Marketing News South Africa

Chartered marketers re-certified

Last week saw the recertification of 100 chartered marketers who completed the 2007/8 Continued Professional Development (CPD) programme through the Services Sector Education & Training Authority (Services SETA).

"CPD was initially introduced by the Services SETA in 2007 and we have received nothing but positive feedback from delegates,” said Ivor Blumenthal, Services SETA CEO.

“During the course of 2008 we conducted workshops in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town and all costs associated with these workshops were covered by the Services SETA."

CPD was initially introduced by the Services SETA in 2007 and workshops were held in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town during 2008, which gave chartered marketers the opportunity to interact with subject matter experts, the programme managers and each other.

Topics

The topics introduced participants to new and challenging ideas that led to discussion. Topics included:

  • The Pivotal Role of Direct Marketing - Traditional and New Media, Trends, Quick Wins and Techniques (presented by Michelle Perrow), which highlighted best practice within direct marketing and focused on successful customer- and enterprise-relationship management programmes and loyalty programmes.

  • Sports Marketing and Sponsorship (presented by Michael Goldman), which exposed delegates to current local and international best practices with regards to sports marketing and sponsorships.

  • Consumer Loyalty Beyond Delivering Quality and Bringing Satisfaction: The Creation of Perceived Customer Value (presented by Francis Petel), which covered a perceived quality, different approaches to customer-satisfaction measurement and issues of brand loyalty and consumer resistance.

  • Building a Customer-centric Organisation (presented by Nicola Kleyn), which provided marketers with insights on how to mobilise their organisations and value delivery systems to put customers back at the centre of the organisation's activities.

  • Building and Protecting Corporate Reputation (presented by Russell Abratt), which explored the role of corporate identity, organisational identity, corporate image, corporate communication and the corporate brand in reputation building and management.

  • Marketing Renaissance (presented by Dr Steve Burgess), which focused on two vital trends within marketing - the ability to leverage new insights into the institutional context of emergent markets and the advent of the new “marketing engineering” era.

  • Innovation, Marketing and Branding in South Africa (presented by Gordon Cook), which highlighted current innovative thinking in branding and marketing and challenged delegates to think beyond the paradigm of a brand being developed as a result of a business being developed.

  • Trading currencies for the buying and selling of media space and time (presented by Dr Paul Haupt), which covered the history of and rationale for media audience research and the development of the South African Advertising Research Foundation (SAARF). It also looked at the segmentation of audiences, focusing mainly on the SAARF Universal Living Standards Measure (SU-LSM).

2009 programme

The CPD programme for 2009 will be made up of three components:

  1. A compulsory CPD calendar made up of four sessions presented as
    three-hour workshops in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town - two workshops
    will be run by international marketers and two by leading South African marketers. Chartered Marketers are required to attend all four sessions in order to comply with the CPD requirements.
  2. Participants in registered CPD activities offered through registered CPD activity providers, such as PRISA, SAMRA, the DMA SA, GIBS, Wits Business School, UCT Graduate School of Business others.
  3. Various activities promoting the continuing professional development of Chartered Marketers including the reading and publishing of articles and papers; giving of speeches and lectures; supervising, mentoring or coaching of other practitioners and professionals; attending courses and seminars; membership of marketing professional bodies and industry organisations; and participation in community or social development projects.

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