It's a celebration of creativity, marketing excellence and African talent

Loeries 2004 has not only moved to a warmer timeslot in the year, but for the first time, The Loeries Festival at Sun City, 1 - 3 October 2004, will showcase all of our industries talent and creativity over one innovative weekend: from awards to seminars, exhibitions and fun.

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 three-day long weekend festival of creative ideas and development activity.

Unfortunately, the organizers - the recently transformed marketing industry into the Marketing Federation of SA (MFSA), have borne the brunt of the industry's frustration, particularly from creatives, who don't 'their' awards to be split or 'lumped' alongside the rest of the industry showcase. The MFSA's hand was forced just a month before Loeries into revealing retrenchment plans as part of its ongoing internal transformation process and a bitter debate ensued in the media.

A desperate Mpho Makwana, MFSA CEO, trying to keep sponsors and the industry happy, while keeping the transformation process including a major research project, on track, has not had it easy. Forced to issue almost weekly statements this past month to circumvent rumours from the doomsayers about Loeries being cancelled and alleged cash flow problems, he roped in all the sponsors and 'ring fenced' the Loeries Festival sponsorships to try reassure industry partners.

"The Loeries Marketing Communications Festival has the backing of all its confirmed sponsors and is on track for 1 - 3 October at Sun City," he confirmed a week ago, despite the shock resignation of Davy Ivins, GM of Events and former MFSA CEO.

"We regard the Integrated Loeries Marketing Communications Festival as a step in the right direction towards cementing gains made in the last two years towards breaking fragmentation and ushering a new era of excellence in South Africa's marketing profession," said Makwana.

"In fact this festival will help to foster better partnership amongst all the key players in the marketing communications industry, education providers, academics and practitioners," he said.

The team in charge of making it all happen on the night(s), Mark Steinhobel of VWV, also confirmed that they were on track to present this year's Loeries festival: "We're hard at work to ensure that this will be the pinnacle year for the Loeries. We work well with the events team and management at the MFSA. I trust the industry will be here in full force to learn, enjoy and participate in the inspiring line-up of events at this year's festival."

The damage control seems to have worked to date and organisers promise that this African marketing festival for 2004, will celebrate and showcase world-class creativity, with a special African verve and all the important stuff - the awards and the parties - are going ahead! And for those who actually take the weekend seriously as more than just a big party - there are 38 conference sessions in the business of marketing and advertising over the first two days of this weekend: 1 - 2 October.

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