A celebration of creativity and African talent

Organisers promise that this African marketing festival for 2004, will celebrate and showcase world-class creativity, with a special African verve. The Loeries now form the basis of a newly created event, the Loerie Festival, which will consolidate the Assegai Direct and Effectiveness Awards, the Raptor Sponsorship Awards and the Loerie Creative Awards, within an exciting festival of creative ideas and development activity.

General Manager of the Marketing Federation of Southern Africa (mfsa), Davy Ivins, said the move, which has been widely welcomed by the South African advertising and marketing industry, will go a long way towards enhancing the credibility of the awards by cutting through the current proliferation in the industry.

"After consulting extensively with local stakeholders and African colleagues, we have conceptualised a comprehensive and compelling event for the entire African and South African advertising and marketing value chain," said Ivins.

"The Loerie Festival will be the premier African festival for creative ideas people, and is an exciting platform to reaffirm the role of marketing as a catalyst for African competitiveness, innovation and transformation."

The Festival will be made up of the Loerie Awards for marketing and advertising, a comprehensive international conference, an exhibition, and a range of focused training and workshop interventions. A series of round table forums will provide a platform for executive interaction between key industry stakeholders, including civil society and government. The inclusive event encourages pan-African participation through its positioning as the premier marketing and communications festival on the African continent.

The Loerie Festival will offer a bouquet of developmental events and initiatives - including a comprehensive conference, an exhibition, advertising showreels, training courses, practical workshops, industry round tables, and a range of structured networking forums for business, government and civil society.

The consolidation of all of the mfsa Awards programmes under one umbrella emphasises the trend towards convergence and integration, whilst the festival will allow focused attention to be paid to specialist disciplines such as creativity, design, sponsorship and direct. The Festival will also enable a greater focus on the winning work via an exhibition showcase of all finalists.

"The Loerie Festival and Loerie Awards enables the Marketing Federation of Southern Africa to deliver its mandate of promoting the importance of marketing in a democratic, free enterprise economy," said Ivins. "This event offers an unparalleled opportunity to celebrate and showcase world-class marketing thought leadership and creativity that is contextualised in Africa."

Go to www.loeriefestival.com for more information on The Loeries Festival 2004.