AMI ANZMAC Applied Research Grants. What a great start to our grants program. 42 submissions from 27 institutions across Australia and New Zealand. It will be a tough job for the judges to come up with a short list, however, all entrants are winners as all entrants receive a free (one-year) license from Tableau, a market-leading analytics platform. We launched the AMI ANZMAC Industry Research grants as a step to bridge the industry–academic gap that was highlighted in research undertaken by UQ Business School and Macquarie University.

In fact, I used these quotes from the research in my presentation at ANZMAC2022, in the lovely UWA campus.
–  “Academics exist in a separate world – a parallel universe with no connection or relevance to their world of practice, except indirectly (and in another world and time zone) as educators of marketing practitioners and managers.”
– “Academics have weak relationships with practitioners as their customers, which they describe as “no contact”, “not reaching out”, and “no collaboration”.
Sounds a bit tough to me as many marketing academics have great linkages into the industry, however, there is still much work to do, and we hope the introduction of this new grants program will be a small step in bridging the academia–practitioner gap.
 
The Australian Marketing Institute is a leading industry body for marketing professionals, to support marketers throughout their career pathway; from leaving university to becoming a senior marketer. We work with universities that see value in industry accreditation of their undergraduate and postgraduate programs; universities that wish to achieve industry recognition not just for their academic excellence but the quality and depth of industry engagement. Universities that are committed to supporting their student’s journey into meaningful industry careers. And since the majority of students completing University degrees will be going into industry, they expect their degree to be industry accredited and not just accredited by teqsa.

AMI accreditation provides a mark of industry excellence, and if your program is not one of them, ask your discipline leader why not, and better still drop an email to demetri.hughes@ami.org.au who would love to discuss further. AMI speakers at university, free student members (as part of industry accreditation), and an accelerated pathway to CPM (Certified Practising Marketer) are some additional benefits of accreditation in addition to the AMI promoting accredited universities across the region
 
A key component of the Australian Marketing Institute’s (AMI’s) charter is to facilitate relevant research for the advancement of marketing practice that will have a beneficial impact on business, consumers, and society as a whole.  The AMIANZMAC grants program is one of the ways how we support our commitment to the industry, and I look forward to highlighting the successful applicants in the next few weeks. Watch this space.