Sunday Nov 17, 2024
Sunday Nov 17, 2024
Friday, 13 September 2013 03:34 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
an Indicator of Business Growth’ at the Cinnamon Lakeside Colombo, with over seventy attending the forum. The Honorary President, Dr. Rohan Fernando and the Chairperson, Nadi Dharmasiri of The Chartered Institute of Marketing Sri Lanka Region graced the occasion.
The speaker of the forum was The Chartered Institute of Marketing UK Chief Executive Anne Godfrey. Godfrey, MA (Hons), DipLaw, FCMI, FCIM has held leadership roles in a diverse range of membership organisations including the Law Society; a dynamic leader and Board Director, specialising in change management within the not for profit space.
The CIM’s Marketing Confidence Monitor run by The Chartered Institute of Marketing UK is a quarterly benchmark of marketing 
sentiment, comprising a trackable index score as well as in-depth analysis of the issues underlying the numbers. Launched in October 2012 and supported by Bloomberg, this important business barometer secured responses from over 1,750 UK marketers in its last quarterly survey – making it the largest and most representative study of its kind drawing input across a diverse range of industries, sizes of company and levels of seniority. The key areas of exploration are career prospects, budgets and investment, business prospects and macro-economic issues. The Marketing Confidence Monitor is conducted on a quarterly basis. During Godfrey’s presentation she shared insights extracted from the year one timetable with more prominence to wave three conducted in April 2013 with a response rate of 1,754.
Godfrey spoke about the disruption and role of marketing. She further added the challenges for marketers: “to remember the hard lessons learnt during the downturn, address the disruptions to market and customer dynamics, refocus the function on fuelling growth by becoming an essential part of the ‘big’ conversations and putting the capability in place.” Speaking further on the confidence and sentiments of UK, she said, “Marketers career outlook is strong and improving, but questions remain over personal development and a looming skills deficit.” Concluding the presentation, Godfrey shared insights on the influence and nature of marketing’s role in the organisation and what it meant for leaders stating, “Statistics shows that 59% of marketers report regular, structured access to their organisation’s most senior team; whilst 57% of marketers agree that their CEO/senior management view marketing as an investment and not a cost.”
The forum concluded creating a more interactive platform with a question and answer session with the enthusiastic audience. Over seventy top corporate executives of diverse industries attended the forum.
The Chartered Institute of Marketing Sri Lanka Region Chairperson Nadi Dharmasiri commented, “The topic discussed highlighted the critical role marketers play in any business and the issues and challenges faced by Marketers in the present context. We as business leaders hold responsibility to formulate and execute timely strategies in today’s challenging environment both locally and globally; I am positive that all of those who attended the forum left with the anticipation and determination of engaging themselves with this leading business barometer that will explore and track the marketer’s attitudes, sentiments, outlook and more importantly use the information to create value within their respective organisations.”
Expressing his views, Chartered Institute of Marketing Sri Lanka Region Head of Membership Development Sujith Silva said, “CIM Sri Lanka Region will continue to cater to our members with events of this nature such as the Breakfast Forum and Talking point. The topic ‘Marketing Confidence as an Indicator of Business Growth’ is timely and I am certain that our members would have gained valuable insights on UK statistics. We thank Anne Godfrey, Chief Executive of CIM UK for presenting an insightful forum and also thank our members for their participation.”
Sri Lanka Insurance and Stafford Motor Company Limited, partnered as principal and corporate sponsor respectively. Sri Lanka Telecom PLC, Sampath Bank PLC and Pan Audio were the rest of the sponsors on board.
The Chartered Institute of Marketing is the largest community of professional marketers in the world with 100 years of heritage delivering education, membership and insight offerings to the marketing and sales profession. As the world’s largest institute for professional marketers, CIM places great emphasis in maintaining high standards of quality and integrity and as such, develops and sets standards within marketing landscapes of UK and other regional countries in which it operates. The CIM qualification is the only international qualification recognised by the Royal Charter in United Kingdom.
The CIM Sri Lanka Region is the first international branch of CIM UK and comprises of the largest number of members, both professional and students, of CIM outside the UK; 3,000 student members and over 1,500 professional members, respectively. The regional institute has always campaigned for greater recognition and excellence in the marketing profession in Sri Lanka, through education, training and development.
