Marketing career choice: Agency or client-side?

I was recently asked a question about the value of getting started in your marketing career on either the agency or client-side. It would be easy enough to brush aside with a “how long is a piece of string” (or in this case, “How varied is a career”) because everyone's journey is different. But it made me really ponder which way is best for someone starting their marketing career.

There are really only two final destinations: Either becoming a brand Chief Marketing Officer, or becoming a CEO of an agency/agency network. On the flowing river to CMO or agency CEO you can of course exit in big corporations in specialist roles (Head of Digital; Research/Insights; move into Sales, etc.) or embrace the operational aspects of the craft (becoming a Creative Director, Head of Media, etc.) as a goal.

Regardless of the answer, or goal, I strongly feel that marketers need to embrace Daniel Pink’s work on motivation (Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose) to first get a sense of themselves and what they want to achieve in a satisfying marketing career.

Autonomy

The level of autonomy is closely related to the level of trust you have within your organization and what the stakes are for your role. Autonomy is the need for people to become self-directed in their work. The problem here is that often client-side marketers can’t get out of the way of agencies creating their best work, and agencies are too deadline and brief driven to be truly self-directed.

In terms of career potential, at the beginning of your career there’s no real winner for autonomy. You’re going to be working hard over long hours when you’re starting out. It really comes down to the brand you work for and how they look at their marketing efforts. I’d personally say that at mid-level and senior-levels, there’s more autonomy on the client-side.

Mastery

For client-side marketers, mastery is ultimately about selling the company’s products while building it’s (positive) brand. It’s about truly understanding the “business of marketing” – setting a clear vision of how and why you’re engaging customers, getting the best from your agency and other partners and using marketing tools to sell lots and lots of products. Mastery of marketing is a mastery of business. It is about being the voice of the customer internally and relentlessly focusing on building advocacy with great products (at the right price), great services and genuine engagement. An emphasis on sales is usually seen here.

For agency-side marketers, all of the above applies but it is filtered through a client brief. Mastery comes from living and breathing creative and media solution that get your client’s products into the hands of its customers. Agency-side marketers are usually closer to operational marketing (advertising and media channels) than client-side marketers and this tends to create excellent opportunities to specialise.

Mastery of the marketing craft can be equally attained via going either the client-side or agency-side.

Purpose

Purpose is a little clearer. For me, brands have a much clearer purpose and understand their role in the world better. Many agencies have undeniably lost their way in recent years and are only now getting back to their core purpose of supporting their clients in creating amazing work that sells products. The important thing here is not what the purpose of the company is, but what your purpose is. If your personal purpose aligns with your job, great. And it’s even better if your job purpose aligns to the brand/products that you’re marketing. Purpose is an intensely personal thing and often people need time to figure out their purpose, or where they want to work based on this.

So aside from having autonomy, mastery and a clear purpose in either a client or agency-side role, what are the key things to keep in mind? Here's what I've learned so far (in no particular order) that might help you decide if either agency or client-side is right for you:

• The best marketers have both agency and client side experience. 
• Brand/client-side jobs are more valued and pay better in the long-run. Client-side marketing roles tend to allow you to develop more over time and have a direct path to the Boardroom in most organizations.
• If you've spent more than 5 years’ agency-side, it's very hard to move to the client-side. It’s certainly not impossible though but the skills you need to succeed as a client-side marketer are less to do with operational marketing and more to do with securing budgets, managing non-marketing stakeholders and holding peer-level conversations with sales teams.
• Agencies are generally more fun and you'll learn more about the "craft" of marketing (especially digital) being hands-on at an agency. But you'll miss out on the business side - you will be further away from budgets, setting sales targets and the "why" of what you're doing.
• It's usually better to start out your career in marketing client-side. But you need to love the company and its products. Several industries, such as Luxury or FMCG are tough to crack into later in your career. For example, FMCG companies generally ask you to start from the bottom, so it's very difficult to get into if you've started from the agency world (unless you’re a specialist).
• If you start client-side for a couple of years and work really closely with your agency in that time. Then flip over to the agency-side if you're not moving fast enough up the corporate ladder (or vice-versa). If you can then do one or more years’ agency-side, then you have a choice to make - choose agency or brand/client.
• Go where the personal and professional development is. I’ve found that agencies tend to put a greater focus on developing marketing skills (they need to, to compete in the changing world of marketing).  
• For your first few jobs, honestly, it doesn't matter if you go client or agency. In the first 5 or so years you can make a switch without much hassle. It's when you're 8 - 10 years into marketing that you become "stuck" in one side or the other. The most important thing is to do something truly memorable - a big campaign, a new tech platform, bringing in huge sales for your client or company (this last one is particularly important).
• If you eventually want to be a Chief Marketing Officer, you probably need skills you don’t know about.
• Regardless of being an agency or client-side marketer, you need to work on your personal brand. For example, by mentoring others, or sharing your insights via social media and speaking engagements. That puts you in a position where employers will chase you... and not the other way around.

There’s no right or wrong answer but the best marketers are well rounded people who’ve experienced both worlds first hand. If you’re starting out your career or going through a career change, my advice is to love the brand you want to work for. Passion also trumps experience. If you’re passionate about a brand, agency or even a hiring manager, take the leap. Everyone has a different and unique journey. 

The problem with agencies & tech vendors: They don’t understand the business of marketing

It’s the greatest challenge facing the marketing world today. It can be summarized in three points:

1. Agencies don’t understand brands, and continually complain about cost cutting, bad briefs and bad clients.
2. Brands struggle to find and work with quality agencies, and are overwhelmed by tech companies trying to sell “solutions” that don’t actually solve their real problems.
3. Tech vendors focus only on trying to sell their product without really understanding how marketing teams operate or what agencies need to do to succeed with clients.

The problem is that the business of marketing is not understood.

Identifying why this is a problem.

To understand this and why it’s important, we need to get into the mind-set of brands and marketers. This is the right place to start because marketers are the customer – the ones that hold the key to budgets for both agencies and tech vendors. Marketers run pitches, RFPs and campaigns.  But before going there, let’s look at the other players: agencies and tech companies.

Agencies should understand that their role, and their entire existence, should be dedicated to help marketers do their job well. This basic point seems to have been lost somewhere along the way. Perhaps it’s been the disruption of technology and digital that’s caused agencies to try to branch out into trying to develop products (too often a distraction), or it could be the rapidly draining talent pool that no longer finds advertising or media particularly fulfilling. There are many reasons, but regardless, agencies have lost sight of their core purpose and to a lesser extent, their business model.

Technology companies (selling solutions such as marketing automation, CRM, analytics, social listening, etc.) are much newer to the marketing game. Many leaders in these companies come from fundamentally different backgrounds – they are not marketers but are instead product or tech people who are fascinated by the tech and don’t really have the time or inclination to understand how marketing really works.

Inside the mind of a marketer.

Keep in mind the context of agencies losing sight of their core focus, and tech companies never being truly grounded in marketing, we can get into the head to understand the motivation of marketers. 

There are 12 facts you need to understand about marketers:

• Marketers don’t really care about ads. They do advertising all the time, but no marketer will ever have KPIs / Objectives based on doing advertising.
• Marketers KPIs (and remuneration and motivation) are based on increasing company revenue and market share, cutting costs, lifting brand and making customers happy (among other things).
• Creativity is a nice to have. Its super cool to sit in meetings and see a great idea come together but results always trump the idea.
• Digital scares most marketers. This fear has left an opening that tech vendors are exploiting – selling “shiny widgets” that are supposed to solve problems, but instead create bigger issues in operationalizing the platforms and having to make significant organizational change.
• Marketers are terrible at change management. Agencies and tech vendors also don’t address this or help with this at all. It’s the major reason that there’s “no budget” available for campaigns or tech, or that you get a “no” to that proposal.
• Less than 10% of a marketer’s time is spent thinking about agencies, creative, ads, media selection or campaigns. For tech vendors, it’s much less than 5%. It’s not that these things are not important, it’s just that’s not what a marketer does.
• A marketer’s job is dominated by building internal relationships, getting buy-in from stakeholders, endless meetings (on sales, numbers, data, etc.) and doing lots of (internal) presentations.
• Marketer’s main tools are spreadsheets and PowerPoint, not storyboards and tech platforms.
• Marketing budgets are fluid, and often tied to pre-planned activities. Budgets change every quarter, based on revenue/profit results. For every new idea presented, something has to be cut.
• Marketers want to understand the change in the media landscape, how customers are buying their products and what the future looks like. But they are time-poor and don’t know who to trust to help them.
• Marketing is not easy. Agencies and tech vendors do not make it easier.
• Overall, there’s very little effort to understand each other (on all sides). For example, when is the last time (if ever), a business or marketing plan was shared by the brand to the agency or partner? Do agencies and tech partners ask to see it?

So what is the business of marketing?

The business of marketing is strategically easy to grasp – it’s mapping out where the company/product is today, then looking at their the short-term goals (quarterly, annual) and the long term goals (2 years+) to see what the brand value, sales, market share, profit and customer satisfaction is going to look like. A marketer has four roles in this:

1. Helping set these objectives (internally with senior management, sales, product and support teams).
2. Building an activity plan to get there.
3. Reporting on the progress towards the goals (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annually).
4. Putting in place the right marketing capability (people, process, platforms and partners) to support the brand’s growth.

The business of marketing is what the brand’s marketing team does on a day-to-day basis to achieve the 4 points above.

Where is the disconnect?

The problem is that most of the time agencies, tech companies and partners simply don’t understand the four basics of the business of marketing. Agencies tend to focus very stubbornly on point 2 (the activity plan), but occasionally play in the other 3 areas (increasingly so in point 4). Tech vendors only focus on the capability piece, and neglect almost all of the other areas. The reasons for the disconnect is simple. For Agencies they are:

• Still stuck in the mind-set of asking for briefs, happy to be working on campaigns that are tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.
• Reactive and burnt out by sharing ideas that never get implemented. This is because client marketers don’t know how to receive innovation or new ideas, often because they are not presented correctly or in a way that’s easy to implement.
• Trying to solve business problems with advertising.

For tech companies, the traps they fall into are: 

• Trying to sell their product as the answer to many problems, without understanding the context or objectives of the marketer. One prolific industry that does this is social intelligence / social listening – it’s important, but what problem does it exactly solve? Will it help our team make another $100m in sales? And if so, how…
• Focusing far too much on product features over (customized, specific) benefits.
• Neglecting completely the change management element of all new tech programs. This is critical because it’s not just implementing the tech, but it’s more important to train staff, get rid of the old tech and previous processes that this solution is replacing, get a new process in place, update everyone’s KPIs, etc.
• Generally having underdeveloped communication and empathy skills (replaced by strong sales skills).

How do we fix these problems and work together?

There’s no easy fixes to these problems as many of them are cultural and are now deeply ingrained in marketing behaviours. Following the suggestion below will help.

For marketers:

• Objectives: Share as much information as possible – your marketing plan, budgets (if you value transparency and are under NDA), sales targets and your personal objectives / KPIs.
• Include your agency and partners in on the long term vision.
• Be clear about what’s it going to take to get your promotion or pay rise. A basic rule of thumb is that you’ll probably get a promotion for bringing in $100m in new revenue, probably not for winning a Gold at Cannes.
• State up-front what you can say “yes” to, and where you need to influence others.
• Tell your partners about the approval process that you need to go through to get a new idea implemented.
• Invite your agencies to ask for volunteers to work on your business. Passion trumps experience, and you need the most motivated people working on your business.
• Consider having “open days” where agencies and partners can meet your stakeholders and understand how the business runs (e.g. go to a factory where the products are made, visit a retail store or bank branch, sit down with customers).

For agencies:

• Objectives: Please ask your client for the long term objectives and sales targets. Insist on it. You need to understand the context and why you’re doing what you’re doing.
• Make the briefing process as easy as possible, but understand that you need to create other occasions for you to talk to marketing clients. If you truly understand their motivations, create opportunities for them to talk about them, and if can work to support them, you’ll win.
• Understand that no matter how amazing your idea, it means nothing if the client can’t go through a change management process internally to get it approved. Put a greater focus on how they can implement the idea, as well as how much money it might make for the brand. Ideally, an idea would be broken into 4 elements: First, the actual Creative/Media idea; But also time and capability you need to put in and what the client needs to put in to make it happen; Business results (sales, margin, market share, brand); And support material for the approvals that are needed (e.g. a PowerPoint presentation customized to other internal stakeholders that makes saying yes very easy to your client).
• Build a stakeholder map of your client. Who are they, how they prefer to be communicated with (face-to-face, WhatsApp, call, etc.), what are their motivations. Then map out that persons stakeholders and who they need to influence. It’s a very handy cheat-sheet to understand how to sell-in new ideas and programs.
• Learn more about the client’s marketing capability requirements. Develop a plan that gives you context on their technology or plans to buy technology, level of their people’s marketing skills and skill gaps, how they leverage data, etc. This will put you in the driver’s seat in discussions with tech and media partners in the future and will open up new revenue streams.
• Most importantly, build trust. If you’re a brief-taker, then your agency is a commodity and the decisions about you will be price driven. If you can build trust with individual marketers you become a partner and will see tangible value.

For tech vendors:

• Objectives: Please ask your client for the long term objectives and sales targets. Just keep in mind it’s a tougher sell to ask either your marketing or agency client than it is for an agency to ask for from their client.
• Take the time to understand your clients and what their technology plans are. Rarely is something so unique that a brand won’t have it. Brands have a lot of technology and platforms and it’s often the case that you’re trying to dislodge and incumbent partner. You’ll only do that based on being concrete about achieving the marketer’s objectives/KPIs, not by saying your product is better.
• Understand the day-in-the-life of a marketer. Really understand what they go through in the business of marketing.
• The change management process is critical. Like agencies, focus on how they can implement the idea, as well as how much money it might make for the brand or agency.
• Play nice with agencies and media companies. Build a partnership built on trust and mutual benefit. Marketers trust them more than they trust you. There are often long-standing relationships between marketers and their agencies, with trust being built over many years. Most marketing tech companies are less than 10 years old and marketers don’t know whether you will fail, or whether you’ll be bought by another competitor that we don’t want to work with, or even whether the product will be relevant in 12 months’ time.
• Sell less and talk more. The majority of the time an approach by a tech vendor feels like it’s a numbers game, with generic intro emails or a thinly veiled attempt to socialize disguised as a sales call or a Connection via LinkedIn that leads to an immediate (and inappropriate) sales pitch. Be genuine, use the brand’s real data and case studies from the same industry to become more relevant in the discussion. 

It’s critical to really understand how marketers think and what they do in their day-to-day jobs. If agencies and tech vendors can understand their motivations and objectives, we all win.

I'm joining Standard Chartered as Global Head of Digital Marketing

I'm incredibly excited to announce that I'm joining Standard Chartered, based in Singapore, as the new Global Head of Digital Marketing. I'm sad to be leaving my Vice President/regional CMO role at Philips, but it's an exciting new journey I'm starting out on. In fact, I've even graduated to having my own media release!

Here's the official media release:

Standard Chartered appoints new Global Head of Digital Marketing

Damien Cummings from Philips hired to drive the Bank’s digital marketing strategy

 

Singapore, 19 May 2015 – Standard Chartered Bank today announced the appointment of Damien Cummings as Global Head of Digital Marketing. He will join the Bank in June 2015 and be based in Singapore, reporting directly to Sanjeeb Chaudhuri, Group Head of Brand and Chief Marketing Officer.

 

Damien is currently Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Philips ASEAN and Pacific. He has over 20 years of experience in digital and marketing transformation. He is currently responsible for brand, communications and digital marketing across Philips Consumer Lifestyle, Philips Lighting and Philips Healthcare.  Prior to joining Philips, he was the Regional Marketing Director, Digital and Social Media at Samsung Asia. Damien has also worked at major global corporations in Australia and Singapore including Dell, Ogilvy, Citibank, Coca-Cola, NRMA and McKinsey & Company.

 

Sanjeeb Chaudhuri said: “I am delighted to welcome Damien to Standard Chartered. As a strategic hire for the marketing team, Damien will drive innovation and transformation in all aspects of digital and mobile marketing. I am confident that the appointment of an executive of this calibre will further strengthen the Bank’s brand and marketing leadership capabilities in the digital era.”

 

Damien will be responsible for providing digital and mobile marketing thought leadership as well as strategy formulation and execution. He will work with business partners to achieve our business aspirations across the Bank.

 

Damien is a much sought after speaker and blogger on marketing transformation and digital strategies and actively participates as a thought leader on international industry bodies including the Mobile Marketing Association, CMO Council and World Federation of Advertisers.

- Ends -

For further information please contact:

 

May Meere

Head of External Communications

Group Functions

Standard Chartered Bank

Tel: +65 9366 2351

Email: May.Meere@sc.com

 

 

Note to Editors

 

Standard Chartered

We are a leading international banking group, with more than 90,000 employees and a 150-year history in some of the world’s most dynamic markets. We bank the people and companies driving investment, trade and the creation of wealth across Asia, Africa and the Middle East, where we earn around 90 per cent of our income and profits. Our heritage and values are expressed in our brand promise, Here for good.

 

Standard Chartered PLC is listed on the London and Hong Kong Stock Exchanges as well as the Bombay and National Stock Exchanges in India.

 

For more information please visit www.sc.com. Explore our insights and comment on our blog, BeyondBorders. Follow Standard Chartered on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. 

Content Updates & Scheduling on Social Networks

I'm often asked how I maintain my social media updates throughout the day (while still doing a full-time job!). Well, I cheat. I pre-read a lot of sales and marketing content and schedule it to be published at a later time/date. I usually do around 6 -8 updates per day on Twitter and LinkedIn, and 4 on Saturday and Sunday. It only takes an hour or so per week (plus reading) but gives you a robust social media presence. Here are the 4 key steps:

1. Find the right content.

The most important step is finding the right content to share. It takes a lot of time to read through it all but it gives you the dual benefit of getting you up-to-speed on what's happening in the industry but also identifying what content to share. As a kick start, here are 50 blogs that are worth reading: http://bit.ly/1hiV5nC

I also regularly read www.marketing-interactive.com, www.campaignasia.com, www.marketingmag.com.au, www.adweek.com, www.adage.com and www.econsultancy.com. Twitter is also incredibly useful in finding relevant and useful content.

2. Aggregate content in one place.

The best content comes from those you follow or respect. To help identify this, I’ve subscribed to Newsle (www.newsle.com) and Nuzzel (www.nuzzel.com), which are free tools for news about my friends/network.  I also use Feedly (www.feedly.com) to aggregate news/blogs together in once place.

3. Schedule your content.

I really love and use a tool called Buffer (www.bufferapp.com). There’s a free version that allows you to schedule up to 10 updates at a time. There's a paid version (which I use) that allows for unlimited updates. Buffer is simple to use, and has a Chrome extension, meaning if you download it for the Chrome browser, when you’re reading a website or article you simply click on the Buffer icon in the top left corner to schedule it into Buffer. Other tools you might consider are Hootsuite (www.hootsuite.com) and here are 6 more: http://empowerlounge.com/6-great-social-media-scheduling-tools/

4. Publish them to your social networks.

I’ve connected my Twitter and LinkedIn accounts to Buffer, but you can also connect your Facebook account if you like. If you’re advanced, you can scheduled different content for different social networks (for different audiences).

I hope this helps - and happy content publishing!

Who are Chief Marketing Officers? [infographic]

Here's a great infographic from Adobe. Who are Chief Marketing Officers?

My new adventure – I’m joining Philips!

I’ve been blessed with a great career at some of the most amazing brands in the world. In 2012, I joined the biggest brand in Asia and the world’s largest technology company, Samsung. It was a great ride. I had the great pleasure of working with some of the best and brightest minds in marketing on some of the best products ever created. My role matched my passions – leading marketing transformation in Asia, doing great work in digital, changing the game in social business, introducing e-commerce to the region (for Samsung) and building a great brand. Unfortunately, at the end of 2013, I was retrenched by the (at the time) new regional leadership at Samsung as part of a management restructure. The move was widely reported in the media including Campaign Asia, Mumbrella and Marketing Magazine.

It’s tough going through such a sudden change, both professionally and personally. For the last couple of months I’ve taken time out to reassess and focus on what’s important in life – friends, family, being healthy, giving back to the community and sharing my knowledge. It also gave me a unique opportunity to focus on finding a new role at a company that was more closely aligned to my values – a company that focuses on helping people and improving people’s lives.  I was fortunate to be approached by Philips. I’ve always been a huge fan of the Philips brand, which I believe is one of the most innovative and caring companies in the world. It’s a brand that is helping the world, as you can see from their company profile:

“Royal Philips of the Netherlands is a diversified technology company, focused on improving people’s lives through meaningful innovation in the areas of Healthcare, Consumer Lifestyle and Lighting. The company is a leader in cardiac care, acute care and home healthcare, energy efficient lighting solutions and new lighting applications, as well as male shaving and grooming and oral healthcare.”

I’ve accepted the role of Regional Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer for Philips ASEAN & Pacific. I'll be part of the regional management team, reporting to the well respected CEO of Philips ASEAN & Pacific, Harjit Gill. It’s a big role, focused on three key areas – building the Philips brand in the region (it’s already number 40 in Interbrand’s top 100 global brands), implementing best-in-class communications and social media practices, and making Philips a digital marketing leader. I’m very excited as I strongly believe three key things:

• Brands are not built by a 30-second TVC or by advertising. Brands are built by engaging customers and driving advocacy. I’ve had a lot of experience in brand storytelling and engaging influencers and advocates – a discipline that I’m surprised that more brands aren’t embracing.
• Social media has fundamentally changed how brands engage customers, shareholders, media and other stakeholders. Brave brands, like Philips, are embracing this tectonic shift in communications and are investing into social media. This is an area I will dedicate myself and my team to becoming a best practice leader in.
• Digital marketing is the future. I’ve worked in digital my entire career and I’m very honoured to be one of the few digital marketers to breakthrough into a senior level marketing/CMO role. While I appreciate and support specialists, I personally don’t understand the need to have separate digital teams as part of the wider marketing organisation – I want Philips to become the best digital marketing organisation in the world. I plan to bring my extensive experience in this area to my new role.

I start my new, very exciting role in February 2014. If you're interested in working with Philips and joining me on this adventure, please check out the Philips Career website here: http://www.careers.philips.com.sg/

I’m only one person but I believe in the power of networking and value the ideas of others. If you have any thoughts on Philips, specifically on what I can do to help grow the brand, improve communications or drive digital transformation across the region, I’d love to hear from you. Please let me know what you think in the comments section below or feel free to email me directly (damiencummings@gmail.com).

Moderating "Web Analytics & Actionable Insights" at Econsultancy's Digital Cream 2013.

Recently I had the pleasure of moderating the Web Analytics & Actionable Insights panel at Econsultancy's Digital Cream 2013 event in Singapore. In my opinion the Digital Cream event is one most prestigious and valuable events because it brings the top 150 digital marketing leaders across Asia together in one room to debate and share insights.

The Web Analytics and Actionable Insights panel featured lively debate around three key themes: 

Measurement is useless without strategy.

First, that there tends to be a focus on measuring digital metrics but this is usually quite disconnected from a marketing or business strategy. The key theme of that discussion thread is that if you don't have a strategy in place, you don't need analytics to measure your success. It's critical to understand your end goal, and what metrics are important for your brand before embarking on developing a digital dashboard and key metrics. 

Be mobile first.

Second, there was a discussion around evolving platform usage. In 2013 mobile web traffic is already at 28%, with a predication of over 50% of web traffic from 2014. This means that a web analytics plan needs to think broader than PC, and focus more strongly on measuring content and interactions on mobile devices and tablets.

Resourcing for Analytics into the future.

Third discussion point was about how to get started and what resources are needed. It was agreed that if you're new to Web Analytics, it makes sense to outsource this to an agency in the early days. However, as all businesses become fundamentally digital it's important to have Analytics as an internal function. The challenge though, is that right now this responsibility is given to an already overworked marketing team or marketing manager. So the big question is whether organisations will grow specific Web Analytics teams, or whether it needs to be decentralised and made a responsibility of all marketers? The consensus was everyone needs to understand Web Analytics but for Actionable Insights, this requires a higher level of skill and knowledge. These "strategic analysts" will be the "Chief Data Officers" of the future.

6 Guidelines For Becoming A Social Business.

My latest presentation: 6 Guidelines For Becoming A Social Business.

6 guidelines for_becoming_a_social_business_dec2013 from Damien Cummings

4 reasons why CEOs still don’t invest in digital marketing

This post originally appeared on the Firebrand Talent Blog.

There are thousands of research documents, millions of opinions, and the experience of almost everyone on the planet that digital is the new normal. Smartphone penetration is ridiculously high, with the passionate debate about Android vs. iOS and Samsung vs. Apple making headline news. There are over a billion people using Facebook, with hundreds of millions of people using Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Vine, and other social networks. Google, Baidu, and Bing searches are a daily part of everyone’s every day lives, as well as critical to finding any information nowadays.

So, why are marketing managers struggling to spend even a small percentage of their media in digital? It’s big news when companies like P&G announce that they’re moving their digital spend to 35%. For me, the big question is whether this is enough? Consumers don’t spend 10%, 20%, or 35% of their time using digital devices and media, so what’s the bottleneck?

I believe there are four major reasons why CEOs and CMOs are struggling to invest in digital:

1. CEOs don’t trust CMOs. This is the biggest contributor to why marketing budgets get cut and new initiatives don’t get off the ground. Marketing is not as clear cut as Sales. Sales have easy to understand metrics like sales, profit and market share. Marketing and Advertising deals in intangibles like brand, customer satisfaction, reach/awareness, and purchase intent. Too often, Marketing leaders don’t take the time to truly connect and engage with the CEO and other executive leaders. This has lead to the erosion of trust.
2. Marketers rely too much on their media agency partners to spend their money. Media agencies are fantastic at optimising a media budget, but they have inherent bias towards certain media. TV is still top of mind for most media agency leaders due to its reach and ability to quickly launch a new product.Online video (the nearest digital equivalent) is far too fragmented and requires a deeper level of understanding of less understood elements like content marketing, YouTube (and YouTube celebrities), and Mobile marketing. Similarly, it’s easy to understand that print and OOH are going to get a brand a wide audience and boost awareness. What’s missing is the understanding thatconsumer behaviour has changed and people are expecting a different, deeper relationship with brands. A print ad will never change behaviour in the way a conversation with friends on social media can – digital is the only way to interactively engage consumers and build brand preference and true loyalty.
3. True consumer digital usage is on platforms and devices, not in media. The focus has to be moving marketing budgets from media to production. Building a website is not a media spend. Creating an engaging mobile experience via an App is not a media spend. Engaging social media influencers and advocates is not a media spend. e-CRM is not media. For true digital engagement the focus needs to shift to capability building activities and “creating” things, not simply buying an empty space and filling it with an ad.
4. CMOs don’t understand the value and ROI of social media. Marketers understand that consumers are deeply engaged in platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, but most haven’t figured out the right way to engage these consumers. Instead of listening to customers, understanding their passions and needs, then engaging in a open, honest and relevant discussion with them, it seems most brands simply want to relentlessly spam their fans/followers/connections with product info or useless trivia. In fact, in my experience, up to 45% of activity on a brand’s Facebook page is customer service-related (complaints, questions, etc.), so pumping out spammy product content in that kind of environment completely misses the mark. This all leads to the confusion around ROI. If CMOs don’t understand the best way to use social media, it’s going to be very unclear on how to measure its success.

How to be an amazing digital marketer

This article first appeared on the Firebrand Talent blog.

Recently I’ve written about my perspective on the role of a modern CMO and have given tips on how to climb the corporate ladder if you’re a digital marketer. However, not everyone aspires to be a CMO. Many are eager to get into digital marketing and those already in the field want to become better, to be truly great digital marketers. One of the biggest challenges in digital marketing is about definition. What exactly is “digital” and what types of digital marketing practitioners are out there? 

I believe there are 5 key archetypes:

• The Technologist is the tech geek. This is someone who is comfortable talking about website development builds, web hosting, e-commerce or other technology-heavy digital initiatives.
• The Strategist is passionate about consumer behaviour. They want their marketing and % of media spend to match the massive amount of consumer time being spent online or using a mobile device. They live and breathe digital, but may come up short when it comes to deep operational insights or how to make it happen outside of a PowerPoint presentation.
• The Specialist is the person who is a true expert in one particular field. The search marketing professional, the e-CRM expert or the mobile application developer. However, their deep subject matter expertise usually comes at the expense of broader experience in other forms of marketing.
• The Media Maven is an expert in ad units and media placements. They understand the most popular websites, how to spend money efficiently with Google, Facebook, Yahoo! or Ad Networks. The best ‘Media Mavens’ also know what creative units work best in each platform.
• The All Rounder is that rare individual who has done a lot of things in the digital world. They have probably built websites, engaged in social conversations, managed digital marketing campaigns, maybe done a bit of search marketing and are now passionate about all things mobile. A lot of people aspire to be ‘The All Rounder’ but very few walk the talk when it comes to do the various areas of digital marketing well.

So what makes a great digital marketer? In addition to having a solid grasp of marketing fundamentals, good presentation, and inter-personal skills, here are 7 tips for success:

1. Don’t talk tech, talk business. This is a simple mistake I see so many marketers make. Talking about click-throughs, impressions or sentiment doesn’t mean anything to the CEO. If you can link your work to increased revenue, cost savings or higher levels of customer engagement/experience you’ll have the support of senior management.
2. Try to be inherently social and mobile. The world is rapidly becoming about connected mobile devices. So focus all your efforts on truly understanding these platforms. Instead of building a website, focus on responsive design or building a mobile site first. For social, ensure every other form of digital marketing is inherently social. You can do this by adding social share buttons, opening up Apps or websites to comments, or integrating your work into social networks such as Facebook or Pinterest. More importantly, be social in your personal life – walk the talk! Blog, Tweet, Pin and interact with others online.
3. Challenge what others tell you is possible in digital. Many forms of digital marketing are still evolving and there aren’t best practices built yet. There’s the potential for greatness in all forms of digital marketing. For example, no one even considered using YouTube for real-time (and wildly entertaining) conversations until Old Spice launched their legendary campaign for Old Spice Guy in 2010. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. But because things are changing so rapidly in digital, there is potential everywhere.
4. Reimagine and reinvent the best of your past work. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel every time you run a campaign or build a website. Go find out who’s already done a great job and build upon what they’ve done. Google have a wonderful process called Project re:brief where they review old campaigns and reimagine them for the 21st century (with a strong focus on social, mobile, search, YouTube video and digital activation). You can take the same idea with your previous work or the best work of others – relook at that last campaign, brainstorm how you could improve it and then make it happen.
5. Deliberately open yourself up to criticism. Like the early point about being inherently social, it’s important to not just be good at digital marketing but take it to the next level by becoming a thought leader. I don’t suggest you do this to get famous, but to do this to put your ideas on the public stage for criticism, review and ultimately, improvement. You’re not great until you’ve been challenged and put to the test. If your ideas or work doesn’t stand up to criticism, you need to go back and continue learning.
6. Read voraciously and continue learning. No one knows everything about digital marketing. and because of the pace of technology change, things are moving so quickly. It’s important to keep up-to-date with what’s happening in the world of marketing. At least 5 – 10 hours a week of solid reading andnetworking is required to keep at the top of your game. Even more importantly, you need to seek out best practice examples and learn from others. For example, meet up with digital marketing leaders and other Fortune 500 brands, have lunch with your agency once a week or fortnight, or attend regular marketing events and seminars.
7. Challenge yourself to master another part of digital marketing. Your ultimate goal should be to become ‘The All Rounder’ – a master of all digital marketing arts. So if you’re great at search marketing, branch out and immerse yourself in social media or e-CRM. Keep challenging yourself until you’ve been successful at everything.

The key skills needed to be a successful CMO

This article first appeared on the Firebrand Talent blog.

Recently I wrote a blog post on how a digital marketing executive can get to a Marketing Director or CMO role. It raised a lot of debate about whether a specialist in any form of marketing can make it to the top, as well as bringing into spotlight the key responsibilities and skills a CMO needs to be successful.

I strongly believe someone from any marketing specialisation (and in particular digital) can become a Marketing Director or CMO. In fact, many great CMOs have come from non-marketing backgrounds (such as Sales, Operations, and even Engineering). The secret lies in understanding the changing nature of what a CMO does, and the skills needed to be a successful modern Chief Marketing Officer.

So what does a CMO need to do to be successful? Here are the top skills needed for modern CMOs:

1. It’s NOT about doing great advertising. Although a lot of external media and agencies benchmark brands on this one aspect of marketing. Ads are great, but it’s only a small aspect of the overall responsibilities of a modern CMO.
2. There’s a need to manage a very large media investment wisely. Many organisations have marketing budgets in the millions of dollars and some big brands have massive budgets in the billions of dollars. Managing a million or even billion dollars in media expenses is a massive responsibility that is often outside the skill set of most marketers. It requires a very strong understanding of finance, investment management and building the right capability with media agency partners.
3. A modern CMO needs to have a deep understanding of technology and how it affects customer behaviour. Programs like CRM, digital marketing, social media, e-commerce and lead generation all need strong guidance from Marketing. There’s even speculation that CMO and CIO roles will merge into a Chief Digital Officer role in the near future. Regardless, modern CMOs need to be experts in technology to be successful.
4. The modern marketing function is about change management and building capability. Running marketing campaigns is not the role of a CMO. Building the right competence in your field marketing team at regional and local country is. Capabilities include the right level of product innovation, marketing research and insights, strong lead generation and sales framework, agency and partner management, media investment management, digital and technology systems, and of course, hiring and retaining the best people.
5. Marketing needs to have a very strong link to the Sales organisation. In some brands, sales and marketing are managed by the same leader but in many others they are separate functions. The best CMOs link marketing metrics to sales or business metrics otherwise they run the risk of irrelevance.
6. Be an inspirational leader. Inspire and support your team and in turn attract the best talent into your organisation.
7. Have a deep understanding of the customer and be the “Chief Customer Officer” for your organisation. This is more than doing market research but truly putting the customer first and getting a deep understanding of how customers view your brand and products – every day.

There are many other traits and skills needed to be a great modern CMO, but if you are good at several of the key points above, you have a great chance to be a top CMO of the future. Good luck on your journey!

From digital marketing executive to CMO: 10 tips to get to the top

This blog post originally appeared on the Firebrand Talent blog.

If you want to be a CMO or Marketing Director at a big brand and currently work in social media or digital marketing, you’re probably not going to make it. The fact is, you’re in the wrong job. I am often asked for career advice or to mentor young professionals looking to make a name for themselves in the digital marketing world. Currently there aren’t many digital marketers or social media marketing professionals that have made it to the top levels of marketing at a major brand. While I strongly believe it’s possible (in fact, as digital becomes more mainstream, it’s becoming much more likely) to reach the top, there are a lot of misconceptions about digital and social that many don’t understand. Some of the challenges and issues include:

Social media is perceived as “operational”. It is something that is “executed” by (usually less experienced) specialists. Big Brands are looking to hire specialists who understand social media but the scope of these roles tends to fall in two areas

• Community Management – This is increasingly about managing a pre-built editorial calendar, managing digital assets (images, videos, written posts, etc.) and moderating community comments.
• Customer Service – As much as 40% of enquiries via social media platforms (specifically Facebook and Twitter) are customer-service related.

Digital marketing campaign management is too technical and siloed. Managing digital campaigns is very important but the skills needed tend to be either:

• Technical – especially if you’re running digital display with media that is managed via real-time bidding, you are doing e-CRM with re-targeting and multi-variant testing, etc.).
• Niche and often overly specialised. For example, Search Marketing professionals are now often responsible for both paid search/PPC and SEO, and to be great, require a number of years specialising in the craft.

So, if you are currently in a social media or digital marketing role, here’s 10 tips on how to break through to the top:

1. A successful digital marketing function = change management. Digital marketing in large organisations is about building capability and making change. This includes tools, processes, ongoing education and executive level training. Your job should be to help make all marketers digital, not just a select few.
2. Shift from operations to achieving results. I don’t mean hitting campaign targets or driving incremental sales. When I talk about results, I really mean achieving the “wow” factor. You see this in memorable digital work like Old Spice Guy’s ongoing social engagement, or more recently inSamsung’s “The Next Big Thing” work. These campaigns think big and achieve big. Do this, and you’ll be on the fast-track to success.
3. Develop great presentation and communications skills. It doesn’t matter where you are in an organisation, if you can’t communicate or present well, you won’t get to the top.
4. Stop talking about tactical digital metrics and start talking business objectives. Too many marketers get caught up in impressions, click-throughs and social media sentiment. CEOs don’t care about these things. They care about sales, market share, savings/efficiency and building great relationships with customers. Tactical metrics are important but they need to be clearly linked to business metrics.
5. Be a thought leader. If you have deep subject matter expertise, share your knowledge. Consider presenting externally, talking to the media and blogging/writing. Even better, if you can help senior management understand how digital and social is impacting your customers, this is a big win.
6. Lose that sense of entitlement. This is much more subjective but I often see those starting out in digital with inflated job titles (or even worse they are “ninjas” or “jedis”!) or overconfident because they know more about a particular niche skill than others. Be humble and patient. As you grow older and wiser you’ll realise that your previous big title or knowing how to grow a Facebook Fan or Twitter Follower base doesn’t entitle you to a Marketing Director job.
7. Understand the broader marketing landscape. You might not want to hear it but TV advertising still dominates marketing. Never be a “digital vs. traditional” person. Be smart and learn how digital and social media works well with other forms of marketing in the media mix.
8. Understand that your social networking ability does not equal actual networking ability. So much of working in a big brand is about building strong relationships and networking. Sadly, being great at social networking often limits your skills at face-to-face networking. Get out from behind the PC or off your mobile phone and learn the art of conversation.
9. Understand both brand marketing and performance marketing. Unfortunately digital marketers tend to fall into one of two camps – driving brand engagement (through social marketing, online video, digital display, etc.) or focusing on sales (through search, e-CRM, affiliate marketing, etc.). CMOs need to understand both to be successful.
10. Realise that eventually some other new technology will come along and it’ll shake things up. It’s been happening since the invention of the ink and quill. New technology enters the market and changes how people interact with each other. It’s inevitable and some radical shift will happen again soon. Please don’t look down upon your senior managers who have struggled with the introduction of the PC, Internet, tablet, social networking and smartphone (to name just a few). You’ll be in that same place soon, I guarantee it.

How People Really Use Mobile (& Mistakes Marketers Make)

I recently came across this fantastic article from the Harvard Business Review website, titled "How People Really Use Their Mobile". The link to the full preview article can be found here. 

For me, it's always been a challenge understanding how consumers really use their mobile device (whether it be a smartphone or tablet). This article gives great new insight into this - there are really seven key motivations for using a mobile device. More importantly, there's a clear contrast between how people are using their mobile device and the disconnect between what marketers are doing (in mobile advertising, in-apps brand engagement and mobile marketing).

-------------------------------------------------

To marketers, the prospect of reaching shoppers through their smartphones is tantalizing. But mobile doesn't always mean on the go. New data show that 68% of consumers' smartphone use happens at home. And users' most common activity is not shopping or socializing but engaging in what researchers at BBDO and AOL call "me time."

Seven primary motivations for people using their mobile device. 
The reasons consumers use smartphones can be broken down into the goals listed below, along with the average monthly minutes and percentage of interactions devoted to each.

Where Marketers Go Wrong.

Marketers often get it wrong when looking to either place ads in front of potential customers, or in understanding true user behavior.

Lesson number 1 for marketers - Making Bad Assumptions About App Use.
Apps can have more than one purpose. Facebook, for instance, can be used for socializing, self-expression, or discovery. And if you're using a shopping app to dream about what kind of couch or pizza you might order tomorrow, you're in "me time."

Lesson number 2 for marketers - Failing to Connect with Users During "Me Time".

Mobile ads that consumers see during "me time" generally do poorly on effectiveness (as measured by the percentage of viewers who click on the ad, search for the product, recall the product, or make a purchase). That's because the majority of messages aren't relevant to the context, are easy to ignore, or get in the way.

You can find out more about this impressive research from the Harvard Business Review website here.