As every marketer knows, with any important project, the devil is in the detail – and that’s certainly been the case for the launch of the Business Marketing Collective (BMC) which we formally announced the launch of in January of this year. This followed around 18 months of discussion with various stakeholders and interested parties, more prominent of which were those at the helm at ABBA (the Association of Business-to-Business Agencies) that was to form a key part of the proposed organisation.
Since January, the steering group has been frantically preparing for the formal launch of the BMC, and are hugely grateful to everyone who has contributed to this effort. The website is due to go live imminently, brand guidelines have been developed, all collateral and documentation has been rewritten and redesigned and we’re preparing for a launch event where we can begin the process of bringing the B2B marketing industry together (more on this later).
The most important part of this process has been the selection of the Executive Council, which will lead the organisation. These were selected by vote from the extensive list of individuals, agencies and vendors who registered their interest in participating, with votes being cast by the steering group that has managed development to date. For the council we had specified a mix of seven client-side marketers, seven agencies and four vendor members. The BMC Executive Council is made up as follows:
Client marketer members:
• David Burnand, (chairman)
• Paul Higgins, CMO, TalkTalk Business (vice-chair)
• Annabel Rake, brand and marketing director, Deloitte
• Jon Moger, head of digital and content marketing, Juniper
• Georgios Kolovos, EMEA marketing director, GE Capital
• Claire Sadler, head of marketing, BT Business
• Simon Rose, marketing director, Experian
Agency members:
• Chris Wilson, MD, Earnest (chair of Agency Council)
• Rob Morrice, MD, SteinIAS
• Clare Lawson, client services director, OgilvyOne
• Drew Nicholson, joint MD, DNX
• Fran Brosan, MD, Ombono
• Paul Everett, director of marketing strategy, The Marketing Practice
• Danny Turnbull, MD, Gyro Manchester
Vendor members:
• John Watton, EMEA marketing director, Adobe
• Sylvia Jensen, director of EMEA marketing, Oracle Marketing Cloud
Two further vendor members were waiting to be confirmed at the time of writing.
Everyone on the steering group was impressed with the quality and quantity of individuals and organisations who nominated themselves to be involved with the Executive Committee – the only negative aspect to this is that, due to the size limitations of an effectively functioning management team, a great many will be disappointed not to be included.
However, the stated intention of BMC remains to involve as many passionate B2B marketers as possible within the organisation and its activities. The prime opportunities for this will be to join the various task groups which will be set up to manage BMC’s activities around specific objectives – we have already specified education, awards and events/networking as the first three such groups, recruitment for which will begin once the Executive Council has met for the first time. Agency members will be welcome to nominate team members to join these groups, and they will also be welcome to join the standing Agency Council, which will meet quarterly and resume the good work that ABBA was engaged with in helping the development and interconnectivity of B2B agencies.
If you’re not interested in getting involved at this stage, you’re welcome to watch how things develop – we’d love you to attend our launch party on March 27th (click here to register). We’ll be sending out regular email communications, tweeting and running regular networking events. Please stay in touch and give us your suggestions about how we can make BMC enhance the B2B marketing industry for practitioners everywhere – there will be an opportunity to register on the new website once it is live.
