Total Media Awarded Platinum Accreditation By IPA
Posted by Emma Jeffers,
May 16, 2013
Total Media has been awarded a platinum accreditation for its Continuous Professional Development (CPA) programme by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA).
The IPA introduced the new category for member agencies who have demonstrated a sustained commitment to their development programmes for four consecutive years.
Total Media is the only independent media agency to receive the IPA's platinum award and the new status means the agency's CPD programme sits in the top three per cent of the advertising industry.
The IPA’s Continuous Professional Development (CPD) panel praised Total Media’s “incredibly organised” and “fun” programme saying: “The panel were very impressed by the long term CPD ethos at Total Media: the management believe that if you give people responsibility, it is the agency’s duty to help provide additional training and development, not just for tomorrow but throughout their career.
“And that help is provided in spades – from a good welcome, to forward looking appraisals to huge learning opportunities appropriate to career development and business success. A well organised CPD strategy and plan, with nice little fun touches and some flare.”
Nigel Potter, Total Media’s Learning and Development Director said of the agency’s new platinum status: “Although it takes a considerable amount of effort to continually keep updating and refreshing our staff learning and development programmes, it is incredibly worthwhile for the agency.
“We can see the success of our training in our excellent client retention rates, our excellence business conversion and the positive feedback from both staff and the clients we service. We’re absolutely delighted to receive the IPA’s highest accolade.”
The IPA is the professional body for advertising, media and marketing communications agencies in the UK. The IPA’s CPD programme is tailored to the requirements of the advertising industry and provides in-depth professional training to ensure staff skillsets match agency objectives and client needs.
For more information about the new platinum CPD award, check out the IPA’s news blog.
In terms of viewing the Olympics online the story is a somewhat similar one. The rights around any Olympic content being shown on the internet are impressively strict with the BBC and Eurosport websites being the only UK broadcasters able to show any content. The two websites along with BBC iPlayer will inevitably see significant rises in traffic over the period, however Sky Sports news will most likely see upsurges both in TV ratings and website traffic as its special Olympic report will cater for its loyal consumers seeking extra news. Much like last time around, expect to see clips uploaded onto YouTube, only to be taken down swiftly.
The rise of social media over the last 4 years will clearly add another aspect to the Olympic experience this year. The relationship between sport and social media was fantastically demonstrated in this year’s Super Bowl with the world record for the amount of tweets in a second broken twice. The first came in Madonna’s half time performance and the second at the very end of the match, my own prediction is that #ldn2012 and #ubolt will be breaking similar records. As we have seen before on TV, these social media buzzes will in turn create a drive back to live viewing as people do not wish to miss out on the real time experience of watching and discussing the Games over Social media platforms.
Needless to say if you don’t wish to watch any coverage of the Olympics and are hell bent on avoiding the ahem… “massive waste of tax payers’ money”…. then you will also need to avoid picking up any newspapers as they will have the Olympics story dominating both sides seeing as it’s not often that press has an advantage over TV and online these days.