Natasha Aaron has extensive experience in developing and managing high-performance marketing teams across disrupted and rapidly growing retail, e-commerce, and food delivery businesses. Natasha talks about the evolving role of marketing leaders in today’s fast-paced environment. She discusses the importance of curiosity, the need for clear communication and goal-setting, and the challenges of managing remote teams.
Natasha shares her insights on building high-performing teams, celebrating small wins, and the impact of AI on marketing practices. The conversation highlights the necessity for marketers to adapt to change, embrace new technologies, and foster collaboration across departments to drive business success.
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“You’re talking about like very kind of charismatic founders that are the true embodiment of the brand. That’s the dream. But I think that, like just having the CEO being able to talk to the brand counts for so much”.
Transcription (Edited):
Darren Woolley:
Hi, I’m Darren Woolley, founder and CEO of Trinity P3 Marketing Management Consultancy, and welcome to Managing Marketing. In this weekly podcast, we discuss the issues and opportunities facing marketing, media, and advertising with industry thought leaders.
A question that often arises is: What is expected of marketing leaders today, and how should they respond to the enormous demands to foster growth and adapt to rapid technological changes impacting business and consumer behavior? My guest today has extensive experience in developing and managing high-performing marketing teams across retail, e-commerce, and food delivery businesses. Please welcome Senior Marketer and Director of Marketing, Natasha Aaron. Welcome, Natasha.
Natasha:
Thank you so much. Great to be here.
Defining Marketing Leadership
Darren Woolley:
The term “marketing leader” is thrown around a lot. What is your go-to definition for being a marketing leader, and how do you know when you are one?
Natasha:
It’s a great question, and I think the definition has changed a lot. Historically, it was centered on managing advertising—the “coloring in department.” It has evolved significantly. Beyond just advertising, marketers are now expected to be drivers of growth and, above all, the voice of the customer. This voice must permeate product development, sales, and overall business strategy. It’s become a much more well-rounded voice that has earned a seat at the executive table, which is exciting.
Darren Woolley:
On a personal level, at what point in your career did you feel you became a leader? I don’t think it’s just a title.
Natasha:
Absolutely. When I started, everyone was a generalist, an integrated marketer creating campaigns. Then, functional disciplines began emerging—paid performance, retention marketing, and so on. I had a bit of an identity crisis because sometimes a generalist feels good at many things but great at none. I became self-conscious, wondering if I had the right to lead a team without deep expertise in every discipline.
However, having that generalist background and open-minded curiosity about the entire marketing mix actually served me well when I got the opportunity to lead. It meant that even when managing specialists where I didn’t have deep expertise, I could still show up as a leader and add value across a multidisciplinary team.
The Value of Curiosity and Diverse Experience
Darren Woolley:
It’s a conundrum. Young marketers often end up in a vertical discipline, but the best leaders are cross-functional. If your career is stuck in one vertical, how do you build out that breadth? I agree that curiosity drives intellectual and professional growth.
Natasha:
For sure. I made intentional, strategic moves between different businesses to learn by osmosis. For example, I was a brand leader in an e-commerce business at one point. That meant I had to learn the commercial metrics quickly and work closely with performance marketing partners.
It is an underrated way to learn: just by being in an environment where upskilling and learning different parts of the funnel are built into the whole experience.
Darren Woolley:
Doing different jobs in different categories also highlights the unique demands of each business model—retail, e-commerce, food delivery logistics, etc. While starting at a big CPG company used to be the “University of Marketing,” there are many different paths. It’s still a lot of on-the-job training.
Natasha:
Absolutely. Some of these things didn’t even exist when I started. That’s why I always come back to open-minded curiosity. It means you can move between industries and verticals quite seamlessly.
Darren Woolley:
Some categories, like automotive and financial services, can be resistant to change due to compliance or a “tin man mentality.”
Natasha:
That’s true for financial services, especially because of the compliance and regulation. However, as a generalist marketer, I’ve always advocated that skills are transferable. If you have customer-centric and first-principles thinking, it doesn’t matter how you are applying them; you can learn the nuances.
Three Principles for Building High-Performing Teams
Darren Woolley:
You are known for building successful teams. Are you willing to share your methodology or what you might call your “secret herbs and spices” for leadership?
Natasha:
Reflecting on my time as a leader, from Coles to DoorDash, I’ve certainly learned and made mistakes, but it has shaped me. The three things that stand out, especially when leading high-performing teams through challenging periods, are:
- Set Clear Goals and Communicate Standards Often
We often fall into the trap of assuming everyone knows what is expected. This leads to awkward performance reviews where you share expectations that were never communicated openly in the first place.
- Goals and Metrics: Be clear about the commercial impact the person is expected to have. This provides a clear benchmark for measurement.
- Standards: Show what is important to you—the level of attention to detail, how people proactively communicate with cross-functional partners, etc.
By leading through example and stating your expectations, there are no surprises during performance reviews. This principle also extends to external partners and agencies; honest, frank communication is essential.
- Celebrate Progress, Not Just the End Goal
In successful businesses, expectations and goals constantly rise. You rarely have a period where everything is great. During challenging times—when campaigns fail or operational chaos is out of your control—it can feel like nothing is worth celebrating.
At that point, you need to regain momentum by celebrating progress. We put in place a monthly meeting for celebrating the 1%. This could be one metric starting to turn around, or even small, “silly” things like the legal team approving something quickly, or a global team canceling a 6 a.m. meeting to run it asynchronously. Small wins count. Celebrating progress is how you break the tension and regain momentum.
- Maintain a Growth Mindset and Stay Curious
This is about being open to change and embracing it as a leader, and ensuring your team is resilient enough to do the same.
A key part of this is fostering a culture of experimentation. The more you experiment, the faster you learn. The unintended consequence is that you also tell your team it’s okay to fail, as not all experiments will work. This is powerful; it builds resilience, flexibility, and a willingness to try new things, which is crucial in a rapidly changing marketing environment. As my old boss used to say, “Don’t worry when something fails, as long as you’ve learned something from it, even if that learning is, ‘don’t do that again.'”
Challenges and Opportunities in Modern Marketing
Darren Woolley:
You mentioned particularly difficult times, like the COVID pandemic, which affected every business differently. Now, the challenge is working in distributed teams. What are some of the biggest challenges facing marketing leaders right now?
Natasha:
The biggest challenge is keeping up with the rapid pace of change, particularly with AI. A lot of teams feel overwhelmed and don’t know where to start because of the sheer volume of tools and noise. It is crucial for marketers to keep pace with what’s important and block out what’s not.
Marketing playbooks that were reliable for a long time are changing—algorithms shift, and suddenly, creative is more important than data and targeting in channels like paid social. This requires a very different, open-minded approach.
Darren Woolley:
Do you have a philosophy for navigating distributed teams?
Natasha:
You need to be intentional about the rituals you create for connecting teams. In my last role, I had a distributed team across Melbourne, Sydney, and Auckland. We agreed on a meaningful cadence for in-person contact (e.g., once or twice a year). Then, we established formal and informal virtual rituals throughout the week and month to ensure connection and information cascading.
Darren Woolley:
I share your concern for junior team members. When I started, I worked exclusively with retailers and loved the instantaneous feedback—you knew within 24 hours if something was working. Was that instant gratification attractive to you?
Natasha:
Absolutely. I’ve always thrived on the pace of retail. In physical retail at Coles, things moved fast; in e-commerce, it was that on steroids. You could see an issue Monday morning and make a change by Monday afternoon. I love the fact that you genuinely can see the impact of your results almost immediately. On the flip side, it can be terrifying because there’s no place to hide, and you have to be comfortable with that high level of ownership and responsibility.
Breaking Down Silos and The CEO’s Role
Darren Woolley:
In retail and e-commerce, marketing is often very closely tied to sales. This differs from organizations where marketers and salespeople clash over “Marketing Qualified Leads.”
Natasha:
In any organization, teams can become siloed, leading to infighting or finger-pointing. As a marketing leader, one of the biggest things I saw as part of my role was building relationships and bridges with other teams. If I could do that at my level, it set the tone for the entire team. Relationships count for a lot; they break down silos and allow for open, constructive conversations.
Darren Woolley:
The most successful marketers I know all agree: the first 90 days as a new leader should be spent building horizontally across the organization, not just vertically into your team and up to the CEO. When you build that collaboration, you influence customer experience, pricing, product, and distribution.
Natasha:
Absolutely. We are one of the most cross-functional teams in a business, which gives us a huge opportunity to influence. Also, because everyone has an opinion on marketing, collaborative relationships mean those opinions can be delivered constructively rather than just being “lobbed over the fence.”
Darren Woolley:
What about the idea that brand should sit with the CEO?
Natasha:
That’s the dream. The best scenario is when the CEO communicates the principles that are important to the brand—who the audience is and how the company shows up. When the CEO is bought in on the brand’s direction, the entire business is bought in, because brand is the job of the entire business, and it is set at the top.
Darren Woolley:
I agree. It’s not about being a charismatic, Richard Branson-type personality; it’s about the CEO reflecting the values and culture the brand instills.
Natasha:
Exactly. I also think that, especially as so many businesses have focused heavily on performance marketing—which can become a huge cost center—it’s important for CEOs to talk about how they are better balancing brand and performance in their reporting to reduce reliance on that heavy cost.
AI: Creative Velocity and Insight Generation
Darren Woolley:
Where do you see the immediate biggest opportunities for marketing teams and their agencies with AI?
Natasha:
One thing that was becoming unsustainable even before the recent wave of AI tools was the volume and velocity of creative output required to optimize channels like paid social. There is a huge opportunity to leverage AI to speed up the creative process.
This is not about replacing creativity, but using AI for more granular, manual elements like resizing assets, switching out headlines for testing, and generally speeding up iteration.
Darren Woolley:
What about AI for driving insights?
Natasha:
Absolutely. There’s a big opportunity for more effective data mining. Marketers currently rely on the analytics team to pull data. If we could use AI tools to put in simple language prompts and generate a response, it would significantly cut down the process and reduce reliance on other teams. It would mean marketers could move faster in uncovering insights and acting on them through experimentation.
Darren Woolley:
I think we do live in interesting times. I can hear the excitement in your voice. Your dual skills of curiosity and being very people-focused put you in good stead to address these challenges.
Natasha:
It is exciting times! Who wants to be doing the same thing over and over again?
Darren Woolley:
Thank you, Natasha, for coming in and talking to me today.
Natasha:
Thank you so much. This has been great.
Darren Woolley:
Just a quick question before you go: Which is the retail outlet—online or bricks and mortar—that you enjoy the most?
