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Business Reporter
The Marketers Association of Zimbabwe will hold a two day business conference later this month in Harare to help business leaders expand their networks and make valuable personal and professional investments.

The conference, to be held from April 19 to 20, 2016, will draw interest from business executives from a wide range of industry sectors.

Professor Malcom McDonald, a world renowned business consultant who has consulted for many major companies across the world, will deliver the keynote speech.

He has consulted for companies from the United Kingdom, Europe, USA, Far East, South-East Asia, Australasia and Africa, in strategic marketing, marketing planning, market segmentation, key account management, international marketing and marketing accountability.

He is also an Emeritus Professor at Cranfield and a Visiting Professor at Henley, Warwick, Aston and Bradford Business Schools, and academic advisor at Oxford College of Marketing and in 2006 he was also listed in the UK’s Top Ten Business Consultants by the Times magazine.

Prof McDonald’s interests centre on measurement of the financial impact of marketing expenditure and global best practice key account management.

The first session of the conference is targeted at chief executives, marketing directors, managing directors and board members, who will get insights on how to overcome the marketing versus finance boardroom challenges.

The consistent culture in various organisations has been a lack of interrelation between marketing and finance, where most marketers have failed to justify their return on investments on aspects such as branding, advertising and promotion. Marketers who advocate a big share in the budget are now part of a “tug of war” to prove who actually rules the boardroom, which can be detrimental.

The Jumpstart Business Conference will assist the steering of marketing versus finance debate, in a way that ensures that both these functions successfully influence the overall direction of the business in a combined effort, rather than employing fragmented strategies.

The ultimate goal should be maximizing the organisation’s profit and enhancing shareholder value. Chief executives who will attend this business conference will benefit from a platform of new and innovative business and will also give attendees a chance to share techniques that have established them as leaders in their respective industries.

Professor McDonald speaks the right language to executives as he spends much of his time working with the operating boards of the world’s biggest multinational companies, such as IBM, Xerox, BP in Japan, US, Europe, South America, ASEAN and Australasia among others.

The marketing guru has written over 40 books on the subject of marketing, including the best seller ‘Marketing Plans: How to prepare them, how to use them’, and more than one hundred articles and papers.

The second session to be held on the 20th of April is targeted at all marketers. Professor McDonald will deliver a presentation on how to create a competitive edge for companies through marketing strategy.

Marketers, with their in-depth knowledge about markets and consumers, should act as a major resource for strategy formulation and this conference will allow marketers to get a pulse of the market and insights into strategies that drive business growth and help it maintain dominance in the current competitive economic climate.

Marketers will have a chance to interface with Professor McDonald who is the world’s foremost expert on branding.

He has extensive industrial experience, including as marketing and sales director of Canada Dry. Until end of 2012, he spent seven years as chairman of Brand Finance Plc.

His vast experience in consulting will provide marketers with a foundation that can transform their strategy outputs. Some of the companies he has consulted for include Mobil, American Express, BP, Kodak, Barclays, Hitachi and Xerox. Marketers will be able to apply the knowledge gained from the conference in their professional lives.

The value of networking cannot be undermined and this conference will indeed be a resource centre of emerging innovations. Studies have revealed that marketers have often been given a back seat role despite the centrality of the marketing function within an organisation.

Success in marketing should be defined more by formulating a strategy that clearly defines the return on investment, rather than place focus on creativity.

Professor McDonald is a leading voice in making sure that marketers formulate strategies that make “financial sense”.

Prof McDonald’s experience includes a number of years as Marketing Director of Canada Dry.

He has also successfully maintained a close link between academic rigour and commercial application.