As the New Year dawned, I had been pondering on my highs and lows of 2013. When I tackled the career part of my life, being a finalist for New Marketer of the Year in the CIM Marketing Excellence Awards trumped everything else on the list. This category required nominees to have less than 3 years of experience in marketing. Since it was the first award I had gone for as a full-time marketer, being made a finalist came as a pleasant surprise.
I also realized that delivering a successful campaign required three key elements when starting out, namely: passion, work ethic and business support.
The campaign I entered into the awards was for the digital elements I had been responsible for during the Investec Global Insights Conference in 2013. These elements included online registration, a microsite, an iOs app and an NFC badge system that I had designed.
My passion for digital allowed me to come up with the NFC badge system and push for its implementation. Without passion, it is all too easy to back out of a challenging task. I pitched the idea way before the conference was supposed to happen, enough time for the relevant stakeholders to validate, consider and allocate some budget towards it. Passion definitely gave me the fuel to keep trying and find something that eventually worked for everyone.
A solid work ethic gave me the backbone to achieve all the digital elements in time and in working order for the conference. Obviously, I had to work with different teams, partners and stakeholders, but I still had the ultimate responsibility when it came to digital so a good work ethic was essential. It was definitely tough, but it did wonders for my personal growth.
Finally, proper business support was needed for this project to succeed. I couldn't have done it without the budget, the people in the various teams that I worked with and the trust that my colleagues gave me in relation to the project.
For all those starting out in the marketing world, passion, work ethic and business support is what you should be developing.
And to CIM, thank you so much for hosting the Marketing Excellence Awards. Being a finalist not only acknowledged my previous work, it also inspires me to become a better marketer every single day.