Marketers to put on improvised comedy show for Comic Relief
To mark the 10th anniversary of The Marketing Academy, marketers from Microsoft, Disney, TSB and Eve Sleep are among a group that will undergo an eight-week training programme culminating in a March show for the charity.
Marketers from Microsoft, Disney, TSB and Eve Sleep are among a group that are to put on a show of improvised comedy to raise money for Comic Relief.
Part of the 10th birthday celebrations for The Marketing Academy, the totally improvised live show will take place in London on 3 March.
Starting now, the eight marketers will go through an eight-week training programme led by Ed Pithie, who runs improvised comedy workshop Dingbats and works in the Gatwick Airport marketing team.
The event will have five headline sponsors including Spotify, VCCP/VCCP Media, the7stars, Mail Metro Media and TSB. Oliver are the official content partner for the event and will be producing a series of short films and blogs leading up to the show in March. More than £20,000 has been raised to date.
The idea came from TSB CMO Pete Markey, an alumni of The Marketing Academy’s Fellowship programme , who has been learning improvised comedy for the past 12 months.
Markey says: “Improvised comedy is a brilliant skill to stretch and develop your creative thinking and to build confidence. As senior marketers, creativity is a vital part of our roles but in corporate life can sometimes become a lost art so our aim is develop as individuals and as a group across each lesson and to put on an amazing show to raise lots of money for Comic Relief too.”
The Marketing Academy, of which Marketing Week was a founding partner, was launched in February 2010 and now runs scholarship programmes to equip future marketing leaders with the skills they need in the UK, Australia and the US.
It also runs the Fellowship programme, which helps CMOs become CEOs, in EMEA and the US. Alongside this it runs The Marketing Academy Foundation, a charity dedicated to providing access to a career in marketing for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds through apprenticeships.
The Marketing Academy’s global CEO Sherilyn Shackell says: “We’re thrilled to be supporting Comic Relief by bringing our community together at what promises to be a laughter filled event. The fact that so many of our senior marketers are keen to take part proves that CMOs don’t take themselves too seriously.”
You can purchase tickets to the event here and donate to Comic Relief here if you’re unable to attend.
The marketers taking part are:
Pete Markey, CMO of TSB
Tony Miller, VP for digital darketing and CRM at The Walt Disney Company
Ottokar Rosenberger, COO of Iglu.com
Cheryl Calverley, CMO of Eve Sleep
Michelle Andrews, CMO of Quilter
Paul Davies, consumer marketing director at Microsoft
Kate Bosomworth, CMO of M&C Saatchi
Mark Choueke, co-founder of Rebeltech
Maria Sebastian, former senior vice-president of marketing at Starbucks
Alex Batchelor, chair of Watch Me Think.
