Heather Noble: “The Partnership Helps Elevate the Visibility of Ladies’s Sport”

Momentum Metropolitan Holdings’ Head of Model & Advertising and marketing Heather Noble is a passionate, decided and goal-oriented enterprise skilled with a commendable profession within the FMCG, OTC and Pharmaceutical industries – who leads by instance.
On her LinkedIn profile, Noble describes herself as a artistic, who’s dynamic in method and thrives on challenges.
Over time and with intensive information and expertise underneath her belt, Noble has been tasked with the problem of main the model and advertising and marketing facet of Momentum, whereas in July 2022, she took on the position of Lead: Sponsorships & Occasions, in an appearing capability.
Working alongside an impeccable workforce, Noble has been capable of dismantle limitations as Momentum thrive on ladies empowerment within the company house.
As we’re properly underway in our 2023 Momentum gsport Awards marketing campaign, we discovered it becoming to study extra about Noble and her journey to the company giants.
gsport Content material Lead Celine Abrahams finds out extra about Noble’s profession so far…
Heather, thanks for taking day trip for us! For the advantage of our readers, please introduce your self and your position at Momentum.
I’m Heather Noble, Head of Model & Advertising and marketing for Momentum Metropolitan Holdings. As well as, in July 2022, I took on the position of Lead: Sponsorships & Occasions, in an appearing capability.
Please take us by your journey and the place it began for you in company.
I’m a chemist and a marketer by coaching, a bizarre mixture, I do know… After spending a 12 months or so in laboratories, I realised that it didn’t convey me the achievement and richness that my curious nature and deep curiosity in human behaviour wanted. I moved into gross sales, and studied advertising and marketing, and located my heartland. I spent about 10 years within the pharmaceutical trade, the place I took on my first government position, as one among two ladies in a boardroom filled with males. To succeed, I believed on the time, I needed to turn into extra like a person, and labored laborious at it. Nonetheless, I then realised that girls have a robust position to play within the boardroom, and that they’ve probably the most affect and worth once they take up and personal their house as authentically who they’re, ladies; bringing views and management types that come naturally to us as a result of we’re constructed in a different way.
A merger gave me itchy toes and I moved into the alcohol trade to discover a unique type of advertising and marketing, worker advertising and marketing. While it was deeply satisfying, I missed the fun of chasing the numbers, and extra importantly influencing society at giant, with the patron on the centre. The time I spent at a startup was probably the most exhilarating journey of my life. Each day was fully completely different, the tempo was off the charts, and the affect we had throughout Africa was rewarding.
The startup was acquired by Momentum Metropolitan, and as a consequence, my life at MMH started. My roles to date have been in strategic and government areas, and the magic is that I’ve the privilege to be concerned in lots of numerous and complicated tasks and campaigns, together with making an lively contribution to the development of gender equality for girls.
You might have labored in varied industries in your profession – what are a few of your highlights by way of tasks that you’ve labored on?
I’m energised by firsts, and can actively search out alternatives that take us to new locations past the norm. Within the pharmaceutical trade three issues soar to thoughts instantly; getting a product to market in 6 months vs 12, by skillful interpretation of rules; hitting the enterprise’s strategic aim of 8% improve in gross sales, 2 years forward of time; and being the prototype for organising a profitable specialist gross sales pressure. Once I was within the alcohol trade, my workforce received the Advertising and marketing Brilliance Awards for Africa AND Globally. Within the startup house, a spotlight was personally working analysis in an Africa market; and efficiently launching a brand new to the world service resolution. Extra just lately, the identify change of our organisation, a really complicated and layered challenge impacting your entire enterprise, and the place errors of any variety or misalignment on timelines have been simply not acceptable, we accomplished 3 months forward of the agreed deadline.
I might cite a couple of extra, nonetheless the largest spotlight in my profession is rising leaders, and watching them occupy government roles in various industries, each domestically and internationally. Witnessing the expansion, progress, and achievements of these I’ve mentored and guided is a supply of immense pleasure and satisfaction. Realizing that I’ve performed a component in shaping their skilled trajectories, empowering them to beat challenges, and serving to them unlock their true potential, fills me with a way of objective and gratitude.
At Momentum, your position permits you a chance to contribute to the empowerment of ladies. What are you having fun with most about your present journey?
The chance to be a part of initiatives that try to dismantle limitations, problem societal norms, and empower ladies is really inspiring. Every endeavour permits me to witness the transformative affect of our collective efforts, as we work in the direction of making a extra inclusive and equitable world for all.
It’s a profound pleasure to contribute to those efforts, realizing that we’re making a constructive distinction within the lives of ladies and shaping a brighter future for generations to come back.
If you take the gsport and Momentum partnership into consideration, why do you suppose it is necessary for these two manufacturers to align?
We’re for girls. Their journey to success, on the sector and off. Among the advantages, I see are:
Elevated Visibility: The partnership helps increase the visibility of ladies’s sport and feminine athletes. By highlighting their achievements and sharing their tales, it evokes and motivates different women and girls to take part in sports activities, difficult gender stereotypes and selling inclusivity.
Empowerment and Recognition: The partnership empowers women and girls by offering them with a platform to showcase their abilities and achievements. It recognises their laborious work, dedication, and contribution to sports activities, fostering a way of pleasure and self-confidence amongst feminine athletes.
Advocacy for Gender Equality: The collaboration between gsport for women and Momentum advocates for gender equality in sports activities. It creates consciousness concerning the present gender disparities, challenges, and limitations confronted by ladies within the sports activities trade. By means of our joint efforts, we work in the direction of making a extra equitable and inclusive surroundings for feminine athletes.
Improvement and Help: The partnership focuses on supporting and nurturing younger expertise by varied improvement packages, mentorship alternatives, and monetary help. It helps in constructing a powerful pipeline of feminine athletes and offers them with the sources and help they should excel of their respective sports activities.
Neighborhood Engagement: The collaboration extends past sports activities and engages with the broader group. It promotes sports activities participation amongst women and girls at varied ranges, encourages lively existence, and highlights the quite a few advantages of sports activities for bodily and psychological well-being.
Inspiring Position Fashions: By sharing the tales of profitable feminine athletes and leaders in sports activities, the partnership affords inspiring position fashions for women and girls to look as much as. These position fashions present motivation, encouragement, and steering, inspiring the subsequent era of feminine athletes to dream massive and pursue their sporting aspirations.
Total, the partnership between gsport for women and Momentum brings constructive change to the panorama of ladies’s sport, empowering women and girls, selling gender equality, and making a extra inclusive and supportive surroundings for feminine athletes.
Momentum just lately introduced a sponsorship extension of the Proteas Ladies’s workforce, in addition to the SA U19 facet. As a model, why is so necessary so that you can give again, particularly in ladies’s sport?
There’s a nice distinction between the funding behind women and men’s sports activities. Males take pleasure in sponsorship from an array of manufacturers and establishments, whereas ladies solely get a minute share of that. This hole impacts the quantity of ladies who can pursue sports activities as a viable profession selection, the services and sources that may be obtainable to them to enhance their sport, and the publicity they get from the media. Momentum persevering with the help sponsorship is pushed by the dedication to see this hole closed and making sports activities a profitable profession for girls and younger ladies.
Out of your statement, what could be carried out to lift the profile of ladies’s sport in South Africa and the way can corporates play an even bigger position?
Improve Media Protection: Media performs an important position in selling ladies’s sport. Encourage media house owners to supply extra protection of ladies’s sports activities occasions, competitions, and achievements. This may be achieved by devoted segments, spotlight reels, interviews, and have articles.
Sponsorship and Funding: Corporates can spend money on ladies’s sports activities by offering monetary help, sponsorships, and endorsements. This allows ladies’s sports activities groups and particular person athletes to entry sources, coaching services, tools, {and professional} improvement alternatives.
Partnerships with Sporting Our bodies: Corporates can collaborate with sporting our bodies and federations to help initiatives that promote ladies’s sport. This consists of growing grassroots packages, offering teaching and mentoring help, organising tournaments and leagues, and providing scholarships or bursaries for aspiring feminine athletes.
Advertising and marketing and Promotion: Corporates can incorporate ladies’s sports activities of their advertising and marketing and promoting campaigns, the place related. By that includes feminine athletes as ambassadors and position fashions, they will improve visibility and encourage others to have interaction with ladies’s sports activities.
Company Sporting Occasions: Encourage corporates to organise and sponsor ladies’s sporting occasions and competitions. This creates platforms for feminine athletes to showcase their expertise and abilities, whereas additionally attracting consideration from a wider viewers.
Worker Engagement: Firms can foster a supportive surroundings for girls’s sport inside their organisations. This may embody organizing inside sports activities leagues, health challenges, or wellness packages that promote ladies’s participation in bodily actions.
Collaboration and Advocacy: Encourage corporates to collaborate with organisations and initiatives that champion ladies’s sports activities. By leveraging their networks, sources, and affect, they will advocate for elevated funding, equal alternatives, and elevated recognition for girls in sports activities.
Training and Consciousness: Promote schooling and consciousness campaigns that problem gender stereotypes and biases surrounding ladies’s sports activities. This may be achieved by workshops, seminars, and media campaigns that spotlight the significance of gender equality in sports activities and the constructive affect of ladies’s participation.
By implementing these methods, corporates could make a major contribution to elevating the profile of ladies’s sport in South Africa. Their involvement will help drive systemic change, improve funding, and create a extra inclusive sporting panorama for girls, finally inspiring future generations of feminine athletes.
What’s your recommendation to ladies in sport about attracting private company help?
Attracting private company help requires perseverance and a well-articulated worth proposition and powerful private model.
By constructing your private model, understanding potential sponsors, and showcasing the advantages of partnering with you, you possibly can improve your possibilities of securing company help and additional your profession in sport.
What makes an excellent model ambassador?
model ambassador possesses sure qualities and traits that allow them to successfully characterize and promote a model. Listed below are some key attributes that make an excellent model ambassador:
Authenticity: model ambassador genuinely believes within the model and its values. They align with the model’s mission and may authentically convey its message to others.
Educated: A model ambassador ought to have a deep understanding of the model, its options or companies, and its audience. They need to be well-informed concerning the model’s distinctive promoting factors, aggressive benefits, and key messaging factors. This allows them to have interaction in significant conversations and deal with inquiries or issues from potential purchasers.
Robust Communication Abilities: They need to be capable of articulate the model’s message clearly and interact with numerous audiences, whether or not by public talking, social media, or interpersonal interactions.
Optimistic Perspective and Enthusiasm: model ambassador exudes positivity and enthusiasm for the model. They’re obsessed with what they characterize and may create pleasure across the model by their power and conduct.
Reliability and Professionalism: Model ambassadors must be dependable {and professional} of their conduct. They honour commitments, meet deadlines, and keep a excessive stage of professionalism of their interactions with stakeholders. Their reliability builds belief and confidence within the model.
Robust Social Media Presence: On this digital age, a powerful social media presence is crucial for model ambassadors. They need to have a stable understanding of social media platforms, be good at creating partaking content material, and have a considerable following or affect inside their and the model’s audience.
Relationship Constructing Abilities: Model ambassadors ought to have sturdy interpersonal expertise and the power to construct relationships with purchasers, stakeholders, and the model’s group. They’re approachable, pay attention actively, and foster connections that contribute to model loyalty and advocacy.
Outcomes-Oriented: model ambassador focuses on reaching measurable outcomes for the model. They set targets, observe progress, and frequently search alternatives to boost model visibility and generate constructive outcomes.
Moral Conduct: Model ambassadors ought to uphold moral requirements and characterize the model in a accountable and respectful method. They act with integrity, adhere to model pointers, and prioritise the long-term repute and success of the model.
By embodying these qualities, an excellent model ambassador turns into a trusted advocate who can successfully talk the model’s message, construct sturdy relationships, and contribute to the model’s total success.
Who’re a few of your position fashions and what have you ever learnt from them?
The individuals who have impressed me and influenced the who I’m on this life and world are:
Leonardo da Vinci: While primarily referred to as an artist, he was a prolific inventor and visionary. Once I consider the longer term, or within the midst of fixing a problem, I choose to start out with a clean canvas and create alternate situations, and attainable outcomes, so the answer shall be as proper as it may be, with the data I’ve. This typically wants me to mix the artist and dreamer in me, with the analyst and thinker.
My mother and father (and Oprah Winfrey): With a lot love and care, they constantly pushed me to be the perfect I might be, in a loop primarily based on steady enchancment. Right this moment, I thank them for his or her deep and real perception in “good isn’t ok” and discovering the reserve tank if you realise you’re not carried out but.
Certainly one of my leaders: If you happen to faucet into your personal or ignite another person’s ardour, it provokes motivation, drive, and dedication. When you find yourself obsessed with one thing, it brings you pleasure, fulfilment, and a way of objective. It drives dedication, perseverance, and a willingness to speculate time, power, and energy into what you set your sights on.
Out of your expertise, how can we construct sturdy ladies position fashions?
Constructing sturdy ladies position fashions wants an surroundings that nurtures and helps ladies’s empowerment and improvement.
Mentorship and Help: Set up mentorship packages that join ladies with skilled professionals who can information, encourage, and help them of their private {and professional} progress.
Visibility and Illustration: Improve the visibility and illustration of ladies in management positions, influential roles, and in numerous fields. This consists of selling ladies’s achievements and contributions in media, highlighting their tales, and showcasing their experience to encourage others.
Encourage Ambition and Confidence: Foster a tradition that encourages ambition, self-belief, and confidence in ladies. Present platforms for girls to specific their concepts, tackle management roles, and take part in decision-making processes. Create secure areas for them to discover their potential and take dangers.
Have a good time Achievements: Recognise and have fun the achievements and successes of ladies in any respect ranges. Acknowledge their contributions and the affect they make of their respective fields, assist encourage others and reinforce the concept ladies can excel and be position fashions in several domains.
Break Stereotypes and Bias: Problem and break down stereotypes, biases, and gender-based expectations that restrict ladies’s potential. Encourage people and organisations to confront and deal with unconscious biases and promote equality, equity, and inclusivity.
Foster Supportive Networks: Create networks and communities that present help, encouragement, and networking alternatives for girls. These networks supply a platform for girls to attach, collaborate, and share experiences, fostering a way of solidarity and help.
Empowerment Applications and Initiatives: Implement packages that particularly deal with ladies’s empowerment, offering sources, coaching, and mentorship alternatives. These initiatives assist ladies construct expertise, achieve confidence, and overcome limitations which will hinder their progress.
Promote Work-Life Stability: Foster a tradition that helps work-life stability and suppleness, enabling ladies to pursue their careers whereas additionally fulfilling private and household obligations.
Encourage Self-Care and Effectively-being: Emphasise the significance of self-care, well-being, and psychological well being for girls. Promote practices that prioritise self-care and emphasise the worth of holistic well-being of their private {and professional} lives.
By implementing these approaches, we will create an surroundings that empowers ladies, builds their confidence, and offers them with the instruments and alternatives to turn into sturdy position fashions for future generations.
Lastly, what else would you prefer to tick off your aim checklist?
I’d prefer to proceed selling gender equality at each stage, whether or not private or skilled. My dream is to assist small companies develop and turn into extra profitable, by offering my experience freed from cost, and linking in a few of the fantastic folks I’ve met during the last 25 years; and if these companies are ladies owned, a lot the higher!
I’d like to stroll the Camino de Santiago sooner or later; the Camino Frances route, that begins in Saint Jean Pied de Port, in France. The route is 763.5 kilometres lengthy and is usually carried out in 33 levels of roughly 20 or 25 kilometres every. This route runs by the inside of the north of the Iberian Peninsula, crossing 8 Spanish provinces.
Picture Caption: Momentum Metropolitan Holdings’ Head of Model & Advertising and marketing Heather Noble is a passionate, decided and goal-oriented enterprise skilled, with a commendable profession within the FMCG, OTC and Pharmaceutical industries. Picture: Provided