MAZ honours marketing executives

practitioner status certificates at a breakfast meeting organised by the Marketers Association of Zimbabwe.
Of the 55, 40 received the marketing practitioner status certificates and 11 received marketing practitioner status.
According to the recipients, the marketing practitioner status award was given to marketing executives that underwent a three-day intensive advanced marketing course during the marketers winter school held last month.
The course was conducted by the Institute of Marketing Management Graduate School of Marketing director Hellen McIntee, who is also a lecturer at Wits University in South Africa.
The participants were required to submit a marketing plan of their organisation or any organisation of their choice as part of their course assessment.
The honorary marketing practitioners’ awards were given to a few selected men and women in the marketing profession in recognition of their achievements and contribution to the marketing profession.
Some of the notable recipients of this award included Mr Herbert Nkala, Mr Douglas Mamvura and Ms Ruth Ncube.
MAZ president Mr Godfrey Dube said that he expected the recipients of the honorary marketing practitioner status to assist the association and the profession in a number of ways.
“We expected them to be ambassadors of the association, role models to young marketers and assist in the development of the marketing profession,” he said.
Apart from the awards the association took the opportunity of the breakfast meeting to launch its partnership with the Institute of Marketing Management on training.
Mr Dube said the partnership is in the provision of short marketing courses, in-house corporate training for all levels.
“Under this partnership we want to introduce training for local marketing practitioners based on the IMM model,” he said.
In addition, the MAZ president also announced plans by the association to launch a marketing magazine called the Zim Marketer in a month.
Speaking at the same occasion, guest of honour Dr Primrose Kurasha urged marketing executives to continuously pursue refresher courses in order to remain abreast with developments.
“You are always supposed to be developing ourselves. You need to constantly remember the basics of marketing to stay on track,” she said.
She added that marketing executives should also draw inspiration and marketing skills from small time traders at various markets such as the Gulf in downtown Harare.
Dr Kurasha said she always draws inspiration from traders marketing their wares at public markets whenever she visits other countries.
She added that there is need for marketers to be digital natives by adopting digital culture since the digital age is not limited and transcends all nations.
Dr Kurasha said marketers should also be cognisant of customer satisfaction in their organisation.
“Customer satisfaction is a function of marketing so we must be able to constantly gauge customer satisfaction for the benefit of our organisations,” she said.
In addition, she said marketers should also be able to express their expertise and to be imaginative when it comes to branding.
“This is a profession where you are allowed to be as wild as your mind takes you but at the end of the day you must make sure that you bring the dollars to your table,” she said.
To this end she cited two advertisement for Trust Bank that were done by Mr Douglas Mamvura, one of which depicted a bird picking the teeth of a crocodile which had its mouth open.
The advert was an illustration of trust while the second advert had a father who had thrown his child in the air and was waiting to catch the child as she came down, which was also supposed to signify trust.
She added that while external branding was important there was also need for internal branding.
“Employees need to live, eat, sleep and speak the brand of their company for it to sell elsewhere.
“As marketers it is our duty to transform any negative branding in our organisations to positive branding so that our brand is entrenched in every employee and that there is a total buy-in,” she said.
Dr Kurasha also called for ethical behaviour among marketing executives saying this was the only way to retain customers.
Meanwhile, the association will this year hold its marketing convention at Elephant Hills Victoria Falls in mid-October.
In addition, at least 146 brands will be participating during the MAZ superbrand competition slated for later this year.
This is an improvement from the 86 brands that took part during the previous competition last year.