The Marketing Academy raises more than £30k for Comic Relief

After an eight-week training programme, eight marketers put on a completely improvised comedy show to raise funds for the charity.

The Marketing Academy’s improvised comedy show has raised more than £30,000 for Comic Relief so far, with four of the marketing stars joining this year’s Festival of Marketing to share their experiences.

To mark the 10th anniversary of The Marketing Academy, marketers from Microsoft, Disney, TSB and Eve Sleep were among a group that undertook an eight-week training programme, culminating in a performance on 3 March in aid of the charity.

TSB CMO Pete Markey, an alumni of The Marketing Academy’s Fellowship programme who came up with the idea, Starbucks senior vice president of marketing, product and brand EMEA Maria Sebastian, Microsoft’s director of consumer marketing Paul Davies, and former Walt Disney marketer Tony Miller, will discuss how their experiences have helped them professionally during a session at Marketing Week’s flagship conference in October.

“Improvised comedy is a brilliant skill to stretch and develop your creative thinking and to build confidence,” Markey says. “As senior marketers, creativity is a vital part of our roles but in corporate life can sometimes become a lost art, so our aim was to develop as individuals and as a group across each lesson and 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 in the UK, Australia and the US with the skills they need to flourish.

It also runs the Fellowship programme, which helps CMOs become CEOs, in EMEA and the US. Alongside this is The Marketing Academy Foundation, a charity dedicated to providing access to a career in marketing for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds through apprenticeships.

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