Kathryn Illy is a strategic and commercially driven executive leader with over 20 years’ experience in private and public sectors, including tourism, financial services, professional services, advisory, and advertising.
Kathryn discusses the evolving landscape of marketing, highlighting the challenges and opportunities marketers face today. She highlights the dichotomy of marketing being viewed as both a cost centre and a growth driver, the importance of metrics and accountability, and the necessity for collaboration across departments.
She emphasises the balance between the art and science of marketing, the necessity for marketers to speak the language of business, and the value of professional credentials. She concludes with advice for young marketers on developing both hard and soft skills to succeed in the industry.
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As a CMO or a general manager of marketing, you need to know enough…
To be dangerous.
Enough to be dangerous. That’s it, Darren. We need to be dangerous.
Transcription:
Darren:
Hi, I am Darren Woolley, founder and CEO of Trinity P3 Marketing Management Consultancy, and welcome to Managing Marketing, a weekly podcast where we discuss the issues and opportunities facing marketing, media, and advertising with industry thought leaders and practitioners.
If you are enjoying the Managing Marketing Podcast, please like, review, or share this episode to help spread the words and wisdom from our guests each week.
When you reflect on the challenges and opportunities that marketers face today, it’s hard not to think of the famous opening line from Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was an age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness. It was an epoch of belief and an epoch of incredulity. It was the season of light, it was the season of darkness.”
Now, while Dickens was reflecting on the lead up to the French Revolution, marketing continues to undergo its own revolution, driven by technology that’s reshaping how consumers consume media and information, and how marketers engage with them.
To help us make sense of this, please welcome to the Managing Marketing Podcast, a strategic and commercially driven executive leader with over 20 years’ experience in private and public sectors, including tourism, financial services, professional services, advisory, and advertising. Please welcome Kathryn Illy. Welcome, Kathryn.
Kathryn:
Hey, Darren. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thrilled to be here.
Darren:
It is a really interesting time, and I use that in big quotation marks, to be in marketing because, it feels sometimes that everyone has an opinion on marketing and everyone thinks they’re a marketer, but in actual fact, it’s not true, is it?
Kathryn:
No. Look, I mean, you’re right there, in your opening statement there with regards to it’s the best of times or the worst of times. It certainly is, and it feels like it’s a more challenging time at the moment.
I look out on the environment, and you can see so many changes coming your way and also passing through like AI. You said the tech, the finance, the budget pressures, the environment, the economy at the moment. It seems to be a real sort of melting, mixing pot. And for marketers, that puts ourselves in a really tricky position.
I feel like we have the hardest role sometimes in an entire business. You need to be experts in everything. You need to be an expert in IT, you need to be an expert in finance. You need to be an expert in operations. You need to know and understand products. You need to know it all.
And it’s a real challenge for marketers. How do you keep up? How do you become and remain successful? How do you stand out? And I think it’s really interesting time for marketers at this point in time.
So, let’s see how we can navigate through all of that at this point, and hopefully, we don’t end up on the worst of times. We can actually navigate through the best.
Darren:
I think one of the problems is that people are inclined to (and I mean people outside of marketing in business, looking at the marketing function) focus only on the most visible function of marketing which is promotion, and that’s why we get terms some ill-informed CEOs talking about their marketing department as the coloring-in department, because they’re really only thinking of promotion.
And that’s because either the organization has taken away from the marketers the other Ps: the pricing, product and placement from that marketing team, and basically turned them into the promotions department. Or those other areas are not as visible as the latest ad or the latest campaign or the latest promotion. Do you think that’s a fair criticism?
Kathryn:
Oh, absolutely. And I think all marketers have experienced it. The staff Christmas party’s on, “Oh, the marketing department will organize it” or “Make this presentation look pretty,” “Oh, yes, the marketing team can do that.” And I think we’ve all experienced that in our career. And I think it’s this challenge between the art and the science of marketing that the art is the visible, it’s the creative.
It’s where most people have an opinion on, I either like it or I don’t like it. And most people, it’s the subjective around it. It’s taking away from the objectivity of really why are you trying to achieve, or what are you trying to achieve through your marketing? And I think it’s where you get the balance between the art versus the science.
And people see the promotion, and they see the creative, and they see the billboard, or they see the TVC, and instantly, all marketers have an opinion as whether or not I like it or I don’t like it. And you see this with board members, you’ll see some of the wives or the husbands have an opinion on, “Oh, look I really don’t like that creative.” And it’s like, “Well, that’s great in your opinion.” But really, when it comes down to what is the actual impact that that has.
And so, I think the reputation that’s been through years and years of marketers who have been considered the marketing department, the coloring-in department or the organizers of the Christmas party or the staff Christmas party, how do you change and shift that reputation? How do you get away from just give it to the marketing team and color it in and make it look pretty, to really have a seat at the table to demonstrate the value and the expertise that marketers can actually bring to an organization, to a business.
And how do you shift that from being just making it look pretty to be a real growth driver for an organization? How do you demonstrate that value and earn that seat at the table so that you’re doing more than just organizing the events or just more than just coloring in and making like a presentation look good.
That’s the real shift, and I feel like that’s the real opportunity for marketers in this current environment. How do you stand out? How do you really demonstrate that you are a growth driver, like a sales team as an example?
Darren:
Yeah, and that’s an interesting point because metrics have become such a big part of marketing, particularly with the technology impact. 20 years ago, we didn’t have social media, we didn’t have all these digital channels, we didn’t have the ability to have real time responses to customer either insights or complaints.
And being at the huge amount of data has made marketing more accountable, and I mean that in the counting part of accountable, in that people are now saying, “Well, I’ve got all this data, why isn’t marketing driving growth?”
But it’s sort of unfair to say right, here’s your promotions budget, so you’ve got one lever to pull, now we want you to actually drive growth, because there’s a lot more to growth in a business than just promoting it, isn’t there?
Kathryn:
Oh, absolutely. And I think there could be some things there of what actually are the important metrics that you are measuring. And I think marketers perhaps have got lost on, “Oh, we sent out millions and millions of emails,” or we’ve got thousands of thousands of hits, or what’s vanity metrics like impressions or hits or whatever it may be.
We are coming back to what actually are the business drivers and therefore, the metrics that matter to a business, and that is very different to actually having these vanity marketing metrics, and making sure that when you’re looking at what those activities that you’re doing in marketing absolutely demonstrate the value or are hitting those business objectives.
So, for example, are you reaching the right audience? How many of that audience are you reaching? How many are you getting cut through to? How many are engaging, actually literally engaging with your content and engaging with your organization?
And then therefore, what is the conversion rate of those customers or of those clients to actual business? And then what is the value of those customers? And what’s actually then the value of that two-way business, and the role that marketing plays in tracking that through the entire chain becomes really, really important.
I think what we’ve sort of lost ourselves in is how do you measure that? And really, it’s almost like being bilingual. You’ve got to take those marketing metrics, which you traditionally count, and turn it into business metrics, and what’s really going to shift the dial for a business.
Someone said to me once, “You can’t bank consideration.” So, if I’ve increased your brand consideration, you can’t take that to the bank. But what I’m really keen on is what is the revenue or the profitability or the number of new clients that you’ve acquired, or what’s your retention rate, or how you’ve reduced your attrition. All of those are the key metrics. So, what’s the role that marketing can play to really shift those business metrics?
And having that, and aligned and speaking the language of the finance, the CFO or the CEO to be able to demonstrate the real value that marketing can deliver as a growth driver, not just as a cost center.
Darren:
And that’s one of the key things, isn’t it, for marketers to actually not just define themselves within what was often commonly thought of marketing, but actually position themselves in the business, and engage with these sort of colleagues across either the C-suite if you’re a CMO, or operational heads or functional heads so that you can actually coordinate and work together to drive growth.
I don’t think we can hold marketers responsible for growth alone, because no one part can actually drive growth, not even sales, interestingly.
Kathryn:
Yeah, no, it’s a really good point. And I think those marketers that are the most successful actually look beyond their role, outside of their role, outside of their department to the teams across the broader business and be it sales, be it product, be it operations, and those that actually have a thorough understanding of the full operations of a business, how it performs, where does the growth come from, where does the funding, who pays you, how does it flow, cash flow through an organization.
Understanding all the different teams across the business and having a very strong consultative collaborative relationship with those teams, almost like working hand in glove – like yes with sales, but yes with products, but yes with operations, yes with your finance, so you know where the pain points and the pressures are. And having that sort of partnership relationship versus us versus them, which is often what it ends up being, and bringing that to bear, so you’re solving the problem collectively.
It is not just marketer’s role to be able to drive growth. You absolutely need great product. You need to understand the customer journey, their operations and the supply chain of a business, how and what happens when a customer comes into a business, and where do they go and what’s all the touch points through? And some of those are marketing’s responsible for, some of them, they’re not.
And so, working collaboratively with every single part of that organization to really, how do you build growth together? How do you remove some of those barriers? How do you identify the risks together? I mean, there’s the risk team, the legal department, procurement, all of them, you need to work hand in hand to really get greater growth together and achieve those objectives together.
Darren:
Yeah, because it’s interesting how technology particularly has blurred the lines between marketing and sales. And I’m always interested when I read or hear about disputes between sales and marketing, the difference between a marketing qualified lead and a sales qualified lead.
And just because marketing said they generated this many leads doesn’t mean that they’re actually proper leads for sales. Because technology now allows marketers to not just engage with potential customers, but then nurture them through to the point of really even closing the deal if it’s an online product.
I think it’s still interesting how in many ways, the same last click attribution that the tech companies like to sell us is the same thing as companies measuring sales from the sales department as fully attributed to sales.
Kathryn:
Yeah. Look, I mean, an organization shouldn’t really give a flying toss where the lead comes from, it’s just a lead is a lead. Whether or not it comes through sales or it comes through marketing, it’s new business in the door and someone’s got to convert it. And ultimately, if you’ve got organizations that really take that holistic view and are not saying, “Well, that’s just AMQL (a marketing qualified lead) or that’s a sales qualified lead, or that came through the channel …”
And I get marketers look back to say, “Well, I need to understand the attribution of my marketing activity to demonstrate the true ROI.” And I get that, and that’s a way to be able to prove the value of marketing.
But ultimately, if the business is growing and leads are coming through when you’re converting those, that has to be back to sort of earlier points, we were saying, it has to be a relationship, really close hand in glove relationship with your sales and your product and your marketing team that converted the leads regardless of the source of where they came from.
And successful organizations, and I suspect successful CEOs who recognize the power of doing that together, a lead’s a lead, let’s now convert it. So, I would say get away with a lot of that. I know marketers want to try and prove it, and I’m one of them. It’s like I created that lead and that was a marketing qualified lead because you’re trying to prove the value, but ultimately, it comes down to a lead’s a lead. And that’s new business and potential new revenue.
Darren:
And that’s a great attitude taking that into a conversation about this brand versus short-term science, because there’s a lot written, there’s a lot of research, there’s a [inaudible 00:14:57] field, there’s the long and the short of it, about getting the balance right between brand building and short-term sales conversion.
If you then say, well, ultimately, let’s be held accountable to the bottom line or top line growth, bottom line profitability, then it doesn’t matter where it comes from except that budgets are allocated on a function-by-function basis.
And one of the things that frustrates me is that marketing budgets are still often allocated as if they’re a cost of business, rather than investment. Have you ever had experience with actually being seen as the investment, and not having to sort of fight to keep your budget when times get tough?
Kathryn:
Yes and no. So, I’ve had instances and certainly roles where it is very much seen as marketing is driving the growth for an organization. And you can see that coming through revenue incremental new clients, customers coming in acquisition. So, that absolutely is the case. Also worked at organizations where it is absolutely seen as a cost center.
And those instances and those organizations where perhaps there’s not as smart and savvy leaders there, or CEOs at the helm who absolutely recognize marketers have that ability to be able to drive growth, and naturally marketing seen as a cost center. And they’re always the first ones to cut costs.
And as I said, like smart, savvy leaders recognise the value you can deliver and would seek efficiencies otherwise, like through automation or through AI. How do you use it to create those efficiencies, effectiveness internally rather than just anybody can cut costs out of the business. Anyone can say, “Right, I’m going to reduce your budget by X percent, or I’m going to cut heads out of the business.” That’s easy. It’s really easy to do.
What’s more, I suppose, smart, clever, is how do you actually continue to drive that growth whilst also seeking efficiency and effectiveness, reducing manual workarounds, increasing your productivity by finding new, more efficient automation ways to be able to actually deliver what you’re doing in half the time, as an example.
That’s really smart. That’s really clever. Leaders who actually identify the marketing needs, and also, then, how do you try and do that more efficiently, and more effectively? And it’s always going to be the age-old debate. Your short-term gains, you want to see sales immediately hit the bottom line. You want to see how we’re delivering profit. And we report on a quarterly basis, organisations need to demonstrate what they have done this quarter in the financial year?
A lot of that is around delivering that short-term, immediate growth to an organization. But if you don’t have that long-term brand building and you’re not investing into your brand, your short-term sales will just continue to decline and decline. Building strong brands will actually reduce and lower your cost to acquire. If you have a stronger brand, your cost to actually build and drive that demand should and would reduce overtime.
So, you’re actually doing the finance department and the CFO a favor by investing into your brand. But that has to be over the longer term or otherwise, you’re never going to see the benefit.
Darren:
Yeah, I’m always amazed that the term brand seems to not necessarily resonate with CFOs. They understand goodwill, because goodwill is the difference between values of your assets and the overall value of the company. All of that just gets put onto the balance sheet as goodwill, and yet brand-
Kathryn:
And you can measure that, you can measure it.
Darren:
But brand is the significant part of goodwill just as corporate reputation is. And I’m wondering whether part of the problem, to your point earlier, is learning the language or perhaps marketers being able to equate or show how brand is a contribution to goodwill, because that then sits on the balance sheet.
Kathryn:
Well, and that’s, I think probably the big nut to crack for marketers. Like how do you increase brand awareness or consideration is equal to an increase in your market share as an example. And if you can demonstrate a 1% increase in your awareness or your consideration would equal to incremental X dollars or revenue, I mean, we’d all be millionaires if we could crack that nut, the difference between that and connect that.
And I know there’s a whole lot of systems and research out there that’s kind of like is trying to attribute in real dollar terms to a business. But it is the hardest thing to be able to demonstrate the value. So, speaking the language of the CFO or the CEO, it’s like how do you turn that brand awareness and all that increase in consideration?
And in my view, and this is where we’ve had some success in the past, is around how do you demonstrate an increase in market share. So, if I’m reaching more people, more people know me, more people are then starting to consider me, and then therefore, starting to buy, that will then equal an increase in our market share. That’s then you’re talking the language of the CFO and the CEO, and that’s what really matters.
As I said, you can’t bank consideration, but you can certainly bank market share. So, talk that language, understanding what matters and is important to the CFO, and what matters and is important to the CEO.
Darren:
What I’m hearing, Kathryn, is this almost like a role as a translator, someone that understands consumers, customers, and is able to then convert that into business language that the CEO, and all of your colleagues can actually understand so that it’s not seen as just oh, marketing’s going off and doing some ads.
Kathryn:
No, I mean, you’ve got to be bilingual. You need to be a unicorn. You’re like Ryan Gosling, you need to sing, dance, and act. You need to be able to do-
Darren:
Tripple threat.
Kathryn:
That’s it. You need to be able to understand, okay, what are the drivers of the organization? How do I then transfer a CFO or a CEO … how do I then translate that, and what’s the role that marketing can actually do to be able to influence/impact that?
And once you’ve cracked that nut and you’re talking that language, and then flipping it all around from this is where we come back to why is marketing sometimes considered the coloring-in department, is because we have our own language.
We are like CPAs or whatever the language is that you’re talking through, and it’s all about brand and this and that, but how do you actually translate that into something that actually matters for a business speaking their language? So, you absolutely have to be bilingual. You have to be able to sing, you have to be able to dance, you have to be able to act, you have to do all of the above to try and get that through.
Darren:
The all singing, all dancing, all acting troop.
Kathryn:
That’s it.
Darren:
You mentioned CPAs there. When I was on the board and chair of the Australian Marketing Institute, one of the things that kept coming up is the fact that marketing isn’t a true profession like accounting or law, because anyone can be a marketer in many ways.
There are degree courses, there’s master’s of marketing. We’ve got Mark Ritson doing his mini-MBA courses on brand and marketing. So, there’s lots of ways of getting training, but you don’t necessarily need to have done any of those to be recognized as a marketer. I mean, in my case, I’m a science graduate in medical science and worked in medical research and ended up in marketing.
Do you think there’s a role for having a proper recognized credentials for marketing? Or do you think one of the great things about marketing is that it attracts people with abilities that can then apply themselves to the marketing role?
Kathryn:
I think the answer is yes to both of those. I feel you do need to have some form of qualifications to be able to have that credibility, that authority, to be able to demonstrate you’ve got the skills or the expertise to be able to have that, and earn that seat at the table. So, there needs to be some form of technical training to be a marketer.
And disclose, I sit on the Australian Marketing Institute, I’m on the board, and the certified practicing marketer, the CPM is a prime example of how you could actually get that. That’s recognized, it’s a credible, reputable way to be able to demonstrate that yes, you have the technical skills as a marketer to be able to earn and have that seat at the table.
There are also other ways to be able to get that through, as you said, your backgrounds in medical science. Not everybody has that linear career or the development to be able to go straight into … like you studied business or Bachelor of Business, or you studied marketing and et cetera, and you major to marketing, you go through.
It comes left and right, but to your background, where we started, it’s like the science part of it, there’s the behavioral science of marketing and understanding at the end of the day, marketing is all about how you change behavior. You either influence, you get them to buy something new they’ve never tried before.
So, it’s all about how do you change that behavior and understanding the science behind that and the data behind it, the evidence behind it. So, you’ll see that there’s a vast array of skills that are actually transferable across multiple industries that you can bring to the marketing space.
But ultimately, having the credibility, the authority, the expertise as a marketer, I think is really important. Because everybody thinks they’re a marketer where we started. It looks easy. Oh, it’s easy, I can do that.
But then I look at it and you go, I did an MBA, I studied accounting, and it doesn’t make me an accountant. It doesn’t mean that I go up to the CFO and go, “You see that number on line X, really think you should check that.” I would never dare do that. But everybody thinks they could do it to us, like to marketers.
So, it’s really interesting, how do you actually validate and evidence that the skills and expertise is required for a marketer, given we need to know so much at this point in time.
Darren:
I absolutely agree. I think marketing, whether it’s a profession or not, you need to be a marketing practitioner. You need to understand the fundamentals of marketing. And what worries me is that there are a lot of people that call themselves marketing who have never actually even bothered to understand the fundamentals that underline marketing.
I mean, if you talk about modern marketing from the middle of last century, there has been so much that’s been learned and reinvented and revisited, and keeping across that is so important. And it worries me that as marketing’s become broader and more complex, that people have become marketers in very narrow areas without necessarily learning the fundamentals.
I think the same thing is you can’t necessarily be a great artist just because you’ve got some natural talent. The great artists actually learn the principles of art, and I mean, painting here before they then break the rules.
And I think the same applies to marketing as well, to draw on the artistic metaphor of marketing. There is an art component just as there’s an increasing science component. And I think that’s one of the attractions for me personally, is I have a science background, but then I was attracted into advertising as a copywriter because it also appealed to the creative side.
And I think that art and science blend is really interesting in getting the balance right. How much of this can … if you could truly make it a science, then there’d be a formula or a theory that would just make every brand successful. And clearly, that’s not true.
Kathryn:
No, you’re right. It is absolutely a balance between the two. You’ve got to know when to get the cut through the art, the cut through the creative. How do you stand out? How do you differentiate? How do you make your brand distinct to stand out in a sea of sameness or a saturated marketplace? You absolutely need to have that, and that’s really important. And you’ve got to respect and protect that as much as you possibly can.
And you also need to have the data or the science that underpins that. So, what are the consumer insights? What is the evidence? What does the data tell you? And this is coming back to understanding your customer, like what do they wake up in the morning and want for breakfast, so to speak.
So, once you know that the drivers, their motivators, their needs, what are the key things that are going to get them to change behavior. And that’s the data that underpins it. And once they see that in the marketplace and they see something that really cuts through and is impactful and it resonates and it appeals, then the magic happens. And so, you do need the cut through, but equally, you need the impact. And then therefore, you should have one plus one should equal results.
But you need to find and strike that balance between the two. One, overweight, won’t work; and the other one overweight, equally won’t work. You need to be able to strike exactly where it is, that happy medium where that magic, that sweet spot is.
Darren:
I recently read an article, I think it was the New York Times about the film industry, and they’ve had the worst summer ever because almost the whole box office was filled with sequels and remakes of old films or old concepts. And it reinforced for me the fact that part of this is not just sticking to what’s tried and true, because eventually, human beings will react by not turning up when you give them the same thing over and over again.
And the importance of really understanding the human condition. How do we keep people engaged, whether it’s in a movie theater or it’s in a brand. I think it’s a real challenge, and one that comes with risk.
Now, I’m really interested in getting your thoughts on this because apart from the CEO, who will often in organization be responsible as the chief executive for growth, there’s also boards, and largely, the board is given the responsibility of bringing due diligence, governance, and risk mitigation on behalf of shareholders, if it’s a publicly listed company.
How does a marketer deal with or present the fact that marketing inherently has a level of uncertainty when you’re talking to a group of people that are more worried about risk?
Kathryn:
Yeah. Look, it’s a bloody good question, Darren. I think the key thing for marketers is to have a really good understanding of your marketplace, like where are you playing, and how are you performing within that. So, really good understanding of the business performance, and then the role that marketing plays within that, and what are the levers that marketing is pulling to be able to help impact, influence onto that business performance.
And then communicate it really, really clearly, like openly, transparently, and not in your vanity metrics as we spoke about, but more around we reached X amount of people, and that has had this amount of impact, new clients, new leads, whatever it may be that you’re measuring, and is important to the business. And then communicating that to the board on a regular basis. And it can be as much as a one pager.
But what is the scorecard that the board needs to see? What do they really care about? What is happening in the marketplace? What are the competitors doing? And providing that overview of what actually are some of those drivers.
What are the challenges? What are you seeing in the market that’s really hindering you? How much are your competitors spending? And generally, most of the time the conversations are, “We are being outspent, our competitors are outspending us, they’re taking our market share, et cetera.”
So, really tapping into that and being very open and transparent with how you communicate, what are the business imperatives, and those priorities to the board on a regular basis. So, you’re essentially opening the kimono so to speak.
A lot of people will hide and like oh, I can’t share that information, whereas I’m the opposite. Like let’s share; let’s share openly, let’s share regularly, because then ultimately, you’ve got a greater understanding of what’s actually happening in a business. And therefore, not to expose yourself because you should have the rigor that underpins it. But ultimately, then you’ve got a more informed board that can recognize the value and the view that marketing actually can take and does take.
And if they can see that and you can help to inform them on that and what’s happening in the market and how the marketing team is performing and delivering against those objectives, then they can actually start to have more of a conversation, an educated conversation versus, well, can you just change that sky from blue to pink, because I really like it that way.
And I find those are the most valuable conversations that marketers can have with CEOs or with boards, is when they have informed discussions based on facts, based on figures and marketing leads that. And then you’ve really earned your right to have that conversation and have that seat at the table.
Darren:
Yeah, I think there’s a role for marketers to actually help educate boards and CEOs on the business function that they fulfill as part of the overall jigsaw puzzle. Because you could have the most efficient and effective business delivering a certain service or product. But unless you’re able to engage consumers in that, and build some sort of behavior of purchase or behavior engagement, you could relatively fail.
I don’t know a CEO alive that will cut marketing budget completely. They’ll keep trimming at the edges, but to actually go about and say, “Well, we’re not going to do marketing anymore.” Because I think fundamentally, there’s a visceral sense that marketing’s essential. What they’re not sure of is how much to invest and how the money should be spent. And I think that way for the marketers to actually educate the board and the C-suite around the insights that are coming from the market is a really essential one.
But I think often marketers find themselves too much time, or too much effort spending on defending their position rather than educating their position.
Kathryn:
Yeah, and it can be a bit of both. It should really be, not necessarily say I’m defensive, therefore, I’m not open to feedback or to consult. Absolutely not, it should be the other way around. But you need to be able to quietly, kindly with care, educate around the value that marketing can actually deliver with boards or with CEOs.
And again, coming back to that, has to very much be in the language of the CEO, what do they care about? What does the board care about? What are the business imperatives? What are the priorities? And then aligning the marketing to what can marketing do to help solve that business problem. And how did you go about doing it? And were you successful in doing it? Yes/no, and then what were the lessons you learned, and being open with regards to that.
And then therefore, then you can start to get an understanding of sometimes, your thought process, your approach, but the journey you’ve also taken to get there. And some of that is again, like that’s where it comes in the technical aspects of marketing. Because boards or CEOs who are not smart and savvy, don’t recognize the value will just go, “Oh, that’s easy fix. We’ll give it to marketing, they’ll fix it.”
And it’s like well, actually, no, that’s actually … I’ll just put a campaign in market, “Can you do that in two weeks?” You’re like, “No, like we can’t.” Like if you want to actually do this and do this properly, it actually takes time. It actually takes time for us to consider who we’re reaching, when we’re reaching, how we’re going to do it et cetera, et cetera.
So, there is an education process in the actual marketing process and the approach you need to take. So, not only are you educating them on what you’re going to do, but how you did it, and then what you did, and then were you successful or not.
So, there’s a lot of sort of education there that needs to go through. It’s not as easy just like a CFO or the finance or just using them, the poor CFOs (I don’t mean to pick on them) – but it’s very easy because it’s very open, transparent.
You look at your balance sheet, you look at your P&L, it’s all there for everyone to see. And boards need to see that, and they take that to your finance committees or your audit and risk reports. It’s all in black and white, and there’s no gray. And so, whereas marketing, it’s very much the gray, the ambiguity that people don’t understand.
Darren:
Interesting. There’s two ways we could have this conversation. The first is, if you were advising and mentoring is such an important part, I think of marketing, and being able to share, but also learn from others.
But if you are advising young marketers coming up today, what would you suggest be their core focus as far as sort of hard and soft skills? Or the other way of answering that is, looking back, what do you think you would tell your younger self about what you would do? So, either as a mentor or as a time traveler, what would you go back and say to young Kathryn about what she would need to develop as a skillset to be a successful marketer that you’ve been?
Kathryn:
I would go back and tell myself to get some courage, put your big girl pants on and get out and do some more stuff. I think there’s a bit of that, that comes. But certainly, the technical skills are really important. We just spoke about having like the artist, you need to know the techniques. And so, I would say always keep abreast of what’s coming up.
So, like the Australian Center for AI for marketers, like check them out. Go and do a course. Understand what’s coming in the market, be ahead of it, be in front of the curve. Always put your hand up to learn. If there’s an opportunity to attend a course, do whatever it is, learn. Learn your technical skills. That is really, really important.
So, definitely advice is to continue to … and also not only external courses, but I’d say internally. Like sit down with the finance team. Sit down with your finance department and understand it intimately. Understand what it takes a business, how does it tick? They’re the key things. Set that up. Don’t pretend you’re the expert in other areas outside of marketing until you actually are more of an expert in those areas. Do not pretend. So, that would be my first advice.
I’d also then look at how you grow and enhance and build on your soft skills. And I think that is sort of like losing weight. You need to do something little every single day. Painful as it might be, but after a month or two months, you actually start to see the difference. And those are the things such as you’re influencing, you’re negotiating, you’re building your relationships, your emotional intelligence.
Listen, really, really listen and understand, get to the core or the crux of what somebody’s really trying to understand. It’s like the core of the onion. Peel it back, peel it back to really get to the crux or the core.
Those softer skills – and I don’t really like the word soft because I think they actually should be hard, like hard-wise, but those marketers that really understand how to build relationships and understand how to communicate effectively and know how to influence and know how to negotiate, and are just genuinely good humans as you go, like a kind and care … you don’t have to be too nice, but you are absolutely dealing with humans at the end of the day. So, how do you connect and engage with humans on a human-to-human level?
I think that’s really important. And those softer skills need to be practiced every single day. They cannot be learned. You just don’t wake up in the morning and go, “Hey, I’m a great leader, or I’m a great marketer, or I’m a great this.” You absolutely need to grow and develop those softer skills.
And that takes practice, and you’ll get it wrong, and you’ll come back and someone will say, “Oh, you really handled that really badly.” And you are like, “Oh, shit yeah, I stuffed that up.” But you learn through that, and you listen and you learn again, and you look to who’s doing it well, and you say, what are those type of traits that they did? And how did they answer that question? What was really appealing about that leader that really resonated? And you learn from those leaders.
And then you equally learn from those leaders that didn’t do it well, and you go, “I’m never going to do that. I’m never going to do that.” But take notice. But it’s absolutely about doing something every single day.
And whilst you’re also doing that, learn on the job, sit with the finance, sit with your customer call center, listen to firsthand, get that firsthand knowledge. Don’t just rely on someone else to say, “Oh, the sky’s blue.” Go and have a look, get that firsthand knowledge, get that firsthand experience. Listen to your customer calls.
All of those type of things is actually going to make you a better marketer because you’re talking from firsthand experience or you’ve got firsthand knowledge. You’re not just learning it or reading or hearing it from someone else. You’re actually experiencing it yourself.
Darren:
Yeah, absolutely. I’ve worked with, as you can imagine, hundreds and hundreds of marketers, and I would say the vast majority of them are incredibly empathetic and insightful, and will build relationships. If you do any of those personality testing, most marketers will fall into the human focused relationship.
Having said that, I’ve also worked with a handful of marketers that have come from backgrounds like economics or actuaries, who have been very data-driven. And it’s interesting that they’ve been successful because they surround themselves with the people that have those, you call them soft skills, those human skills. But they’ve been very much the — what I’d say is the strategic driver. They’ve been able to see a strategy, develop a strategy, and then they put a team around them to help them implement that within the organization.
So, no matter what, you do need those soft skills as a marketer, either in yourself or being able to attract them in the team around you to deliver it. It’s an interesting area. Whereas I’ve also met CFOs that are very much numbers-driven, one of the reasons they’re attracted to it. Do you know the concept of the capability T. So, it’s a T shape.
So, the danger for marketing is, as it’s become more diverse and more complex, we are getting specialists in those vertical disciplines. But that there’s still a requirement for leadership to come from someone that has an understanding across all those disciplines to help coordinate it.
And I think you can only do that if you can then engage with your various disciplines in a way that gives you an intimate understanding of what each of them do and help them collaborate together. Because if you’ve only ever had one experience or one view of the world, it’s very hard then to actually understand how that works across multiple disciplines.
Kathryn:
Oh, absolutely. And I know enough to be dangerous. And my view is, is that you bring in those specialists and learn from those specialists. So, when I’ve always gone into roles, I bring in the digital specialists, they know more about it than me on digital.
I know enough and I know what questions to ask and I know what’s good and know what’s bad, but absolutely surround yourselves — and I sort of say, my view is you surround yourselves with people who are smarter than you, and have a deeper expertise in a particular specialist area or a particular category.
And only then as a leader … like I’ve been able to surround myself with absolutely brilliant people, do I actually learn from them, and they learn from me and vice versa – but I don’t pretend to have the answers to every single marketing discipline, and to be across and deep SME across every single discipline, you can’t. Like as a CMO or a general manager of marketing, you need to know enough. You need to have this really strong foundation-
Darren:
To be dangerous.
Kathryn:
Enough to be dangerous. That’s it, Darren. We need to be dangerous. But you absolutely need to recognize, and this is where not so great leaders think they have all the answers. They think that they know, and they think they can solve it all, and they can control everything, and they’re really dangerous. They’re uber dangerous.
So, surrounding yourself with really great, strong experts in their field and it’s the saying, all ships rise. You will grow and you’ll develop, and you’ll learn from each other. And I find that’s the way that I’ve been successful in the past. And hopefully, people who’ve worked with me recognize that that’s the way they’ve learned as well, like surrounding themselves with really just awesome people who are really, really good at what they do.
Darren:
Yeah, fantastic. Kathryn Illy, we’ve run out time. This has been a fantastic conversation. Thank you so much for being so generous in sharing your experience and your insights and your thoughts on what makes a marketer successful in the best of times and the worst of times.
Kathryn:
No, thanks, Darren. It’s been an absolute pleasure to be here and chat you through. I love the best and I love the worst. And here’s to marketers who can continue to navigate that till the end of time.
Darren:
Now, just a final question before you go. As a marketer, what would be the brand that you most admire?
