Australian Promotion Marketing Industry acknowledges Mike Da Silva, CEO of MDSA Promotion Marketing, Sydney with the Industry’s inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award At the 2009 Promotion Marketing Awards in Sydney.
Mike Da Silva is recognised as a leading global authority on Promotion Marketing and a pioneer of the Industry in Australia, the United Kingdom and Asia. Mike is a winner of the MAA Worldwide International Marketing Professional of the Year Award, for his work in developing Promotion Marketing throughout the world, a Winner of the Asia Brand Congress, Brand Leadership Award and a Global Super Achiever Award for his work in Promotion Marketing throughout Asia. He is the Immediate Past President of the prestigious 42 year old, New York based, Marketing Agencies Association Worldwide.
Mike is the Founder of the Promotion Marketing Awards of Asia (PMAA), “The Dragons of Asia” which, after 10 years, has become the most prestigious Marketing Award Programme throughout Asia.
In his early days, Mike Da Silva travelled from Adelaide to London in the hope he’d find a lucky break in the ad game. His opportunity to crack into the world of advertising came when he secured a job with petroleum giant Burmah Castrol as an assistant to the Publicity Manager. This would be Mike’s one and only job application.
Burmah Castrol paid for Mike’s Diploma in Advertising and at 22 he was promoted to the company’s Sales Promotion, Advertising & Training Manager role, overseeing more than 2000 UK petrol stations.
When he returned to Australia, he became the Country’s first Agency Sales Promotion Manager. But he soon wanted to take advantage of new opportunities for Promotion Marketing on his own, so formed Ideas Workshop. Mike then founded Australia’s largest Promotion Marketing agency, Purchase Point, which was acquired by Advertising heavyweight McCann Erickson three years later. Mike later bought his share of the Agency back and formed MDSA, which has been in operation for two decades.
MDSA is a Member of NMA Entertainment Marketing, the largest independent Product Placement Company in the World. Current Movies the group is working on includes Transformers 1 & 2, Sex & the City 1 & 2, Wall Street 2, Spiderman 4 & 5 and a number of Australian Movies.