Following on from our selection of 50 Golden Brands for our 50th Anniversary, we’re launching a search for 50 Marketing Heroes. Many of you have collaborated on www.50goldenbrands.com to ensure our selection of brands is as representative as possible, and if you haven’t already done so, we want to hear from you.
Our selection of 50 Marketing Heroes needs to be just as democratic. We want to recognise the great people behind the great brands and we need your help. Who inspires you? Who do you most admire? Which fellow marketer has most influenced you or changed your lives?
It couldn’t be simpler to get involved. Reply to hero@marketing-society.org.uk, using the template below, type in your Marketing Heroes. We’ve separated the shortlist into five different categories: Most Brilliant Brand Builder, Greatest Communicator, Most Admired and Changed Lives. These categories will be explained in more detail below.
Your submissions will then be collated to form our 50 Marketing Heroes shortlist. Over the next 12 months there’ll be various opportunities to vote on your favourites.
Please add in your Marketing Heroes to the template below and email by return. You can include more than one name and the names we include are just suggestions to get you started, not an either/or that needs to be chosen. The only criteria is that your nominations should be marketers from the last 50 years.
Most Brilliant Brand Builder
Which brand builders do you rate most? Is it someone like John Robb, who built Lucozade, Ribena and Horlicks at SmithKline Beecham or maybe Tim Mason at Tesco, or someone else?
Nominations:
Greatest Communicator
Who communicates brands better than anyone else? Could it be David Ogivly, from O&M, Anthony Symonds-Gooding, whose career spanned Bird’s Eye, Whitbread and BSB or someone else?
Nominations:
Mould Breaker
Which marketers should be recognised for ignoring the rules, breaking the mould. Is it someone like Freddie Laker from Laker Airways or James Dyson from Dyson or someone else?
Nominations:
Most Admired
Which marketer do you admire the most? Is it this year’s Marketer of the Year, Jill McDonald from McDonald’s or someone like Jim Burke from Johnson & Johnson who handled the Tylenol crisis so well or someone else?
Nominations:
Changed Lives:
To make this category easier to nominate a shortlist, we’re shaping it in term of the milestones that have shaped and disrupted different industries, whether it’s Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA who made design affordable for many or Pierre Omidyvar, the founder of eBay, who taught a million strangers to trust one another and empowered consumers to sell to each other cutting out the middle man.
Here are some more milestones we’ve been discussing that may act as inspiration for your own nominations. Search empowering consumers from Google founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin; the world becomes a smaller place thanks to cheap flights from easyjet founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou; communications for all as mobile phones grow in popularity thanks to marketers like Charles Dunstone, founder of Carphone Warehouse; the creation of the category of convenience food thanks to marketers like Ken Webb from Bird’s Eye; the creation of the third space and coffee culture thanks to Starbucks founder Howard Schultz; the evolution of multi-channel and digital TV thanks to media entrepreneurs like Rupert Murdoch. This list could go on and on but could also include categories like gaming,beauty, fashion retailers like Zara and Primark, the first pharmaceutical consumer brands like Viagra and Prozac, internet banking.
Nominations:
Thank you for getting involved. As members of The Marketing Society, it’s essential that our 50th Anniversary projects, whether it’s 50 Golden Brands or 50 Marketing Heroes, are as representative of your views as possible. We’ll be in touch to let you know who’s reached the shortlist of 50 Marketing Heroes. And there’ll be numerous opportunities to vote on your favourites from each of the five categories over the next 12 months. The winners will be announced on 16 November 2009 in a special 50th Anniversary awards ceremony.