The month of June marks entry into the second half of the year.
This, to many companies calls for strategic re-alignment of marketing and commercial activities in a bid to hit set targets and pull out of the rubble, if there are hitches
Such strategic changes call for not just the best brains, but also ones with experience to drive growth.
New roles.
Leading the pack of former marketing honchos who have been placed in new roles to drive growth is Innocent Bagumira.
The 39 year old Social Sciences graduate is the new Chief Executive Officer of Hot Loaf Bakery Limited.
Hot Loaf is probably Uganda’s oldest confectionery shop and is part of the conglomerate of companies owned by tycoon Amos Nzeyi.
Innocent previously held top marketing roles at Diageo owned UBL before moving to Crown Beverages/Pepsi as Commercial Director. He left Pepsi under controversial circumstances before later surfacing at lowly but heavily commercialised Movit Products where his stint lasted only 3 months.
The soft spoken Marketer then fizzled into the private sector running his own start- up MNT Consultants before being scooped by Hot Loaf as CEO.
Others in things.
Phillip Besiimire was until last month the CEO of MTN South Sudan, a subsidiary of SA based MTN Africa that has operations across Africa including Uganda, Rwanda.
Phillip started off at MTN Uganda as junior marketing executive before taking over when pioneer marketing boss Eric Van Veen left.
He was later promoted to Chief Executive of MTN Malawi where he lasted for over a year before being sent to head the new Southern Sudan operations as Chief Executive.
In his latest posting, Phillip has been recalled by MTN Group as the executive for regional operations.
MTN is also recalling the former head of marketing for MTN Uganda Mapula Bodibe who has also been appointed as the executive for consumer business unit.
Ms. Mapula has worked for the MTN group for over 10 years in different roles, the last one being in Uganda.
She now moves back to South Africa, her native country to take up the role head of growing MTN’s consumer units.
High jumpers.
Other Uganda executives are also rising the scales. Among the top movers is Hans Paulsen, formerly Managing Director of Shell/Vivo Energy Uganda operations.
Insiders say Uganda is Shell’s best performing Africa Unit and the stellar performance of their Uganda operations where they are market leaders beating off stiff competition from French led Total, caught the eye of Shell top management.
Hans who has vast management experience having been MD of Uganda Telecom, mast company LAP Green Africa, MD Zambia telecommunications company.
Hans is reportedly being moved to a top level role that cuts across major markets in West Africa.
In the news makers, Daniel Ogong‘s new move cannot be left out.
The experienced marketer who was until recently the Marketing Director of Nile Breweries joined Stanbic Bank at the start of June in a similar role.
Daniel Ogong cut his teeth at Nile Breweries where he rose through the ranks to become the top marketing honcho.
Daniel left the now AB InBev owned brewery after overseeing their buy-in that saw giant SabMiller move out.
The last known marketing director at Stanbic Bank was Jackie Namara Rukare who moved to Vodafone in the same role. Jacque has since left the British Telecom entity to start up her own consultancy firm-Iguru consult limited.
In the months that followed the buy-out, top managers with leading roles started to exit the brewery under controversial circumstances in a move some blamed on AB InBev’s new operational model that structured out or merged some roles.
TrumpetNews will continue to make a follow-up of the movers and shakers as the year comes to the close, and evaluation of who is excelling.
