Time for a new name for Advertising Association?

Your leader, ’Marketing’s far more than just advertising’, is incredibly timely, and it’s good to have your support in a campaign we at the Institute of Promotional Marketing have been waging for many years.

Credos is a good initiative, but it must focus on all marketing communication channels, not just advertising. Indeed, I have been saying for many years (not just the four I have spent as the IPM’s representative on the Advertising Association’s Council) that the AA’s core focus should be to make it clear that it represents the interests of all marketers, not just those who ’do’ advertising.

The AA recognises it needs to be more inclusive and now says more often that its remit is ’advertising and promotions’; but there is a danger that if Credos is seen to focus too much on ’advertising’ and not enough on marketing communications, then the AA could undermine the excellent work it is doing through this initiative.

Your magazine is called Marketing Week for a reason. We are marketers, and advertising is one of the specialist disciplines within marketing.

Marketing practitioners are integrating different channels to deliver a coherent message that drives behaviour change, delivers real, measurable results and achieves strategic objectives. The AA needs, in its Credos, to properly embrace all the skills that this entails. More than that, the AA needs to show that it has won the hearts and minds of the non-advertising disciplines.

A change of name for the AA might be one way to show it really represents the interests of the other marketing communications channels. Maybe the time is now right to change the AA’s name to the Marketing Communications Association?

Clive Mishon
Chairman
The Institute of Promotional Marketing