Kick off looms for industry showdown

Singapore - The IAS will help launch the Advertising's Contribution To Industry Vision & Education (ACTIVE) Scholarship Fund with an industry-only five-a-side football tournament held at The Cage on 28 September - MediaCorp are the main sponsors while Marketing magazine are event organisers.

"The main objective of the event is to raise money for a scholarship fund to sponsor university level marketing students in Singapore and provide a boost to the overall career development of the marketing profession in Singapore. We are involved to help raise awareness about the benefits of building a career in marketing and to encourage the development of the marketing industry overall in Singapore," Michelle Crawford, regional events director, for Marketing said.

The tournament, which aims to be an annual affair, will raise funds to provide scholarships to selected graduates interested in establishing a career in advertising and related disciplines. Each participating company contributes towards the fund and there are currently twenty teams signed up with Crush, DDB, Y&R, McCann Erickson, MindShare, TBWA, Publicis, Starcom, Saatchi & Saatchi, Shooting Gallery, Euro RSCG and Ogilvy & Mather fielding teams.

"Each year we will run a re-match of sorts where last year's winning agency can compete to reclaim the trophy. By running this event annually, we hope to raise money each year to sponsor a number of marketing students during each new school year," Crawford said.

Speaking about the event and his team, president and CEO for DDB Worldwide, David Tang said "this is a perfect combination for the good of advertising. I suppose behind every ad guy, there is a frustrated Zidane and we do have two fearsome English strikers, a Scottish midfielder, a Swedish defender and a very tall Irish goalkeeper - all we need now are a couple of Brazilians".