GMN Committed to Creating a New Era of Marketing in Africa
22 February 2010, Accra, Ghana
The worldwide professional membership association for marketing and business professionals, Global Marketing Network, launched its Ghana operation (GMN Ghana) and The Global Marketer Programme with its strategic partners Anglia Ruskin University and BPP Learning Media with a series of workshops, conferences, receptions and media events from 15 to 21 February 2010 in Accra, Ghana.
The centre-piece of the launch week was World Marketing Forum 2010, which took place on 18 February 2010 in front of a packed audience of 150 participants who heard presentations from leading global and African marketing authorities including Professor Svend Hollensen, Professor Roger Palmer and former Head of Marketing for Coca-Cola West Africa and Chairman of Strat-Afrique, Mr Kofi Amegashie.
The conference as opened by His Excellency the British High Commissioner, Dr Nicholas Westcott. Amongst those joining him was GMN Chief Executive Darrell Kofkin and GMN Ghana Honorary President, Martyn Mensah, who delivered his inaugural speech as GMN Ghana Honorary President.
Said Mensah:-
"Marketing is a Profession; and a good marketer must be disciplined, must have high ethical standards and must be directly connected to the sources of up-to-date and critically refined knowledge. The marketing profession, especially in Africa, is at a critical intersection in its growth. In my view, the confluence of the academic resources and the practitioners' trade represents the only sure route to professionalism for marketing.
Global Marketing Network presents a clear opportunity for marketers to re-position our profession.
"It offers credibility, recognition and standards. It provides a means for satisfying all the criteria of a profession by connecting a specialized body of knowledge to a set of practical skills. It establishes the minimum acceptable standards of practice and behaviour and galvanizes its membership to maintain these by giving them a common mission. Every marketer who shares these aspirations for themselves and for their profession must join up and be a part of the GMN."
He added. "Now more than ever is the era of the African marketing professional; an individual with a solid understanding of what marketing is and how it contributes value to the entire business of business; an ambitious professional who sets very high standards and who exercises a relentless focus on the changing consumer and relates it to the evolution of consumers in other countries and in other times. The means to seizing the moment and making the most of the African opportunity lies in adopting a global and professional posture, in seeking to be leaders in all spheres of endeavour.
"It is entirely appropriate that GMN is setting out its stall on the continent of Africa, sometimes described as the last frontier. Ours is indeed a continent pregnant with opportunity and therefore, now more than ever is the era of the African marketing professional; an individual with a solid understanding of what marketing is and how it contributes value to the entire business of business; an ambitious professional who sets very high standards and who exercises a relentless focus on the changing consumer and relates it to the evolution of consumers in other countries and in other times. The means to seizing the moment and making the most of the African opportunity lies in adopting a global and professional posture, in seeking to be leaders in all spheres of endeavour."
Mensah ended his speech by proposing two things.
"Firstly, each and every marketer owes it a duty to the profession to develop themselves such that marketers are seen as an attractive option for the job of CEO. Linked to this, the profession must set out to make every CEO a marketer. This in essence is the GMN proposition.
Secondly, as a continent, we have tried everything to get ourselves unto a growth trajectory - aid, debt, foreign direct investment, debt forgiveness, structural adjustment … and yet we are where we are. May I humbly propose that now is the time for a marketing-led renaissance of the Continent. Such an undertaking can only succeed with the growth in skill, knowledge and numbers of a cohort of professional African marketers. This, is ALSO the essence of Global Marketing Network."
For Martyn Mensah`s full keynote speech please click here
