The Marketing Agencies Action Group (MAAG) – the industry body set up from the defunct MAA – has launched its first Diploma in Integrated Marketing, featuring the Mike Spicer Award in memory of one of the industry’s pioneers.
Spicer was a former chairman of MAA who died following a battle with motor neurone disease in 2016; he was chairman of MAA between 2009 and 2011.
The MAAG Diploma is aimed at agency personnel with up to three years experience, and runs over six months, during which the candidates are tutored through 12 modules. The diploma concludes with the candidates answering an integrated marketing brief and presenting back to a client.
The Mike Spicer Award will be awarded to the diploma candidate that the course tutors select as the most promising agency future leader. The Mike Spicer Award will be sponsored by Opia Risk, which provides risk managed solutions for agencies, to help them create promotional campaigns for their clients with zero risk.
The winner will receive £2,500 to spend on travel or experience and the ‘pass it forward’ scholarship, that enables them to elect someone they know or someone in their agency to take the diploma in the following year, keeping the Spicer legacy going down the generations of future leaders.
MAAG director Clive Mishon said: “Mike was a fantastic mentor to many of those coming through the agency ranks throughout his distinguished career. Therefore it seemed right that his name be associated with training of agency future leaders. We hope this award and the scholarship to ‘pass it on’ to other Diploma candidates means that Mike’s legacy will go on and on.”
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