AANA MARKETER EXCHANGE TO THE UK

 
On 15 – 19 June 2015 the AANA hosted its inaugural ‘Marketer Exchange’ to the UK. A group of senior marketers travelled to London and experienced a five-day ‘Retail & Innovation’ programme with 2-3 hour intimate sessions with their counterparts from advertisers that include M&S, HSBC, John Lewis, BT, Sainsbury’s, Santander, Dixons Carphone Group and Guardian Media Group.
 
This initiative was specifically designed to provide our senior members with an intimate and unique opportunity to be inspired and learn from the brands we admire from afar.

Five full days in sixteen sessions with London’s finest. The week was a combination of intimate briefings with CMO’s, a masterclass with McKinsey, special guest speakers including Futurist Richard Watson and a 90-minute chat with Sir Martin Sorrell.

The feedback from all the participants has been outstanding. On every measure the trip proved to be an extraordinary experience. We were delighted to hear comments like this echoed through the feedback; “any business that sent their marketer on the trip is at an unfair advantage in the Australian market, having seen the strategies here that we can bring back”Andre Reich, General Manager Apparel Kmart, and “this exchange provided the most impactful and relevant content for marketing leaders I have experienced” Louise Eyres, Group General Manager Marketing, Group Marketing ANZ.

Over the coming weeks we will be sharing insights and learnings from the trip as authored by the participants which we hope you will find informative. This week’s AdNews Magazine also includes an excellent summary of the key learnings from our AANA Marketer Exchange. Please let us know if you haven’t seen it and you’d like us to send you a copy.

Preparations are now underway for our 2016 trip.  Final dates are yet to be confirmed but we are targeting May/June again. Please get in touch if you are interested in joining the 2016 Exchange because spaces are necessarily highly limited.

My personal thanks go to each of the Member companies that sent their delegates on this trip and enabled us to get this initiative off the ground. Special thanks also to our partners GroupM, Adobe and The Marketing Academy who not only supported this idea but were instrumental in providing privileged experiences for our members in London!

The AANA group who headed over included marketers from ANZ, Virgin Mobile, Kmart, Nestle, Nine Entertainment Co, MEC, Colenso BBDO, Artifex Advisors, Beam Suntory, Kellogg’s and Bank of New Zealand.

View the full week’s agenda here.