Perfect Pitching

This week CIM North ran their annual student competition, which this year was hosted by McCann Erickson in Prestbury.
What a fantastic event: 13 teams of 3 students studying marketing at HE had to put together a 3 minute pitch with just 8 powerpoint slides to win The Pitch '08.
As always, it was a tough competition and the three teams that went through to the final showed us what talent is coming onto the market.
I did hear someone say 'this is making me fear for my job!'
Congratulations to the winners from Macclesfield College, very well done to the runners up from Isle of Man Business School and University of Central Lancashire and thank you to all those that took part to make it a super competition.
My thanks also go to everyone behind the scenes who made it happen, my Ambassadors that organised and hosted the event, everyone who turned up in the evening and of course our sponsors, without whom there wouldn't be a competition: Hays Recruitment, NXO Strategic Marketing and McCann Erickson.

If you weren't involved at all, we are hoping to have the website updated with photo's and video next week, so make sure you visit www.cim-nw.org.uk/thepitch to see what you missed!

Learning 2.0

Yesterday I attended the launch of The Institute's latest agenda at Moor Hall: Learning 2.0 - nothing to do with elearning as such but about how learning is changing.


Basically what we are saying is that what's past is past, the degree you got ten years ago, although nice to have, really isn't relevant to what is happening in the world of work today or the skills you need for your career. In fact all any degree says is you can learn to degree level.



What exactly does that mean? Interestingly, it was suggested during open discussion that in the future we would see job vacancies requesting you to submit a CV and three years CPD records.



CPD (Continuous Professional Development) certainly seems the way things are going as progress is such a pace, especially in marketing and business, that you need to continuously update and refresh your skills.



The other key point that came out of the research CIM has undertaken to prepare this agenda paper is that learning in a very broad sense, rather than just formal training, appears to be favoured as the way people will undertake CPD. So, the variety of ways you learn will enhance the CPD experience.



What does all that mean?



Firstly, it means that if you are a CIM member register today on the Chartered CPD Programme at www.cim.co.uk/charteredcpd . Even if you are a Chartered Marketer you need to do this or risk losing your status.

Secondly, consider that fact that most marketing people stay in post for 4 years (significantly less for agency side) and CPD is going to be the back bone to career progression.

CIM Events

I have spent the last two days trying to sort out paperwork for our Sept-Dec 2008 events across the North of England.
I don't think many of our members realise the effort the branches go to to put together a varied calendar, or the long lead in that we have with our schedules.
But, that isn't why I am focussing on events this week - I am more interested to have your feedback on the proposed roll out of the pricing policy in the North West to the rest of the UK.
For some 18 months now North West have charged £25 for non members to attend their events but they have been free to members.
A number of reasons -

1) to provide an obvious member benefit
2) to give a perceived high value for our events
3) to encourage non members who are attending 4 or so events a year to join

As I said, CIM are looking at rolling this model out across the UK as at present pretty much anything goes. What are your thoughts on this? I know in a recent survey we did in South Yorkshire our members said they didn't like having to pay extra on top of their membership to attend events, so that does add weight to the arguement.

In addition to what North West does we are considering introducing a £10 charge for members who fail to turn up on the night and fail to let us know. This has caused quite a stir among the teams and it is a worry that members might decided not to book in the first place. There is always going to be no shows, I appreciate that, and in North West we calculate in 20% specifically for it, but do you think this would address the problem?

Top 100 North West Brands

I had a meeting on Tuesday morning to discuss the Top 100 North West Brands.
For those of you that don't know this is a collaborative initiative between Hill Dickinson, How-Do the CBI and The Chartered Institute of Marketing.

We did a survey, which was open to anyone to complete, voting for your favourite North West brands. The response was great and the winners were announced in November 2007. You can find out who they were at http://www.how-do.co.uk/north-west-media-news/north-west-marketing-services/the-north-west%92s-top-100-brands-revealed-200711201380/

The meeting on Tuesday was to review the event and discuss this years.
We all agreed that it has been a super start and we want to do it again so I can announce that the timetable is as follows -

launch in June
close mid September
event to announce the winners week commencing October 27th.

I would encourage you all to get your companies in the bidding and put a link on your website as we are also in discussions to feature some of the winners at Business North West in November.

Professional Networking

'Use YOUR professional network' is the message we are sending out to North of England members at the moment.

'It is widely recognised that social networking sites are
wasting many valuable working hours in the UK economy.
They are, it is fair to say, an entertaining distraction.
Professional networks, by contrast, have already proven their
value in a broad sphere - and the new CIM professional
network, cim.mvine, launched on 14th January can deliver value
for you as a member of the Institute and a professional Marketer.'

The advantages are clear:
Advice - access the knowledge of a network of CIM member
professionals in all marketing disciplines from across the country
and internationally.
Business opportunities - highlight your area of expertise,
answer people’s queries, become trusted and ultimately gain
business.
Referrals - in a network someone always knows someone who
can help.
Career / Recruitment - when recruiting or looking for a new
role, networking is proven to be invaluable.
Share - documents and other digital assets easily and securely.

The potential is enormous - we currently say that as a member you are part of a community of 50,000 marketers worldwide, and through this system you can actually network with them too!

The proof is in our members engaging with this new medium, and not to be unfair to our older members, I am sure it won't be all 50,000 that take this bull by the horns.
Anyway, The Institute is proving it is dynamic and listening to it members and I am sure the younger members will be pleased with this development.