from leadersLESSONS

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Context – the changing world of marketing and marketing careers

So what are we doing about it?

from leadersLESSONS

Anthony FletcherCEOGraze.com

Jim CreganFounder & CEOJimmy’s Iced Coffee

Johan JervoeGroup CMO and Client Strategy OfficerUBS AG

Karim Klaus EmaraCMOArup

Kenny JacobsCMORyanair

Kevin RobertsExecutive ChairmanSaatchi & Saatchi

Mauricio VergaraCMOBacardi North America

Nina JasinskiCMOOgilvy & Mather UK

Raja RajamannarCMOMasterCard Worldwide

Simon SprouleCMOAston Martin Lagonda

Orla MitchellVP and CMOWrigley

Alex NaylorDirector, Marketing CommunicationsBarclaycard

TAKINGSTEPTHE FIRST

Credibility

• It’s essential to take on roles and responsibilities that take you outside of your comfort zone

• It’s not about faking it – it’s about learning fast on the job and not being afraid to be out of your depth

• Credibility doesn’t come from titles, it comes from experiences

• The discussions you need to have, with yourself as well as your line manager, are about the gaps in your skillset

• The marketing career ladder has a lot of rungs, but those who are prepared to learn rather than simply leap will climb it much faster and stand a greater chance of reaching the top

Credibility

Collaboration

Collaboration

• Key to making a good first impression – irrespective of level

• Listening is critical, especially early on

• But caution, there’s no denying the drive and ambition which sets marketers apart – instincts which can inspire others

• It’s a question of knowing when to flex those muscles – part of this is understanding the culture of the organisation

• In an organisation where there is an aggressive agenda to run things round quickly, you may need to use your elbows when you come through the door.

In a former job, those first few weeks of being a CMO saw me meeting and speaking individually with all 600 partners in the company.

It was my way of bringing people together, helping them to trust me and allow them to feel part of the marketing process.

Karim Klaus EmaraCMOArup

I wanted them to tell me what they felt about the company’s direction, what needed to be done and what advice they had for me.

It was the first time anyone had spoken to them with such honesty and it meant when issues arose further down the line, we could solve them together more easily because that bond of ambition had already been forged.

Karim Klaus EmaraCMOArup

Relationships

Relationships

• Target relationships from day one – invest time in the few, not the many.

• Figure out who can help bring you up to speed and help with quick wins in the critical first 100 days.

• Identify key players in the organisation you can partner with to make change happen and have an impact.

I’ve learnt invaluable things from all of them [great bosses and poor ones].

But perhaps the greatest advice I ever received was from my grandfather.

‘You’ve got two ears and one mouth so make sure you double your effort into listening.

Johan JervoeGroup CMO and Client Strategy OfficerUBS AG

How to

colleaguescope with

Leadership

Leadership

• Tensions often arise not because of personal issues but a lack of clarity and context – and that falls to leaders

• If you want to get the best out of people, spot problems before they mushroom

• To do that you have to set a clear vision and ensure everyone has a defined role in a structured marketing plan

• Tension isn’t avoidable though, especially in a marketing environment where creativity sometimes necessitates heated debates and impassioned arguments

• It’s down to leaders to ensure a framework exists to channel these behaviours positively, rather than seek to eliminate them

Nina JasinskiCMOOgilvy & Mather UK

There’s a fine line between being creative and getting personal – I like the former, but the latter needs to be nipped in the bud.

You manage people by making the company’s culture clear from the very outset, not by restricting their natural behaviour. People need to be free to express themselves, but the ethos of the company has to be understood and adhered to.

Proactivity

Proactivity

• Avoid the tensions a linear way of working can create, where activities happen sequentially in a chain. Bring colleagues together centred around the customer

• Identify internal dependencies outside marketing, bring them into the rationale and drivers for your initiative before you’re dependent on them to help make it happen

• Be clear on ownership and lines of authority. Consult and collaborate, absolutely, but make sure everyone is clear how and by whom decisions will be made

Balance

Balance

• It’s important for senior marketers to take ownership of the creative process – consensus decision making can easily lead to chaos (and tension)

• Collaboration is central to getting the best out of staff and ensuring the office dynamics inspire rather than deflate – but decisions still need to be made

• At the same time, having such a single-minded and direct approach can inevitably lead to creative tensions, so it’s vital to tailor your approach to the culture of the company you’re working within

I learnt a great skill that the Japanese call nemawashi. Essentially, ahead of big meetings, it was integral to solicit support informally in advance.

In such a company, passionately challenging the boss on his views about an upcoming campaign might not be appropriate.

Simon SprouleCMOAston Martin Lagonda

Positive failure“Experience,” wrote Oscar Wilde, “is the name everyone gives to their mistakes”

Seek advice

• Make sure you’re asking the right questions and are clear on what you’re trying to achieve with the task at hand

• Find people who can counter-balance the passion and eagerness you might have for a project, initiative or campaign

• You need ensure you have access to someone who’s able to look at your ideas objectively and talk about the practicalities of doing something or not… someone who can pull you down to earth

Seek advice

Fail fast

• Failure can’t be eliminated – it’s a fact of life

• The priority is not [just] to limit the impact of failure, but to ensure that problems are spotlighted as soon as they occur

• Leaders play a key role here – being encouraging, not screaming and shouting when things go wrong

• Managers and leaders must handle and deal with mistakes constructively – not humiliating people, as this will only create a culture of fear

• Finding ways to capture and share learnings – the good, the bad and the ugly – will help your team to embrace a healthy level of risk and innovation

Fail fast

Nina JasinskiCMOOgilvy & Mather UK

We must remember that this is a very creative industry.

We need an environment that encourages the testing of ideas, learning from them and making them better, so we need to create an environment where failure is not to be feared.

And yes, that process needs to be fast. You can’t let failure fester.

Learn

• Just as you don’t want to create a culture that discourages creativity, you do want to ensure a culture exists that enables honest appraisal.

• Managers and leaders must avoid starting with determining or allocating blame – this is secondary to understanding the issue and setting the team up to learn from it

• Take opportunities to talk directly to customers to understand what happened when things go wrong, for example pitch reviews or client account reviews

Learn

It’s knowing how the whole ecosystem works, being aware of what other departments are contributing and not withdrawing into silos.

The way I have driven down my own failure rate is to always be in a learning mode, not just in the marketing department, but in other areas too.

Raja RajamannarCMOMasterCard Worldwide

Marketing yourself

Honesty

• Honesty is the best policy; we all know that – but in today’s era of ultra-transparency, there’s really no hiding from a touch of CV embellishment

• Digital is essential to making the most of your talents, but while these channels have the power to amplify, over-reliance on their influence can be a mistake when it comes to marketing your own brand

• Don’t allow digital to rule the way you form your relationships – the ultimate aim has got to be a deep and meaningful human relationship

• Rather than relying on a tweet or a blog a day, start internally – that way your reputation and credibility will build itself, and there’s nothing more authentic than that

Honesty

Mauricio VergaraCMOBacardi NA

Marketers have an annoying tendency to take credit for a piece of work that they weren’t solely responsible for.

Prove to me that you took the lead on a certain project, not in the privacy of my office, but out there on your online profile.

At Bacardi, if we’re adding to our team, we always look at people’s work before reaching out to them because these are the people that we think make things happen.

There is so much drivel and noise, less is more – that is how careers are built.

Over-exposure makes for a lack of authenticity.

Kevin RobertsExecutive ChairmanSaatchi & Saatchi

Tools of the trade

• We’re talking about marketers – people who best understand marketing. We just need to apply these principles and tools to our own brands

• For instance, you should only say something when you have something worth saying

• As custodians of our organisation’s brand voice, we’d always shy away from noise for the sake of it – so we should apply the same principles to our own brand

• As marketers, we often fail to apply the tools of our craft to ‘brand me’. What’s your brand personality? How does that permeate through your social voice? How can you stand out – achieve differentiation and focus in a competitive jobs market?

Tools of the

trade

I like to ask interviewees questions that I am currently grappling with to see how they think, but also to analyse whether they’ve done their homework on our current thinking and the company’s status.

I take people to the Graze warehouse and change the environment into something informal. This way you often learn more about them.

Anthony FletcherCEOGraze.com

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