In line with the 2021 MAA theme, ‘marketing that means business’, the Marketing Achievement Awards’ (MAA) Marketing Organisation of the Year Award is presented to those organisations that stand out from the rest through their consistent demonstration of the role that marketing plays in the sustained growth trajectory of a business.
Organisations that have delivered exceptional customer experiences and enabled consistent brand and company growth over the last three years are invited to enter the Marketing Organisation of the Year Award.
Haydn Townsend, MAA council member and Accenture Interactive Lead for Africa, as well as sponsor of the MAA Marketing Organisation of the Year Award, said this accolade recognises organisations that embrace and develop a marketing mindset and marketing culture as key business drivers, while meeting the needs of their customers.
‘The judges are looking for organisations that consistently and fully incorporate marketing as a strategic business discipline. The successful implementation of marketing initiatives must relate to sustained performance towards the triple bottom line over a period of three years. Entrants must be able to demonstrate the link between the business strategy, the brand and marketing contribution to its organisational success; a successful track record of execution excellence across multiple campaigns and/or brands; and evidence of synergistic portfolio management,’ Townsend explained.
He added that Accenture Interactive has partnered with the MAA on this prestigious award as it embodies exactly what the company aims to achieve by contributing to and influencing the development of the South African marketing landscape as it builds enduring brands and businesses.
Award entries must further demonstrate marketing successes across the spectrum of brand planning, consumer insight, communication strategy, innovation and campaign activation, in addition to the outstanding use of all elements of the marketing mix across brands and campaigns.
One company that reflected all of these aspects in its entry was 2020/1 MAA Marketing Organisation of the Year Award winner, Nando’s. Doug Place, Chief Marketing Officer of Nando’s IMEA, said Nando’s has been a marketing-led business since its inception in 1987, and while the business is most famous for flame-grilled PERi-PERi chicken and slick, smart and funny advertising, it was thrilled to be recognised as a fully-fledged marketing organisation through its MAA win.
‘The marketing team is front and centre in the development and decision-making of all triple bottom line acts, and we drive a strong marketing-centric culture across our organisation,’ Place explained. ‘Roughly 40% of all our marketing effort and spend is invested internally to ensure that our employees – Nandocas – love our brand as much as our customers do. This coherence between internal culture and external brand expression is consistent across more than 10,000 Nandoca marketeers in nearly 300 restaurants across South Africa serving around five million guests a year.’
‘We don’t think of marketing as contributing to business success, we think of it as the heart and soul of business success itself. When marketing works effectively, under supportive, visionary and creative leaders (in our case, many of them marketing extraordinaires themselves), it defines the business, inside and out.’
Place said marketing at Nando’s fulfils two critical functions: that of being ‘the voice of the customer in any room’ where it solves customer problems (as opposed to forcing business challenges that need solving upon customers), and in being a harbinger of the future, pointing to where the brand is headed and how it’s going to get there.
This approach underscores the strategic business role that marketing plays in a high-performance organisation, and exactly what the MAA adjudication panel will be looking for in this year’s Marketing Organisation of the Year entries. Full entry criteria and details can be found here. Entries must be received by 31st January 2022. Modern Marketing is a proud media partner of the Marketing Achievement Awards.
MARKETING ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS
https://marketingawards.co.za
