they have been involved in recently.

Exhibiting last week were 1576, Arc Worldwide, BD-NTWK, Citigate Smarts, Denholm Associates, Elmwood, Family, Feather Brooksbank, FrameC, Jump Marketing, The Leith Agency, Marsh Data, Navigator Responsive Advertising, Profile Plus, Red Cell, Redpath, SSK Conferences and Live Events, Third Eye Design, Tuna and WWAV Rapp Collins Scotland.

Member agencies were encouraged to invite clients and guests along to the private view and enjoy a few glasses of wine and the opportunity to find out more about the SMA.

The exhibition was also part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and members of the marketing community and the general public were able to wander through the exhibition to see the high quality of work currently coming out of Scotland’s marketing services agencies.

SMA members meet to finalise website and ongoing plans

Scottish Marketing Association members got together on 16 August at the offices of BD-NTWK in Glasgow to discuss the initiative’s progress so far and to finalise some of their forthcoming initiatives.

Chaired by SMA chairman Graeme Atha and The Drum’s publisher Gordon Young, members were officially introduced to the SMA’s website and instructed on how they can ensure that the site remains current with regularly updated content on members news and industry issues.

It was also revealed that again the SMA would be a major sponsor of the Marketing Society of Scotland’s Marketing Excellence Awards. These awards are being officially launched on 22 October at Scottish Courage, and the SMA will receive full branding during the run of the awards scheme.

Discussions for a joint SMA and Marketing Society drinks event also took place and a committee was formed to lead this project, which aims to bring the agencies of the SMA and the clients of the Marketing Society together in a social setting for networking purposes.

Plans for an SMA trade mission to Poland are still on track and a meeting between SMA members and the editor of Media Polska (the Polish equivalent of The Drum) will take place during October to forward this SMA initiative. This will be a new European initiative to support The Iceland Forum, which will see a group of clients and agencies spend three days networking and discussing their marketing issues in Iceland during November.

Other good news revealed that a number of member agencies, Redpath and Jump Marketing, had picked up new business as a direct consequence of being a member of the Scottish Marketing Association.

The date of the next general meeting was set for Tuesday 18 October at the Edinburgh offices of 1576.

Monty shows SMA members how to trounce the marketing society

There was fighting talk on one of Scotland’s top golf courses when the Scottish Marketing Association went head-to-head with members of the Marketing Society of Scotland in the Turnberry Challenge, a new event organised by International Pairs.

After bacon butties to settle some nervous stomachs, the two teams were treated to a golf lesson from Scottish golf legend Colin Montgomery. But did it make any difference as the 14 teams of two players trudged off onto the course?

Hard to say really. But what isn’t hard to say is that after a gruelling day out on the course the SMA just pipped the Marketing Society to the trophy by four points to 2.5 points, hoorah!

The Longest Drive awards went to Colin Hewit of The Marketing Society and Ross Duncan of the SGU. The nearest the pin accolade went to Colin Hewit (again) and Alan Frame of FrameC. The best pairs were Alan Frame and Ken Miller of Sportscotland with 44 points and Ross Honey and Graeme Atha and Ross Duncan and Fife Hyland of Carnegie, were runners-up both pairs with 42 points. Congrats to all who took part in the Turnberry Challenge, which proved that organisations can work together in harmony ... even with dangerous weapons in their hands.