Soundbites from CIM Ireland Chair’s Afternoon Tea at Malmaison Hotel by Mariele De Guzman

On June 15 2015 Christine Watson, elected Chair of The Chartered Institute of Ireland (CIM) and founder of Watson & Co. Chartered Marketing held her second annual CIM Chair’s Lunch at Malmaison Hotel, Belfast.

As part of my week with Watson & Co. Chartered Marketing I was asked to assist with the event and take notes from the experienced content marketers speaking. The topic for this year’s event was ‘Context is King, Content is Queen’ and featureed speakers from the Malmaison brand and Business First magazine.

Local marketers were invited to attend on behalf of their organisations for the opportunity to learn and be inspired by talks on best practice content marketing from Group Marketing Manager at Malmaison, Chris Fielding-Martin and the Managing Editor of Northern Irish business publication – Business First, Gavin Walker.

Chris Fielding-Martin aimed to give an insight into the Malmaison brand in terms of the marketing mix and their approach to customer service and sales as well as providing tips on compelling customer and end user focused copywriting while Gavin, editor of Business First magazine spoke about creating relevant and engaging content online.

Content Marketing Soundbites

 Chris Fielding-Martin, Group Marketing Manager at Malmaison:

  1.  “We are a cheeky brand. We like to do things differently from other brands.”

  2. “We are a brand. We are not ashamed to be a brand.”

  3. “One of the big things about our brand is our people.”

  4. “As we evolve we have got to stay relevant.”

  5. “It dares to be different.”

  6. “It’s all in the mix.”

  7. “We are making the most of our assets.”

  8. “Malmaison wasn’t just about making the hotel experience. It is also about the lifestyle experience.”

  9. “The biggest challenge for us all is having a conversation.”

  10. “We launched it with as many Twitter celebrities as we could.”

  11. “We decided to manage this by a keep quiet campaign.” – speaking of a consumer and media backlash after racy construction hoardings were installed and then subsequently covered up. Read more at: www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/hotel-centre-sexism-storm-over-8066386 

  12. “You learn from the experiences you’ve had.”

Gavin Walker, Managing Editor of local business magazine Business First

  1. “Marketing is all about telling stories.”

  2. “The lifecycle… customers for life… how their needs and motivations change over time – it is about context and how we perceive our own lifestyles. When supporting the concept the key point is Context is King”.

  3. “Let’s go back to Malmaison, the food is great!” Gavin said a decade after visiting for a reunion of close friends.

  4. “Getting the message out is all about context.”

  5. “Respond to what the reader is looking for: Do you have what I want? Do you have the toaster? Does the toaster do what I want?”

  6. “You are now a conversationalist.”

Top Tweets

Attendee and CIM Ireland Board Member Nicola Bothwell tweeted from the event:

  Rachel Kane’s tweet took inspiration from both speaker’s talks: 

Peter Craven tweeted:

Peter also gave further resources, referring to the 3 C’s of successful content marketing:

  1. Context
  2. Content
  3. Conversations

Peter also took the time to write a blog following his attendance at the 2015 CIM Ireland Chair’s
lunch after Christine in her welcome speech noted the importance of guest bloggers in the CIM Ireland content strategy and objective to achieve key message amplification post event. You can read it here:
http://superchargeyourmarketing.com/2015/06/15/the-3-cs-of-a-successful-content-marketing-strategy/

Blog written by Watson & Co. Chartered Marketing work experience student of
St Patrick’s College, Ballymena: Mariele De Guzman – June, 2015

You can find all the photos from the 2015 CIM Ireland Chair’s Afternoon Tea at Malmaison on the CIM Ireland Flickr Channel

CIM Ireland Chairs afternoon tea at Malmaison with Business First Online June 2015