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On Wednesday, the Advertising Association proudly launched www.aaccelerategrow.com as the UK’s first ever one-stop shop ‘how to advertise’ website for SMEs. The site is a key plank of our campaign to get more British SMEs advertising across a range of different media. It provides advice and information on how advertising can impact business growth, how to get started on a successful campaign, jargon-busting, templates and more.
The website is the next step in AAccelerate, our initiative to boost the growth and productivity of the UK’s 5.5 million SMEs to enable them to advertise their services to a wider audience and reach untapped growth and new markets. It is the first collaboration of its kind between the media industry and embraces specialist knowledge from APA, CAA, IAB, IPA, Magnetic, MarketReach, Newsworks, Outsmart, Radiocentre and Thinkbox. This comes ahead of our pilot SME programmes in Scotland and our forthcoming project in the West Midlands.
Our Chief Executive, Stephen Woodford, commented: “The SME sector is of vital importance to the UK economy but hundreds of thousands of companies are yet to advertise in a strategic and creative way. We want to change this. Advertising is a key generator of growth, productivity, jobs and exports and AAccelerate will serve to engage SMEs with the powerful benefits our industry can offer.”
Make sure you visit the AAccelerate website here and contact Project Director Francesca Woodhouse to get involved. Watch out for more exciting AAccelerate news soon!
The launch was covered by Little Black Book, Insider, Radiocentre, and more.
The latest recipient of the Mackintosh Medal, Tess Alps, was honoured at a gala dinner at the Goring Hotel in London on Wednesday evening. The dinner saw not only the celebration of the award, but also speeches honouring the Thinkbox founder from its Chief Executive, Lindsey Clay, and the AA’s Chief Executive, Stephen Woodford.
The Mackintosh medal is awarded to those who have given outstanding service to the advertising industry over the course of their career. Tess has a long and productive history in the advertising and wider industry; before joining Thinkbox, she was the Chair of the PHD Group in the UK. In her 13 years with PHD she played many roles including six years running Drum, the content division of the group where she pioneered the concept of brand content. Before she joined PHD, Tess worked at several ITV companies and was one of the few women to reach the level of Sales Director.
Stephen Woodford commented: “Tess is unique in her unparalleled contribution to advertising. Her contribution is distinctive in so many ways and over many years, including through her leadership of Thinkbox as a powerful body for the TV industry, as well as through her CSR activities to make advertising a better place to work. She is truly one of a kind and it is right that she takes her place in an august group of celebrated figures who have made advertising the economic and creative powerhouse it is today.”
Guests at the dinner are pictured above. Alongside Tess on the front row are son, Tom, and husband, Tim, and past Mackintosh award winners Jeremy Bullmore and Richard Eyre.
On Wednesday morning we hosted the top PR, Communications and Social Media leads from across our membership at AA HQ, where they met our growing communications team and we shared our latest research, experiences and insights.
Topics of discussion included Brexit and how any deal might affect both the industry and its workforce; the launch of our AAccelerate for Growth pilot programme in Scotland; the timeTo initiative looking at sexual harassment in the ad industry; the wider issue of trust in our industry among the general public, and of course the increased focus on HFSS advertising that we’ve seen right across the media landscape.
We also outlined where we could provide our members with assistance and highlighted ways that the work they do could feed into our campaigning too. Thanks to everyone who came along and keep an eye out for upcoming get-togethers throughout the rest of the year.
If you have any enquiries please don’t hesitate to contact our comms team here.
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