The IPA New Business and Marketing Group

The IPA New Business and Marketing Group is made up of new business/marketing directors from IPA member agencies. Its function is to discuss and act upon those issues facing IPA members working in new business. The main IPA contact, responsible for the administration of the New Business Group's affairs is Zoe Mitchell, New Business Manager.

Group Chairmen:

Helen Weisinger and Mark Robinson

Number of vacancies on the group: 3

To apply for membership of the group or to leave a message for the Chairmen, see here.

Remit:
To define the New Business role and its place within agency life.
To promote best practice and to raise the standards of professionalism and the understanding and perception of this key agency discipline.
Provide a support network through which ideas and particular problems can be discussed in confidence.
To identify relevant training needs for those working in New Business.
To campaign on issues relating to pitches and other agency selection processes.

Meetings:
Meetings are roughly 4 weeks apart on Tuesday mornings at 9.00am. Members take it in turns to host the meetings at their agencies. The meeting dates for 2011 are:

11th January
1st February
1st March
5th April
3rd May
7th June
5th July
6th September
4th October
1st November
6th December

Recent Achievements:
• The group assisted the Finance Policy Group on an initiative to produce a standardised tender document.
• The group produced a revised version of the "Finding an Agency" best practice guide.
• The Group held the event “Secrets of Success – Changing ways of Winning New Business”  at the IPA on 19th October. The event was a great success and over 80 IPA members attended.
• The group (in association with ISBA) held a round-table dinner at the IPA on 10th November which looked at new and alternative ways of pitching. This was a direct result of the survey that was done on the true cost of pitching. The event comprised of a group of experienced marketers and agency chiefs. This was covered in the 1st December issue of Marketing. 
• The group has established a new business community that allows new business people from IPA agencies to interact and support one another. It will also allow us to share the work that the group does more directly with members. The group have collated a comprehensive list of all New Business contacts in IPA member agencies, many of whom attended the event on 19th October.

Future Activities
• A two day New Business course will be held from 31st March-1st April.
• Following the success of the panel event held on 19th October, two further panel debates/events will be held this year.

Every quarter, all the IPA's Committees report to Council on their activities during the previous three months. (NB For reasons of confidentiality, commercially sensitive areas have been excluded from this website version of the original document). Consolidated, annual reports on key activities can be downloaded as Related Content from this page.