Helen Southgate Elected to IAB AMC Chair for 2011

After the first Affiliate Marketing Council (AMC) meeting of 2011, it has been announced that Helen Southgate has been elected to the role of Affiliate Marketing Council Chair for 2011, beating Ewan Darby (Neo@Ogilvy) and Sanjit Atwal (TradeDoubler) to the role.

Following on from David Hall, Matt Bailey and Kevin Edwards, Southgate will Chair discussion at the AMC throughout 2011.

Last week on Affiliates4u we interviewed the three candidates. The Affiliate Marketing Council can look forward to actioning Southgates's agenda for the year:

Helen Southgate: As an industry and as a council we really need to pull our fingers out and get tougher and more pro-active. The affiliate industry still has a bad reputation within a lot of online circles and we need to do a much better job of promoting the successes and justify our presence in the online mix.

We need to pro-actively start looking at the future of affiliate marketing and ensure that the channel has a secure future ahead as I honestly believe this is at risk if we don’t do anything. We have to get better at cracking down on bad practice, yes we have looked at voucher regulation this year but it needs to go a lot further than that from breaking terms and conditions to illegal activity – all of which still happens and I see little work being done to stamp this out. We need to prove the value of the channel, through working with clients to provide case studies and through new ideas and innovation. We need to be looking at the role of affiliates in the wider online mix and I think the IAB council needs to lead this. Clients are constantly questioning the value of their online marketing channels and I am frustrated that the affiliate channel isn’t getting its voice heard.

Being client side I believe that I am in a good position to be able to step out of the affiliate channel and see the bigger picture which I think is really key to driving the council forward. I think we can be guilty of being stuck in an affiliate bubble and I think I can bring a different perspective than what has been seen at the AMC previously.