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NURTURE
THE
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 WRAP YOUR EARS AROUND...

Marketing goes one-on-one with the sharpest marketers in

Australia. MarCast is joined by CMOs and senior brand leaders to
discuss careers and approaches to brand, competitors, training,
tech, agencies and more!

SARAH MURDOCH
former global marketing
director, Jurlique.
“The challenge is, what that
experience looks like in a country
like in Australia, is very different
to what that experience looks like
in a country like China.”
Available now on iTunes, Spotify and Google Play.
FEATURING...
AMANDA MacMILLAN
ANZ customer marketing lead,
Nufarm.
“Our customers – like in any
industry – are real people, with
real problems or real questions.
It’s all about how we can harness
information and be timely about
how we support them.”
BEN HILL
Marketing, innovation and
corporate affairs director, Bega
Cheese Ltd.
“Anyone can identify a large
category or a future trend; the
hard bit is: which ones do you
choose to go after and how?”
 22

FEATURES CASE STUDIES

48
14 64
Mentors and mentees Mars Puppo
22 Every Dog
Educrastination 68
32 ME Bank
Clean your room Slow TV
38 72
Career profile Shutterstock
Terri Martin Fyrestock
INFOGRAPHICS
14 22 64
Marketing salaries 2019/‘20
46
Social media: what we nurture

INTERVIEW
48
Ben Foote
Careers and marketing skills
32 68
58
Troy McKinna
On Brand Hustle
77
Anna Grodecka-Grad
Advertising, tech and future jobs

Marketing 2019
THE NURTURE ISSUE
30 82

56 84

COLUMNS
36
Martin Moore
Leadership lessons
44
Desh Wheeler
Healthy recruitment
CONTENT 82
Steve Sammartino
36
PARTNERS Corporate virus
20 84
The Marketing Academy Alumni Sérgio Brodsky
Brain Trust Scrap your personal brand
30 86
Forrester Con Stavros
OK leadership Way out
56
UnLtd 44
Taking better care of ourselves

Contents
Editor
BEN ICE
ben.ice@niche.com.au
Publisher
Contributors
JANE BOWMAN
Tel: +61 408 180 288
jane.bowman@niche.com.au
Assistant editor
JOSH LOH
Editorial design
KEELY GOODALL
Production manager
MARIE DELRIEU
marie.delrieu@niche.com.au
Production coordinator
STEPHANIE YANG
stephanie.yang@niche.com.au
Digital pre-press ALISON TILLING* CHRIS FREEL*
KARL DYER Page 20 Page 56
Business development manager
EMELIA HINGE
Tel: +61 404 181 012
emelia.hinge@niche.com.au

Subscription enquiries
Tel: 1800 804 160
subscriptions@niche.com.au
www.marketingmag.com.au

Marketing is a publication of
Niche Media Pty Ltd CON STAVROS DESH WHEELER FIONA KILLACKEY
ABN 13 064 613 529. Page 86 Page 44 Page 24
Suite 2.02, Level 2,
3 Bowen Crescent,
Melbourne VIC 3004
Tel +613 9948 4900
Fax +613 9948 4999

Chairman
NICHOLAS DOWER
Managing director JAMES L MCQUIVEY* JOSH LOH
PAUL LIDGERWOOD Page 30 Pages 22, 32, 46, 77
Commercial director
JOANNE DAVIES
Head of content
MADELEINE SWAIN
Financial controller
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Printing
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Marketing ISSN 1441–7863 © 2019 Niche Media Pty Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of
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LAUREN CAIN* MARGY VARY* OORE
Page 20 Page 20

Image courtesy of chuttersnap via unsplash

OMANY SEAN HALL*
P Page 20

TRACEY PORTER
Many thanks to Content Partners
Page 14

RTNER: a Marketi
tion with which w
partnership to collaborate o for the magazine
(see page numbers listed for
 Editor's
note
E
veryone’s rushing around trying to make
sure they’re across everything – so as
not to be left behind in this age of rapid
change. This issue looks at it all, from mentoring,
to education, to skills, career progression,
leadership and everything in between.
It’s an exciting space and, as with everything
@marketingmag
in the sphere of marketing and modern business,
there’s plenty of noise out there. We live in an
era of keynote motivators, podcast life coaches,
industry thought bloggers and niche online
coursework. Some of it is useful, some of it
inspires, much of it will help you. But one thing’s
undeniably true. It’s getting easier to create and –
due to its volume – harder to sift through. Finding
what’s right for you is the real challenge.
I’m aware of the irony: ‘be wary of anything
that claims to make marketing easier and deliver
career success’, warns editor of the magazine
which does just that.
So I promise you: this issue isn’t just a
pile of tips, tricks and inspirational buzz. There’s
nothing about how ‘there are no bad ideas’
(there absolutely are). We’re not going to tell
you that business is a buffet where culture is
the food and people are the knives and forks.
There aren’t ‘11 surefire steps to that next big
promotion’. You won’t be encouraged to trade
in your WIP meetings for unicycle laps around
the local park to boost imagination. There’s no
magic formula here, because there’s no magic
formula in life.
Yes, it’s important to look at all of this with a
healthy scepticism. We’ve applied a critical lens
to the lucrative world of online courses. Instead
of trying to inspire you about good leadership,
THE NURTURE ISSUE
Ben Ice
Editor, Marketing.
we look at bad leadership – and the even more
common problem of ‘just OK’ leadership.
It also got us thinking about career advice and
how sometimes it can turn out to be pretty bad.
Marketing spoke to a few leaders in the field (of
marketing and business, not of bad advice) and a
pattern emerged. It seems that for many, it’s the
poor advice that teaches us the most. We learn
plenty from the bad bosses. We gain rich experience
from the stress, the mistakes, the exhaustion. We
learn about ourselves, about how to get through
it, how to do it better next time and in many cases,
how to get the hell out of there. I’m not sure where
it comes from, but it’s a testament to our resilience
that we don’t just buckle over and give up. We take
the negative and turn it into a positive.
And when thinking about nurturing careers,
we shouldn’t just be thinking about ourselves.
We should all take an active role in nurturing the
success of those around us and recognise the
role we play in the culture of our organisations.
There are countless options for investing in
one’s skills and development, and I definitely
encourage you to do so if you can. But a free, easy
and priceless investment we should all make is
in the people around us. With our co-workers,
clients, partners, network, family and friends.
It’ll pay off now and in the long run. Unlike the
ever-changing suite of marketing competencies,
communication and interpersonal skills will never
go obsolete. Putting time and effort into the
people around you is an investment in yourself,
your career, your network and, let’s face it, your
overall enjoyment of work and life.
– Ben
“Consumers bring several “I see
perceived and unique a lot of
benefits associated with companies
their inclusion on the trying to do
interview panel.” (44) it all.” (58)

“Plenty of leaders wind up in their Nurture

positions because of their hard /ˈnəːtʃə/
technical skills but have never Verb
1. Care for and protect
learned about the intricacies of (someone or
something) while
what it means to be a leader.” (14)

marketingmag.com.au
they are growing.
1.1 Help or encourage
the development of.
1.2 Cherish (a hope,
“Weak accountability is belief or ambition).

characterised by lots of talk, Origin

Middle English: from
little action. The culture Old French noureture
becomes one of decision making ‘nourishment’, based
on Latin nutrire ‘feed,
by consensus and management cherish’.
by committee.” (36) Source: Oxford English Dictionary

“It would be “That's the similarity

irrational for between my previous life
employees to in academia and now –
not treat you
like an object.”
always learning, always
(30) evolving” (82)

MARKETING 2019
 “Unlike a university or traditional education
model where lecturers must go through a
rigorous process in order to teach, the online
course model can be utilised by anyone,
anywhere with low barrier to entry.” (24)

“If you’re not “Perhaps, our trust crisis may

passionate even have something to do with
people living and breathing
– and there their personal brands rather
could be than themselves.” (84)
@marketingmag

a million
reasons why
you’ve lost “You have to understand
how you come across
that passion and how to work with
– move on people who are different
right away.”(38) than you.” (48)

“The word ‘family’ needs to be “I know that we

can be fiercely
brought back into companies. competitive, but I
Because the bigger you get, worry that this is
the more depersonalised you coming at a critical
cost to individuals.”
become.” (32) (56)

THE NURTURE ISSUE

 14 FEATURE

Following
the leader

marketingmag.com.au
Mentoring offers far more than just bespoke professional development. But what role
does it play in protecting us from short circuiting on our own invented reality loop and
what impact does it have on our ability to grow? Tracey Porter finds out.

O
nce a month some of Australia’s most
influential businesspeople arise from their
slumber, grab a pair of comfortable walking
shoes, and make their way out the door.
Counting among their number some of the
most accomplished commercial brains the country has to
offer, they switch off their phones, go off the digital grid
and turn their attention to the carefully curated groups
gathered in front of them with pen and notebook poised.
And together they stroll. Part of a popular new initiative
called Mentor Walks, the series brings together leading
executives and emerging female leaders for the chance
to connect, support and learn from one another while
enjoying a time-limited open airwalk. The initiative –
launched three years ago by STM Brands co-owner Adina
Jacobs and head of Mahlab content marketing agency
Bobbi Mahlab – aims to help more women advance their
careers by getting advice for challenges they’re facing,
whether it’s requesting a pay rise, influencing executive
teams or achieving buy-in from overseas investors. In
the time it has been running, more than 240 mentors –
including Red Balloon founder Naomi Simpson, Carnival
Australia executive chairman Ann Sherry and former
ABC MD Michelle Guthrie – have agreed to share their
experiences, benefiting nearly 1500 aspiring mentees.
Jacobs says while in the past mentoring programs were
heavily skewed towards male executives, this is no longer
the case.“It is changing now but when we started almost
three years ago there was a fair few opportunities for
men to get that kind of inspiration but there was nothing
specifically by women for women.”
Now it doesn’t even have to be executives who gain the
most from such experiences. The program attracts mentees
that are just starting out in their own businesses, all the way
through to women who are at a very senior level but “may not
be as strong in some areas as they are in others”, Jacobs says.
“To me, the value of a mentor is to use somebody as
a sounding board to be able to really identify what your
challenges are. To have to think about what they are and
then verbalise them and explain them to yourself as well as
to someone else really gets you into a position where you
can figure out what your next steps are to resolve them.

MARKETING 2019
 Plenty of leaders wind up
in their positions because of
their hard technical skills but
have never learned about the
intricacies of what it means to
be a leader.
 16 FEATURE
The benefit of speaking to someone who has been there
before and can share their experiences with you is
invaluable.”
Giovanna Lever, managing director of professional
development group Sparrowly, spent more than 20 years
working as an integrated commercial marketer across the
tourism, hospitality, entertainment and sports sectors
before becoming a professional mentor. Lever, who has
experience as both a mentee and a mentor, says there are
numerous benefits to aligning key personnel with more
experienced business leaders, most notably because they
are able to adopt a big picture view. Mentors look at your
situation holistically – the professional and the personal
– and provide advice and feedback to help you keep in
balance and moving forward, she says. And it’s for this
reason that everyone in business should have one. Lever
argues plenty of leaders wind up in their positions because
of their hard technical skills but have never learned about
the intricacies of what it means to be a leader.
“Many leaders don’t want to show weakness but good
leaders should be working 360 degrees with their people.
One-on-one meetings with team members need to be an
open dialogue where employees feel comfortable airing
their grievances or concerns. I have been hammered by
my team at times but then I go away and reflect on the
conversation. In most cases, they have a point and I have
adjusted my approach accordingly.”
It’s clear, however, that it’s not just women recognising
the value of learning from others’ experience. In fact, many
of Australia’s top performing brands are now exposing
their teams to both informal and formal one-on-one or
peer-to-peer mentoring programs as part of their ongoing
development. In a departure from the commercial world’s
traditional top-down management style, others – including
Mastercard, ANZ and PwC – are also aligning these
programs with reverse mentoring offerings, allowing
younger executives to share knowledge in emerging
technologies and disciplines with their leaders. Not only
does this allow an increased diversity of cross-generational
thought between workers but it also assists businesses in
achieving their strategic goals, such as fostering inclusivity
and increasing Millennial retention.
Tank managing director Jim Antonopoulos, whose
agency provides creative leadership services to founders
and CEOs of start-ups and not-for-profits, believes good
mentorship is as relevant to executives as it is to people
in the early stages of their career. Antonopoulos says to
MARKETING 2019
embark on being mentored you have to have an open mind
and a willingness to learn. One key trait that makes good
mentors is the willingness to ask questions, to provoke
thought and to challenge the mentors’ point of view. When
this happens you’ve got a great foundation for a strong
mentor/mentee relationship, he says.
“In my opinion, good leaders make the best mentors,
and that doesn’t mean that the greatest mentors are always
going to be in a position of seniority. One of my favourite,
if not best mentors, is younger than I and we have a
relationship that sees us both exchange insights and value
with one another on a regular basis.
“Good mentors are open to giving and sharing value
and thrive on others learning because they themselves are
learners.”
In recent years, the 70:20:10 model for learning and
development has been readily adopted by organisations
all over the world. The formula works on the theory that
70 percent of the development of a managerial leader is
experiential, 20 percent is learning from others and 10
percent is learning from programs. However, Macquarie
Graduate School of Management Adjunct Fellow Paul
Kirkbride – who is the lead facilitator of the university’s
popular New Leadership Program – believes that when it
comes to mentoring, these figures don’t quite stack up.
“To get better, [aspiring leaders] have to go on a program
because they need a framework to understand leadership.
They’re not going to get any better at leadership if they
In recent years, the
70:20:10 model for learning and
development has been readily
adopted by organisations all
over the world.
don’t even understand the basics.”
The second portion of the formula represents learning
from others and includes tools such as 360-degree
feedback – where feedback is sought from an employee’s
subordinates, colleagues, and supervisors, as well as a self-
evaluation by the employee – which many claim is a critical
part of any mentee’s journey.
Yet in reality, the benefits of mentoring mean aspiring

Finding your great mentor
Richard Branson had Sir Freddie Laker, Jeff Bezos had David Shaw and Tim Cook had
Steve Jobs. It is often noted that a truly great mentor is “hard to find, difficult to part with
and impossible to forget.” The value a mentor can bring is clear, but what’s not so crystal
is recognising who makes a good one. Fortunately, most great mentors share a number of
characteristics that can help sort the decidedly good from the decidedly average.
Marketing Academy founder
Sherilyn Shackell says aside
from demonstrating superb
leadership skills, great mentors
usually possess an “unwavering”
willingness to share their skills,
knowledge and expertise.
“Our mentors are also extremely
open – willing to share not
only their ‘wins’ but also their
failures. They understand the
importance of supporting
talent within the industry and
are keen to invest their time in
developing the next generation of
board leaders.”
Sparrowly managing director
Giovanna Lever says while skill
and competence are obvious
starting points, a good mentor
will also demonstrate diplomacy
and compassion. A mentor/mentee
relationship is not functional,
she says, so there has to be a
deep level of empathy and
emotional intelligence in order
to be truly productive.
“It’s important that you as the
mentee feel completely at ease.
If you don’t, the relationship will
never work. I have a mentor and
know that he is completely right
for me because I feel I can truly
say anything, without judgement,
and am able to show vulnerability –
that’s important.”
17 FEATURE
Mentor Walks co-founder Adina
Jacobs believes good mentors
differentiate themselves through
their ability to listen as well as
they speak. In addition, they
are authentic and not ego-driven,
she says.
“Most value tends to come from
their experience sharing rather
than advice-giving. It encourages
people to get to the next steps in
their own mind, rather than just
doing what somebody else has told
them to do.”
For her part, GroupM chief HR
and talent officer Cindy Grass
subscribes to the theory that
mentoring is not just about one
person learning from another
person’s experience, so no
one individual is able to fill all
requirements. She says mentoring
is a multifaceted discipline and
those seeking to broaden their
skills through career development
need to adopt a much broader focus
when seeking to find a mentor.
“Mentoring can be personal or
professional, in your field or out of
your field. You really need a blend
of this at different times. It can
be to learn a new skill, or to learn
how to develop your career, what
behaviours to adopt in certain
situations, and to build a network.
It can be as informal as someone
THE NURTURE ISSUE
that gives you a call once or twice a
year to bounce an idea off you, or as
a structured as formalised face-
to-face meetings with an agenda,
timeline and guidelines.”
Grass says owing to this
complexity, it’s unlikely that
aspiring leaders will ever find one
mentor that can fulfil all aspects
when it comes to guidance. Instead,
individuals should consider
building a network of ‘allies’ that
they can lean into at various
times depending on the need
with each serving different roles,
in a professional, educational or
personal capacity, she says.
Shackell says while most good
mentors give their time freely,
it’s best to avoid those who insist
on being compensated. “In our
view, that’s not mentoring. If
you’re paying for advice,
knowledge or wisdom, that’s
consultancy or training.
“Mentoring is a personal obligation,
a gift if you like, from someone
who has either a vested or
personal interest in helping or
supporting the mentee, voluntarily.
It’s not a service. It’s our belief
that mentoring should be freely
given and gratefully received.
It’s the responsibility of every
leader to make time to develop
other leaders.”
 18 FEATURE
leaders looking for greater career growth should allow it to play
a larger-than-suggested part in their development, he says.
“It shades between the 70 percent and 20 percent because
you’re getting your experiences, but then the ability to
discuss your experiences with an experienced mentor and
bounce ideas off that person to reframe your experiences is
one of the most powerful things, I think, of mentoring.”
With a career that includes stints as CMO for
McDonald’s and big roles at Pepsi and Unilever, GroupM
Australasian CEO Mark Lollback was one of Australia’s
foremost marketers before heading agency side. As a result,
he has been exposed to numerous mentoring experiences –
both as mentee and mentor – for much of his professional
life and has relished each chance. He actively encourages
many of his leadership team to mentor younger executives
within the GroupM business, as well as supporting
younger staff to embrace mentoring opportunities.
Lollback, who for the past few years has given back to
the sector through his involvement in several mentoring
projects including The Marketing Academy’s prestigious
Mentoring Scholarship Program, says he considers being
a mentor a “hugely valuable” thing to do and believes both
mentees and mentors have much to gain from participation.
“I think mentoring is something that senior people
in business have a responsibility to do, to pay back the
experience and knowledge that was shared with us by
others. It’s also immensely satisfying to be a mentor to be
able to provide that support and guidance to someone else.
“To me, a good mentor is genuine and honest about
their own strengths and has an openness to sharing their
mistakes. You have to check the ego at the door. It’s about
empathy and listening and it has to come from an authentic
desire to help someone else’s development, rather than
grandstanding about successes.”
While some believe the most successful mentoring
relationships arise when the selected mentor comes from
within the same sector, others argue the relationship is more
likely to succeed when the mentor is from outside the mentee’s
own industry. Lollback believes there are advantages to both.
“Having a mentor in your industry means that they
immediately understand some of the nuanced challenges
that you are facing, and you can offer industry-specific
advice and coaching based on that. But in a business sense,
there is a lot to be gained from a mentor that exists outside
of the nuts and bolts of your day-to-day world. They can
offer you a broader business perspective and draw on the
similar and different challenges that other industries face.
MARKETING 2019
They can broaden your thinking or allow you to step out of
your role and think about leadership or problem solving
from a different perspective.”
The Marketing Academy founder and CEO, Sherilyn
Shackell, also believes there is much value for mentees
in meeting mentors from both within and outside of the
same industry. Shackell – whose company specialises in
developing leadership capability in talented marketers from
the marketing, media, advertising and communications
industries – says to this end when placing mentors and
mentees together as part of her group’s scholarship program,
she purposefully mixes up the pairings.
“[This ensures] that whichever business sector our
scholars are in (media agency, creative agency, client-side
brands, B2B, B2C, public sector, media owners etc) they
meet mentors from a multitude of different industries,
sectors and functions. This breadth enables the scholar’s
marketingmag.com.au
knowledge and awareness to grow exponentially.”
You have to check the ego
at the door. It’s about empathy
and listening.
Shackell says while it is easy to measure the success of a
mentoring relationship from a mentee’s perspective, this is
not always the case from a mentor’s point of view. With no
metric available, the only way a mentor can quantify the
relationship’s success is by asking themselves whether they
gave their best and ensuring they were sincere and honest
in the advice they offered, she says.
“If the answer is ‘yes’, then that’s a fabulous outcome. If
the mentee leaves the session a little wiser, or more inspired,
or challenged, or with the confidence to try something
different, then even better,” she says.
Lollback, however, says the best sign a mentor partnership
is on track is to look at the personal rapport the mentor and
the mentee have developed. If they are comfortable with each
other, respect each other’s viewpoints and are able to be open
and honest – even through difficult conversations – then
mentoring will tend to be successful, he says.
“It’s not about one party telling the other what they
should be doing, or providing the answers, but both parties
offering support and guidance and exploring ways of
thinking and working.”
TOTAL $0.00
PAY

Brain trust
What are some of the best and worst pieces
of career advice you’ve ever received?
LAUREN CAIN
The best career advice I received
was to overcommunicate,
underpromise, and overdeliver. It’s
easy to fall into the trap of assuming
people have the same level of skill
and knowledge as you on a subject,
but often this is not true. If you’ve
been working in social media for
three years, senior execs are less
likely to know the reality of social
channels and how consumers are
interacting with them right now. They
are unlikely to have your knowledge
of the channels worth investing in,
and they are at greater risk of getting
carried away with the hype the sales
team sells them. At the same time,
if you’re a senior exec and you’ve
been in marketing for more than ten
years, managed teams and delivered
presentations to tough audiences,
you have a breadth of knowledge
and skills that helped you on your
path that the rest of the team would
be so enriched to learn. From how to
centre yourself before a big meeting,
to the mindset you need when
approaching difficult conversations.
Underpromise and overdeliver
go hand-in-hand, especially in
marketing. You can get carried
away with the opportunity to build a
20 BRAIN TRUST
fantastic campaign, a comprehensive
content strategy or sponsorship
deal. However, this is also the very
best way to cause anxiety and
long nights and to underdeliver on
expectations – especially your own.
That then leads to disenchantment
and demoralisation. The opposite
of this is to underpromise, making
for happy teams, leaving work at a
reasonable hour and then, with a bit
of hard work along the way, being
able to deliver not only the project as
expected, but with added extras that
make the work sing.
MARGY VARY
I started my career as a graduate
trainee in a big London ad agency,
way back in the days of the
fully-integrated Mad Men-style
behemoths. I’ll never forget the
advice I got from a very ambitious
female account director who was
tipped to be the next big thing. She
said ‘This is a man’s world and if you
want to get ahead you have to make
a choice now. Either be one of the
blokes or a be a whore’. At the time
I thought ‘yeah, sadly that probably
sums it up, you have to play the
game to get to the top before you can
change the system.’ But of course,
MARKETING 2019
it was the worst advice ever. You
can’t change the system by being
the system. You might start slower
marketingmag.com.au
and go sideways sometimes, even
backwards, but finding a different
way means refusing to accept the
status quo. As you do that you’ll
attract others like you who help you
build something better.
The best personal advice I got
was from one of my Marketing
Academy mentors, who said ‘Don’t
accept other people’s definition of
success.’ Success means so much
more than title and pay packet. It
can mean ‘are your kids happy?’, ‘are
you healthy?’, ‘are you trying some-
thing original and interesting?’, ‘are
you helping other people?’. It can
also just mean saying ‘no thanks’.
Picking my own definition was the
most liberating moment. Also I have
to tip it to my former boss Richard
Branson whose mantra was “treat
your staff they way you want them to
treat your customers.” So obvious,
so frequently ignored. It still helps
me every day.
SEAN HALL
It’s funny because I think one of the
worst pieces of career advice led
to one of the best, so I’m actually
 Lauren Cain Margy Vary Sean Hall Alison Tilling
Founder, Jaycaino Marketing director, The Founder, Energx Chief strategy officer,
Guardian Australia VMLY&R

grateful for both. The worst was that
perfectionism was a good thing,
which came from a culture where
it also felt dangerous to admit you
@marketingmag
often lead to physical and mental as a daily practice, a celebration
illness. Through Energx, I’ve made it of knowing who you are. It wasn’t
my mission to pay forward every- about never growing or changing,
thing I learned so that others don’t but rather an acknowledgement that

weren’t at your best. Ultimately both
of these things, along with being a
‘yes’ man and not knowing how to
ask for help, led me to the verge of a
nervous breakdown.
The best was from a ‘friend-tor’
who, when I was at a low point,
asked me a simple question: ‘Have
you thought about managing your
energy, instead of your time?’ This
changed my life and gave me a
way of thinking that enabled me to
research and design the strategies
that led me to heal myself.
The second equally powerful
piece of advice was to develop a
profound understanding of the
responsibility we all have for our
own well-being and how we impact
the well-being of others. Love him
or hate him, I tend to agree when
Tony Robbins says “if you’re relying
on other people for your happi-
ness, you’re fucked.” It’s powerful
because every single decision we
make in life impacts our energy and
potentially the energy of others.
Yet so many of us are on autopilot,
making mindless decisions which
have to go through what I did. In
doing so, I hope to help everyone
have enough gas in the tank for
themselves and then a little extra
with which to do good.
ALISON TILLING
The gems I’ve really hung onto
weren’t delivered as advice. They
came as asides, as anecdotes, as
living demonstrations. I don’t always
manage to follow them myself,
but I try.
‘You’re not presenting ideas,
you’re selling them.’ This reframed
everything. We talk about ‘the
presentation’ as if everything we do
has to be mediated through keynote.
Thinking about selling makes you
consider not only the value – still
the currency we deal in – of your
idea but also how best to keep
those delicate little bastards alive.
Often Powerpoint is idea killer
numero uno.
‘Know your tics, they can be your
tac-tics.’ The best boss I ever had
was great at this. It wasn’t delivered
as advice; it was demonstrated
being told how to be is being told
how to be, even if it’s disguised as
empowerment.
The best piece of advice,
however, came clothed in the worst.
Early in my agency life in London,
I saw a careers counsellor through
my work. His words at the end of
session three: ‘You come across as a
very sexual person, have you thought
of wearing more clothes to work?
I can see a lot of your flesh.’ That
moment is seared onto my brain. I
can see the paint behind his head
and the place where it was chipped. I
can feel the hairs standing up on my
(uncovered) arms. I can remember
blushing and hating the blush and
to my eternal shame I remember
nodding and saying something like
‘I’ll think about it.’
Well, I’ve thought about it. And
here’s the thing: how you present
yourself is something others notice.
That’s a fact. But it’s more important
to clothe your intent, rather than
yourself, in a way that doesn’t belittle
or embarrass others. Aim for that.
That’s my advice.

THE NURTURE ISSUE

 22 SALARY GUIDE

MAKING CENTS?
Australian marketers can expect competition-driven salary increases over the next year.
Hays’ annual Salary Guide shines a spotlight on the skills that are garnering the most
demand and gaps in how employees and employers are view the market.

In 2019…
Employees ployers
73 0 4 6 9

expect
ex
xpe
pect a y a ayay searc
searc
se arrc ers
es inten
nte
en
en to increase
iincr
n rrea
ase
ase expec
xxpec
ecc permanent
perm
pe ma an nt
anen th
think
hink sk
sk lll wou
would
ould
d c sider
sid
deer
salary increase is their t tivated by salaries by 3% staff levels to shortages will employing or
career priority for a new job an uncompetitive or more increase impact the sponsoring
salary or stay the same effectiveness an overseas
of their business candidate in skill
short areas

THE BREAKDOWN
Time to give your boss a tap on the shoulder?
Here are some salary figures for marketing roles in the 2019/'20 financial year.

Marketing Marketing Marketing Snr marketing Marketing Brand

coordinator executive manager manager director manager
NSW -
Sydney
65 80 120 145 210 120
60 - 70 70- 90 100 - 145 130 - 170 180 - 260 100 - 140
VIC -
Melbourne
65 75 100 140 200 100
55 - 70 70 - 85 90 - 120 120 - 160 150 - 250 90 - 120
QLD -
Brisbane
65 75 95 120 140 100
55 - 75 65 - 85 80 - 120 110 - 160 120 - 170 80 - 120
SA -
Adelaide
60 75 95 110 135 75
55 - 70 65 - 85 90 - 110 95 - 125 125 - 165 75 - 90
NT -
Darwin
65 75 100 140 145 80
50 - 75 65 - 85 100 - 180 120 - 200 70 - 100
WA -
Perth
60 75 140 195 100
45 - 6 65 - 80 120 - 170 160 - 230 80 - 110
ACT -
Canberra
70 80 110 150 175 110
55 - 7 70 - 90 90 - 12 120 - 170 150 - 200 100 - 120

MARKETING 2019
 esearch Direct Commun- Sponsorships
manager manager arketing ic /f
anager m m

urne
90 - 14
105

110
90 - 120

hips/ Ecommerce
ng manager

180 0 95
140 - 200 1 0 - 150 70 - 100
0
0 - 180

9
1

-
30
00 - 15
 Unlike a university
or traditional education
model where lecturers
must go through a
rigorous process in
order to teach, the
online course model can
be utilised by anyone,
anywhere with low
barrier to entry.
 25 FEATURE

Education or
educrastination?
A generation ago, it was enough to get a university degree and find lifelong work in
your industry. Today, the need to upskill is ever present and the appetite for online
courses voracious. But is e-learning more ‘educrastination’ than education? How can
we find programs that actually benefit our lives, not just the bank accounts of those
who create them? Fiona Killackey investigates.

F
or many Australians growing up in the 1980s
and ‘90s, education followed a somewhat
straight path. Primary school led to secondary
school which led to one of three outcomes: a
job, a university placement or a spot at a local
TAFE. In 1997, when the internet started to seep its way
into Australian households, only 16.4 percent of us utilised
it, according to World Bank, most likely for things like
email communication or booking a hotel. Certainly not
for educational purposes. Flash forward. In 2018, internet
usage in Australia hit an all-time high of 88 percent,
with 69 percent of the population using social media
and a further 78 percent using internet-connected smart
phones, according to We Are Social. Alongside our love
affair with online shopping, binge watching TV shows
and social media scrolling, Australians are following the
rest of the world by investing time and money into online
education – whether it be training videos, blogs, online
courses or e-learning programs. Worldwide, the e-learning
industry will be worth a staggering USD $325 billion by
2025, Research and Markets predicts. But is it simply a case
of access that’s led to the shift from traditional university
models to online short-courses and e-learning programs?
Or, is it the fact one can upskill on almost any topic in a
shorter period of time than a traditional education model
and, often, for a fraction of the cost?
Amy Porterfield, one of the world’s leading online
course creators and the woman behind the global podcast
hit Online Marketing Made Easy, believes there’s a few
factors in why we’re seeing more people signing up for
online courses and membership groups than ever.
“Number one: the ease of use with technology. It’s
getting easier and easier, and different generations are
starting to participate,” she says.
“It’s not just my 16-year-old son that can pick up
technology in a hot minute, but it’s my mum as well who’s
on her iPhone doing all the things that she needs to do.
So, the ease of use has allowed digital courses to become
more mainstream. It’s not so foreign anymore to get online
and log in to a site and watch videos and download PDFs
and learn that way. Also, there’s the ease of use of a digital
course versus having to get into your car, go to the class,

THE NURTURE ISSUE

 26 FEATURE
take night classes, go to university or whatever that might
be. The fact you can do anything from your couch is pretty
astonishing, and that is becoming more mainstream, more
normal. It’s not so foreign anymore to us, it’s something that
we just do.”
Porterfield, who worked for six years on content
development and marketing with Anthony Robbins
believes the shift in how we consume education is a
reflection of our behaviour with other elements in our lives,
such as entertainment. “Netflix and Apple, and what they’re
doing with TV and movies and the ease of getting content
instantly, I think that is contributing to it as well,” she says.
“Apple, Amazon, Netflix...they’re making content so easy
to get and people are so used to that now, that it’s become
second nature, so why not take it one step further and get
your education that way as well?”
Catherine Toms, founder at Smithfield Digital and
the lead instructor APAC for General Assembly’s Digital
Marketing faculty agrees that the shift in technology is
largely responsible for the influx of online learning. “The
advantage the non-certified courses have is the ability to
be agile – technology and tools are changing so fast and the
online world is constantly evolving,” she says.
“Hardly a day goes by without an algorithm update
or Instagram rolling out a new feature. I’m back in the
curriculum cave constantly updating materials to reflect
the latest changes, tools, tactics and best practices. If you’re
learning something created even one or two years ago, it’s
likely things have evolved and you’re not up to date with the
latest best practice.”
EDUCATION OR EDUCRASTINATION?
One of the most common criticisms thrown at the
e-learning and online course environment is the idea
of students being taught subject matter by people with
minimal or limited qualifications or experience in that
field. Unlike a university or traditional education model
where lecturers must go through a rigorous process in
order to teach, the online course model can be utilised by
anyone, anywhere with low barrier to entry. According to
one Australian CMO who asked to remain anonymous,
“I’ve spent upward of $10,000 on courses that promised the
world in terms of leadership, digital marketing and SEO
knowledge and I should have spent that money on hiring a
consultant to work with me one-on-one.”
Another attack critics have on the flood of online
courses is that many would-be students purchase on
impulse, lured by strong Facebook advertising or promising
webinars. There is nobody checking whether or not they
MARKETING 2019
complete the course, which can lead to a huge number of
students buying courses they never actually finish.
So, how can we choose wisely and actually benefit from
the education, not use it as a way of procrastinating while
under the guise of ‘learning’?
CONSIDERATIONS ARE KEY
A question Catherine Toms suggests any potential
marketing course student ask before purchasing an online
course is, “does it provide you with the latest, in-demand
skills in digital marketing?”
“Take a look at the kind of things you’d be doing and roles
you’d be applying for afterwards and look for a good match
between what employers are seeking and the fundamental
skills the course is covering.”
In addition, Toms suggests looking for a credible course
run by a hands-on practitioner, not a ‘teacher.’ Seek “an
expert who is ‘doing the do’, working in the industry and
has practical hands-on skills, knowledge, and real-life
experience to share.”
Lastly, she urges students to consider how practical
and hands-on the course is. “What opportunities will
it offer you to apply your knowledge? The greatest
lightbulb a-ha moments happen when students put all
their knowledge and tools to work on solving a real-life,
industry-based project.”
Look for a good match
between what employers are
seeking and the fundamental
skills the course is covering.
MERGING THE OLD WITH THE NEW
Toms, who has taught both online and offline digital
marketing courses in Australia and the UK for the past 16
years, suggests that, while 100 percent of online courses can
be fantastic for convenience and flexibility, for her, human-
to-human, in-person learning wins hands-down, every time.
“There’s something about the conversations, the interactions,
the banter, the chance to collaborate and solve problems with
real people, face to face that adds another dimension and
brings the whole learning experience to life. Connections
are discovered, bonds are made and relationships are formed
that last way beyond the end of the course. I’ve seen beautiful
business collaborations (and friendships!) begin because
people crossed paths in the classroom.”
 27 FEATURE

Who’s doing it well?

Research and Markets expect the e-learning industry to bring in a whopping US$325 billion in revenue by
2025. The e-learning industry is attracting a wealth of online platforms, programs and players eager to increase
profit and build global brand awareness. While some may be struggling, many more are finding their purpose
and profitability with online courses that have changed the lives for those who adhere to their teachings. As
well known as any celebrity or TV show host by their students, these online course creators have created a cult
following. We look at three of the most popular (and profitable) in the online marketing and business space.

1 MARIE FORLEO,
B-SCHOOL
Touted by Oprah Winfrey as
“a thought leader for the next
generation,” Marie Forleo is one of
the most established of all online
course creators. Since commencing
work as a life coach more than 23
years ago, Forleo began creating
bite-sized information for anyone
dreaming of starting a business
or learning more about online
marketing. Her Marie TV YouTube
channel now boasts more than
561,000 subscribers, while her
annual marketing course, B-School
(short for business school) has
been bought by tens
of thousands of students since it
launched in 2010.
2 AMY PORTERFIELD,
DIGITAL COURSE
ACADEMY
If you listen to marketing podcasts,
you may well be familiar with Amy
Porterfield. The Online Marketing
Made Easy podcast is one of
the most successful, started by
Porterfield more than six years
ago. After leaving her job working
on content development and
marketing for Anthony Robbins,
Porterfield began teaching digital
marketing through a series
of online courses, launching
everything from Facebook
advertising courses and email list
building, through to profitability
programs and how to create online
courses. In the past decade her
courses have become some of the
most successful in the world, with
her latest, Digital Course Academy,
bringing in millions in revenue with
thousands of students across the
globe investing in it.
3 STU MCLAREN, TRIBE
Stu McLaren was the
co-founder of Wishlist Member,
a Wordpress platform that
launched in 2008 and enabled
people to create and sell
membership groups online. After
more than 58,000 membership
groups used the platform, McLaren
became an expert in what it
takes to create, scale and sustain
an online membership group.
He quickly became the go-to
consultant for some of the most
popular motivational and business
speakers (think Michael Hyatt
and Gabrielle Bernstein). In 2016
McLaren turned his knowledge into
Tribe, an online course which aims
to help anyone, anywhere create
recurring revenue with an online
membership group.
 28 FEATURE
More people are realising,
‘wait a second, I’ve got
something that can translate
into teaching, I could teach this
to somebody else’.
As a teacher, Toms believes in-person allows one to get
hands-on and practical with learning. “We can draw on
more creative resources – Lego, Post-its, Sharpies and
butchers paper – to bring complex concepts to life and
be certain the lightbulb moments truly happen. We can
dive in together and learn our way around the platforms
and tools and if you get stuck on the tech you have the
support of someone there, right next to you, to help you
out. There’s something so bonding and supportive about
embarking on a learning journey knowing a whole load of
people are right there with you, on the same path and have
your back.”
MARKETING 2019
marketingmag.com.au
Whether it’s an online course, membership group or a
traditional education institution, the volume of people
seeking to upskill or teach what they know today is
mammoth.
“People want to do their own thing,” says Porterfield,
“they want to get out of the nine-to-five, change things up,
work for themselves, do something online. All of us are
experts at something, we have an expertise, knowledge or
skill. More and more people are realising, ‘wait a second,
I’ve got something that can translate into teaching, I could
teach this to somebody else.’ All you need is a smartphone
in order to record yourself, record your lessons and get
them online. The technology to actually host your course –
say a platform like Kajabi – makes it incredibly simple. So,
the technology for actually consuming the content and for
creating the content has become so much more accessible...
that there doesn’t seem to be such a barrier like there used
to be.” And with the next generation being raised entirely
alongside smartphones, the phenomenon is set to continue.
“The generation that’s coming out of high school now,
technology is in their blood,” says Porterfield. “It’s nothing
for them to learn something new online or take a digital
course, versus opening up a text book and and going into a
class. It’s not foreign to them, so you’re going to see the rise
of the digital course even more so.”
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brandspace.com.au
 30 CONTENT PARTNER: FORRESTER
The truth about OK leadership
OK leadership is a far more widespread problem than
bad leadership. How can you be sure you’re not adding
drag at your organisation? James L McQuivey has a
few thoughts.
I
t’s easy to pick out truly bad examples of
leadership. In every organisation you may be part
of – from the parent-teacher cooperative to the
leaders of nations – there are inept leaders who
seem to have cajoled or manipulated their way
into their roles. Despite how easily such examples come to
mind, however, these egregious examples are few. And they
usually get found out and moved out, especially under the
microscope of today’s social media environment. The more
pervasive problem is the ‘OK’ leader. They are neither
corrupt nor inept. They do not cheat the system or exploit
their employees. Instead, they are just mediocre. Rather
than sharks that threaten our survival, they are barnacles
that add drag to our economic vessels as we try to sail the
high seas of competition and customer obsession. And
the problem is, if you look below the water line or in the
executive washroom, these ‘just OK’ leaders have collected
by the thousands.
Said more directly, you, OK leader, are a drag on your
organisation’s transformation. In fairness, you’re merely
human just like the rest of us (not a barnacle, though I stand
by the analogy). You have your flaws and skills, you have
good days and bad. Me too. So please consider everything I
say here in the spirit of sympathy rather than accusation.
You are a problem that you don’t even realise you’ve
created. A former CEO of a major PC maker once shared
with me a humorous anecdote of how he boarded the
corporate jet to get to an important meeting across the
country. The staff on the plane respectively approached
him and said, ‘we understand that you prefer Dr Pepper
and that you want it warm, with ice. We have everything
prepared just the way you like it.’ His first thought: ‘Where
did they get that idea?’ He didn’t know whether to be
touched by their sincerity or annoyed that they were
wasting cycles trying to cater to the whims of the CEO. It’s a
trifling example. I have worse.
MARKETING 2019
James L McQuivey
is VP and principal analyst
at Forrester.
I could tell you about the time I had a meeting with the CFO
of one of the world’s largest media companies. Two weeks
prior to that meeting, I had to meet with the SVP sponsoring
it to go over the rules of conduct. There were words I could
not say, data I could not share, and concepts – notably, cord
cutting – that were strictly verboten. That was bad enough.
marketingmag.com.au
But will it surprise you to learn that, prior to the face-to-
face with the SVP, I had to have yet another meeting, this
time with the VP, who prepared me for everything the SVP
would say, so that I would not be shocked by any of it. I said
to him (the VP) and her (the SVP) the same thing I will tell
you now: when the effect of an executive in the room is so
damaging to the flow of correct information – including
informed opinions of an analyst you are paying to speak
to you – that executive is a drag on the company. Worse
than merely being ineffectual in overcoming obstacles, this
executive had become the obstacle. Everybody knew it, and
everybody had decided to go along.
That was many years ago. Guess what? Millions of
people have since cut the cord, just as my naughty data
suggested they would. That CFO was ousted within a
few years – then the VP, then the SVP. I’m still here, but it
gives me no satisfaction, because I can assure you that the
company has not changed. And why would it? Executives –
whether the CEO or SVP – have final authority over their
employees’ livelihood. Executives are the immovable objects
employees will factor into every decision they make. It would
be irrational for employees to not treat you like an object. All
you can do as a leader is choose what kind of object you are.
CHOOSE NOT TO BE A BARNACLE
We know that customer-obsessed firms have higher
revenue growth, greater customer satisfaction, and
stronger employee satisfaction than the average firm. But
your enterprise can’t become customer-obsessed without
customer-obsessed leaders at the helm.
 Customer-obsessed companies have the highest:

Revenue growth

Largest median

“All you can do as a leader three-year sales

growth
Increased Increased Business

is choose what kind of shareholder

value
investment expansion

object you are.” Customer satisfaction

Outperform others
by a margin of 93%
to 65%
Lower Lower cost More More new
customer to acquire revenue per customers
churn customers customer

Employee satisfaction
Therein lies the path from just-OK leadership to great
leadership in our times. Instead of making yourself the 40% more likely to
object that your employees spend their time plotting report being happy
at work
Higher More Lower Easier to
around, planning for, and adjusting to, you redirect the employee employee attrition attract new
attention to the customer. And you show that you are accountability innovation rates talent

serious by demonstrating customer obsession with your

© 2019 Forrester Research, Inc.
own actions. This is almost devastatingly simple to do. You
@marketingmag

just have to choose to be that leader. Rather than obsessing

about the beverages in the corporate jet or making it clear
you don’t want anyone to bring up existential threats
to your industry, you point everyone’s focus directly at
understanding customers, elevating their experience,
and improving their outcomes. We have identified five
behaviors that leaders at the most customer-obsessed
firms do better than others, from modelling how to use
customer insights when making decisions to knowing how
to collaborate across silos to improve customer outcomes.
Leaders at the most customer-obsessed firms do this stuff
better, and they do it more often. Their companies reap the
rewards of customer satisfaction, employee engagement,
and increased profitability.
Model customer obsession. Senior leaders regularly
use customer information to inform decisions.
Set high standards. Companies use customer metrics
on a daily basis.
Recognise and reward obsession. Executives
recognise and reward those who demonstrate customer
empathy and advocacy.
Remove obstacles. Leaders can collaborate across
different divisions to solve customer problems and
improve outcomes.
Provide resources. Executives find budget when they
need to fund innovative projects.
More importantly, we encourage you to shock yourself
out of your leadership bubble, where people rarely tell you
the whole truth and often cater to your preferences because
it’s easier to do so. We recommend you assemble peers that
you respect – we call it your ‘personal board of directors’ –
and invite them to challenge you using an interview guide
Forrester has prepared. You must do this because none of
your direct reports would be foolish enough to put to you
the hard questions we have prepared, such as: Can you put
yourself in the shoes of your customers? When have you
done this recently?
It’s not a trick question. But it also demands action,
recent action, and it takes an honest peer whose paycheque
does not depend on you to put it to you and wait for your
answer – though it’s acceptable and even desirable if their
esteem goes up when you genuinely succeed, as that will
motivate them and you to do the right thing.
Nobody promised you that being a leader would be easy,
just like they never promised you that the stock options
would be easy to spend. But since you are being paid well,
you owe it to everybody to do well. Do well by the customer,
and you will have left just-OK leadership far behind in the
wake of a faster-moving enterprise.
Forrester is a Marketing content partner
– a leading organisation with which we
collaborate to bring exclusive content
to readers. Read more from Forrester analysts at
marketingmag.com.au

THE NURTURE ISSUE

 32 FEATURE

Inside out: brand

evangelism and
the power of story

marketingmag.com.au
Has the brand gun been pointed in the wrong direction? We spoke to Australia’s top
human-centric leaders to learn how brand exists on the inside. By Josh Loh.

hat is brand? For some, it’s simply
make-up applied to the face of a
company. For others, it’s an endless,
intricate understanding of the
profound role business plays in our
social economy. It’s definitely one of the two. Marketers
have understood the importance of brand for some time
now; brand building is the topic of every second industry
panel and every third business development podcast. But
has our brand gun been pointed in the wrong direction?
STORY TIME
To quote long-time Marketing columnist and well-
respected brand evangelist Sérgio Brodsky, “Brands are
stories. Narratives that infuse meaning to otherwise
inanimate commodities... such stories are just as real as the
tangible products, services or entities they animate.”
Come down the rabbit hole for a moment, won’t you?
Journey, narrative, soul and story are at the core of human
connection; and according to neuroscientists, the human
brain is not capable of distinguishing between the different
platforms from which it receives stories. Which means,
believe it or not, to be told a story feels just as real to the
brain as it does to live it.
If we get into the nitty-gritty of what story means, a
Jungian disciple would explain that it is the reverberation
of a finite set of human archetypes manifested into
contemporary environments and contexts. One such
disciple, professor of psychology at the University of
Toronto Jordan B Peterson, explains that when story is
revealed as fiction, it’s treated as the bridge between people
and archetype. “What you want is a story that’s archetypal,”
he says, “but you want enough variation and specificity so
it’s new and interesting and also applicable to you. You have
to humanise the archetype to some degree, otherwise it’s so
abstract that you can’t relate to it.”
The same is true when story is revealed as brand. These
ancient archetypes are ingrained within our biology, in a
sense. And according to Peterson, they’re older than we are
– the archetypal lover, for example. “Romance is older than
people… because sex is older than human beings.” So when
you’re in love, “you’re in the grip of something that’s really

MARKETING 2019
 34 FEATURE
ancient, but at the same time it’s really personal,” he says.
“A good novelist, writer of fiction, is really good at that:
showing the transpersonal in the personal.”
At the risk of getting too abstract, what this means is
that brand is important and powerful. And important to
more than just business. Marketers know this, and the
good ones have been conscientious in telling stories to
consumers for decades. But while marketers have been
using story and brand to convey their companies as
outwardly human, what’s happening on the inside? As
much as we market out, we must also market in.
PIROUETTES AND PURPOSE
A popular conversion of the internal marketing idea is the
employee experience program. It’s not far off from what
we’re talking about, but not exactly it either. Tides are
certainly turning and leaders are beginning to realise they
need to focus on investing in their people. “But investing
in your people is not just having more tea sessions or
recognition of birthdays,” says Odette Jansz, marketing
manager at Ansell Healthcare. “I think the word ‘family’
needs to be brought back into companies. Because the
bigger you get, the more depersonalised you become. But
if you keep that flag as a family, then you’re able to capture
mini families within that big family.” Another way to
describe the ‘family’ Jansz is talking about is: ‘treat your
The word ‘family’ needs to
be brought back into companies.
Because the bigger you get,
the more depersonalised you
become.
people like people’. That trend is catching on. Businesses
are starting to realise that people talk, and that includes
their employees. But Jansz is still sceptical, “I feel like
a lot of it is lip service,” she says. “They’re ticking the
boxes – yes we have a women’s gender bias forums, yes
we have a leadership group – but are they really doing
it?” Though it appears that the value of human-centred
employee experience has managed to penetrate the sphere
of influence for many executives, perhaps not to the point
where they’ve internalised its importance. “I don’t think
a lot of them get it,” says Jansz, “they understand it at a
cerebral level, but everybody gets it at the cerebral level.”
MARKETING 2019
Twitter Australia’s managing director, Suzy Nicoletti,
seems to get it. To her, a healthy office culture is a top
priority. “We know that collaborative and rich work is
something employees value very much, so that’s something
that we want to keep enforcing,” she says. Recently, Twitter
Australia even established a team dedicated to culture,
focused on ensuring that the values of the brand are
communicated effectively to its employees. “Basically, what
they’ve done,” explains Nicoletti, “is created a way to look at
our rewards and recognitions, our policies, our innovation
and design programs and even our fun – which we value
greatly in this office – to create programs that make sense
for everyone.” To participate in the culture team at Twitter
is a voluntary role, “but something we take seriously” – and
was essentially established to ensure everyone in the office
has a voice. And perhaps that’s exactly it. What business
leaders must understand is that people want and need to
be heard. Katie Burke, chief people officer at HubSpot,
certainly agrees, “When marketing your culture internally,
it’s really important to treat people like adults – we listen to
our employees and really value their feedback, even when
it’s not easy to hear.”
“A few years ago, we got some tough feedback from a
leader that we talked a lot about ‘heart’ in the recruiting
process and didn’t do enough to make it real. She was
absolutely right. So, we altered our approach to peer
bonuses, making them more focused on how employees
are living our values each day, and we now celebrate ‘Heart
Week’ annually to really ensure that we are walking the
walk on our culture with employees globally.
“These changes ensure that our values are much more
visible in our new hire experience, employee materials, and
promotion criteria and growth paths.”
Another of Peterson’s regular talking points is personal
responsibility being the driver to finding meaning. That’s
true both for people and businesses – to find a why. The
trick is aligning the ‘why’ of the brand with the ‘why’ of
the people. “Sometimes company culture is solely used as
a recruiting play, but the reality is that the culture of an
organisation is a living, breathing commitment that changes
with ongoing feedback – and a commitment to evolving as
your employees and customers evolve,” explains Burke.
Twitter is equally as fervent with understanding and
communicating its purpose, “Knowing the brand purpose
and being connected and involved is very important,”
says Nicoletti. “I think Twitter’s done an exceptional job
about being clear on its overall purpose – so nobody is
confused about why Twitter exists. We exists as a platform
for conversation, so everyone is incredibly aligned with the
platform side of the business, that’s something that we work
on together.” Having that understanding of the brand’s
‘why’ gives a north star to its employees. Arguably, it’s what
keeps soldiers militant and religious people devout. “You’ve
seen a lot of brands come back and rediscover their brand
purpose over the past six to 12 months. You have a lot of
brands looking to stand for more, looking to be heard and
be more authentic.”
And it can’t be faked. Nicoletti makes that clear: “It
genuinely does start at the top with genuine passion. To
put people first is a priority and it takes work. We can’t, as
leaders, myself and my team, just say we value inclusion, for
example, and then just never support our employee resource
groups.” Essentially, actions speak louder than words.
“That culture must start at the top and I’ve seen it,”
Ansell's Jansz echoes, “and the bigger [the company] grows,
the harder it gets.” Because when you grow larger, that’s
when you evolve into a matrix organisation. Everyone
knows the trope of the purpose-driven start-up – all hands
on deck, all the time; all staff passionately dedicated to
the cause because they believe in what the company is
trying to achieve. But that intimacy doesn’t scale. “Matrix
organisations dehumanise a company massively, but the
reality is they need to exist,” says Jansz. But does that
mean that human-centred employee experience can’t
work in large organisations? “Again, it can be done if the
culture starts from the top,” says Jansz. “If the manager
sets an example and treats me in a certain way, I’ll treat my
colleagues in a certain way, and it trickles down.
“I’ve seen groups that have done it so well, and that’s
why they are getting rewards like no other – nobody leaves
those teams.”
BRAND IN, BRAND OUT
But what’s the point? It’s all well and good to talk about the
abstract importance of understanding and communicating
your brand inward, but why bother – and what does it
cost? “Most people think culture, employee branding or
internal marketing equate to promoting perks designed
to dazzle your employees into thinking they work for a
great employer,” explains HubSpot’s Burke. “We feel the
exact opposite. You can’t buy your way into the heart
of employees with perks. Really smart, remarkable
people want to work with colleagues they admire in an
environment that challenges them.
“It’s the people that work at HubSpot and the problems
they get to solve on a regular basis on behalf of our
THE NURTURE ISSUE
... but while marketers have
been using story and brand
to convey their companies
as outwardly human, what’s
happening on the inside?
customers that make our culture remarkable. The perks are
just a byproduct of that environment.”
The point of it all is: the only way to create a cohesive
and genuine brand on the outside is to ensure that it’s
lived into existence by the people that make it up. Thus,
your brand starts on the inside – it shows through the
work. And everyone needs to be on board. As explained
by Richard Foster, cofounder of Melbourne branding
agency Tank, “it is important to ensure the attributes of
the brand are translated into proof points and actions for
your employees. This needs to be reinforced regularly.
Consider focusing on a different attribute of your brand
every quarter.”
As far as justifying the cost? “It’s tempting to think that
things like ‘culture’ can’t be measured,” says Burke. “But,
if you want to build a culture that attracts and retains top
talent, you have to establish success metrics.”
“We believe that business and culture are irrevocably
linked, and that culture inherently drives business success,
so it’s incredibly important that we’re setting goals against
the improvements we want to make to our culture and
employee experience.
“Smaller businesses with small budgets can absolutely
build a remarkable employee experience. And that’s
because creating a remarkable employee experience
has nothing to do with big-budget perks. You need to
understand what really makes your employees love their
job on a day-to-day basis, and create an environment that
fosters that.”
In short, any company, no matter the size, can foster a
rich work environment infused with the narrative magic
of brand – and money has nothing to do with doing it well.
In theory it’s simple: figure out your brand, what drives it,
its reason of being, its trajectory. Figure out the story that
your company is living, and be honest with yourself in
evaluating its alignment with the values of people on the
ground. Listen without judgement and act more than you
speak. The hard part is caring enough to do something
about it.
 36 CONTRIBUTED

Martin Moore is founder
of Your CEO Mentor
No bad teams,
just bad leaders
We’ve lost sight of what it means to be a real leader, writes
Martin Moore. Here are five solid steps to getting the
most out of your team and making sure your team gets
the most out of you.

I
don’t know exactly when this happened, but
over the last several years the dialogue around
leadership has degenerated into a fluffy, abstract
conversation about desirable leadership attributes.
We seem to spend an inordinate amount of time and
energy ruminating over highly theoretical propositions:
performing team’ that consistently delivered strong, results-
focused marketing campaigns, what would you need to do?
GET THE BEST PEOPLE
A high-performing team is populated by high-performing
individuals. To use an old adage, it’s a lot easier to rein in

‘are humble leaders the best leaders?’ or ‘is transparency
the most important leadership attribute?’
We seem to have lost sight of the primary objective of a
leader, which is to create value for the organisation. Simple.
The difficult part is working out how to yield the greatest
value with the resources you are gifted. It all starts with
building the right team.
I’d love a dollar for every resumé I’ve read or candidate
I’ve interviewed who claimed to have built a high-
performing team. However, it requires only a cursory
challenge to establish that most of these leaders can’t
describe what a high performing team looks like, much less
understand how to put one together.
The marketing discipline lends itself elegantly to high-
performing teams. Marketing is, by its nature, customer-
focused, deadline-oriented and value-driven – some of
the key prerequisites of high performance. So this begs the
question, if you were to set out to build the elusive ‘high-
marketingmag.com.au
a stallion than it is to flog a donkey! As a leader, you have
to be incredibly driven to hire the best people that you can
afford and then retain them.
Many leaders ‘make do with what they’ve got’, both
in their own teams and the marketing agencies they work
with. They neither set nor enforce high standards of
performance at the individual level and this has a dilutive
effect on the whole team.
First things first: having the mindset of a professional
leader who lives the mantra of ‘respect before popularity’.
If you are focused on what people think of you, rather than
getting the right results for the company, you will never
have the discipline and will to do the work of building a
high performing team.
Without single-minded focus on performance,
rationalisation creeps in, and it will be all too easy to
convince yourself that you should tolerate and accept
the people you have, irrespective of their behaviour and
performance.

PROVIDE CONTEXT
Make it abundantly clear to your people what you are
“Optimal performance trying to achieve and more importantly, why. If people
understand the context in which they are operating, the
lives at the point of impact they are potentially able to make and the value that
intersection between they can create for every stakeholder, they will be much
more inclined to offer their discretionary effort.
boredom and anxiety.” Spend enough time with each of your direct reports
to ensure that they not only understand the purpose and
strategy of the organisation, but more importantly, how

MARKETING 2019
 they contribute to these outcomes. I like to call this the ‘class
photo principle’: people aren’t able to see the big picture
until they have worked out where they fit into it.
In multi-layered teams and teams that work with
external marketing agencies, you will rely on your leaders
to provide context for the people below them – this is most
effective when strong, simple, direct communication can be
replicated through the layers of management.
SET CHALLENGING OBJECTIVES
As a leader, you set the tone, the pace and the standard for
your team. Without challenging and difficult objectives,
you will never be able to get the best out of your people.
They need to know what’s expected of them, and they need
to know that you have a strong belief in their ability to
achieve any objective.
The Yerkes-Dodson principle is instructive: increased
stress improves performance up to a point, then performance
declines as stress becomes excessive. People perform at their
best when the challenge is set to harnesses the productive
benefits of stress. Optimal performance lives at the point
of intersection between boredom and anxiety. Stretching
people to their limits is positive for their performance.
@marketingmag
Achieving challenging but realistic goals is
fundamental to building your employees’ confidence and
self-esteem, a key driver of job satisfaction. Don’t be afraid
to push your people to achieve tough goals – they will be
happier for it. Challenge, coach and confront them to bring
out their best.
CREATE A STRONG CULTURE OF
ACCOUNTABILITY
High performing teams deliver results, first and foremost.
The number one driver of successful execution is a culture
of accountability. Your people know what outcomes they
have to deliver, and are held accountable for this. Too
often, leaders foster weak accountability cultures and
performance is impaired.
Weak accountability is characterised by lots of talk and
little action. The culture becomes one of decision making
by consensus and management by committee. Everyone
feels as though they have a right to have their opinion
heard, even to the point where some exercise power of veto.
The remedy is simple: a single accountable person for
every major deliverable. One head to pat, one arse to kick!
Execution of any initiative is faster, more effective and
reinforces the concept of agility that is so critical for today’s
break-neck pace of business.
Place the weight of individual accountability on
your people, then give them the support, empowerment
and resources to control their own destiny. You may be
surprised at the results.
THE NURTURE ISSUE
“Place the weight of
individual accountability on
your people, then give them
the support, empowerment
and resources to control
their own destiny.”
HARNESS THE POWER OF DIVERSITY
Once the groundwork is done, a culture of constructive
challenge is required to maximise the opportunity of the
diverse thinking styles, experiences and capabilities in
your team. This is more difficult than it would appear as
most people are reluctant to express their views openly,
particularly in group settings.
As a leader, there must be an expectation that everyone
contributes to the best of their ability and brings their
unique contribution to the table, putting aside their fear
of failure. A ‘no blame/no excuses’ culture that rewards
excellence over perfection is the ultimate objective, and
a great leader creates a safe environment for people to
contribute, without fear of punishment or ridicule.
The caution here is that an inclusive culture that
enables people to freely contribute their views and
opinions cannot be at the expense of the decision making
rights of the accountable person. Accountability should
always be the driving force, and consideration needs to be
given to striking the subtle balance between inclusion and
accountability.
A culture in which ‘everyone gets their say, but not
everyone gets their way’ will enable an appropriate
decision making tempo while not sacrificing the quality of
inputs into the process.
Building a high-performing team relies upon a wide
range of leadership skills and capabilities to bring the
best people together and unleash their potential, both
individually and collectively. This requires a leader
with discipline, commitment and a primary focus on
the team.
Once you have witnessed the positive effects of high
performance, not just on your organisation but on every
individual who is part of the team, you will realise that it is
genuinely worth the effort.
 I’d love to see an
agency model that was
working, and I have seen
change but it really is an
ongoing challenge that
needs to be addressed.
 REER PROFILE

PATHWAYS
AND PASSIONS
After a career spent at the top of the communications and media chain working in roles
such as senior account manager, client service director and general manager, Terri
Martin made the bold decision to completely change industries to work in the not-for-
profit sector. It was the best decision she ever made. She is now general manager of
Dymocks Children’s Charities, an organisation that provides underprivileged children
with brand-new books to improve their literacy outcomes. Its purpose is to change kids’
lives, one book at a time. But Terri isn’t only a business leader focused on commercial
success, she knows how important it is to work with passion, to be true to your own
needs and work with full transparency. By Michelle Keomany.

S
traight after finishing university, Terri Martin
was lucky enough to find exactly what suited
her from the very beginning of her career.
It was actually a fluke that led her into the
marketing industry, “I desperately wanted to
work in the music industry but there were just no jobs in
Brisbane”. Martin’s first role was at The Marketing Store,
a promotional marketing agency where she worked on
clients like Kellogg’s, Smirnoff and Optus. It was the variety
within the role – having different clients and different
projects – that grabbed her and she knew that this was
where she wanted to be.
She then moved to the UK where she worked as a brand
manager at Nickelodeon, at the height of the channel’s
success. “I absolutely loved that role and that company, we
were the number-one children’s TV channel at the time and
everyone wanted a piece of us,” she says.
“We had corporates, celebrities and brands wanting
to be associated with us and we were heavily invested in
digital media. So it was a really awesome feeling to ride that
wave.” She talks about how creativity was felt throughout
the business at Nickelodeon and the difference that made,
especially when it came from the top-down. “Even when
you just walked in the door, you could just feel it had
this kind of crazy, fun vibe that made it really exciting to
go to work. There was also really good leadership at the
time, a woman called Jenny Grace who embodied what
Nickelodeon was about and that was infectious.”
Upon returning to Australia, Martin worked in senior
account director roles at agencies. It was during this time that
she had her two children and returned to work when they
were young. Compared to other industries, there’s usually
a lower number of parents who work in agencies. Martin
laughs but also speaks seriously, “I think there’s a reason
for that, it’s really, really tough!” Going back to work in a
senior position after having her children was one of the most
challenging times in her career. “I remember having a client
call on my day off and I could hear my son crying upstairs and
I had to pretend I couldn’t hear it. It caused a lot of internal
stress, pretending everything was fine when it wasn’t.”
But she also acknowledges that it’s the nature of client
services and needing to be there when the client needs
you. “The clients and the agency might say ‘that’s so great
you’re a mum, you’re working part time’ but the reality is if
they need you on your days off, they need you.” She hopes
agencies are changing, “I’d love to see an agency model
that was working, and I have seen change but it really is an
ongoing challenge that needs to be addressed.”

NURTURE ISSUE
 40 CAREER PROFILE
What would Martin’s advice be to anyone in a similar
situation at work? “I think the very best thing to do is be
absolutely clear with your manager. Know how you’re
going to work together to navigate things. If I’m working
part time I’ll talk to my team about what that looks like and
set some boundaries. Make sure everyone understands and
buys into it from the start – ask what challenges it might
bring up and how you are going to work around them. If
you’re really transparent and really honest then no one’s
going to hold grudges.”
Martin is very direct when she says we need to really
listen and be aware of how we’re feeling at work beyond
the daily tasks. “If you get an inkling that your manager
isn’t buying into this – maybe you shouldn’t be there. And
that’s really easy to say – but I do believe that you should be
looking for places where maybe they’re parents themselves
so they understand.”
In a competitive industry like marketing it can be easy
to feel pressure to stay in a role that isn’t ideal. Martin
reiterates the importance of considering more than just
responsibilities and salary when job hunting. “You can’t
just say, ‘by the way I’m a mum and you’re going to need to
be really understanding of all the time off I need’, but you
can say ‘these are all the great things I’m going to do and
there are some things you need to consider, but know that
I’m always going to make it work’.” Martin says that working
mums know how to get stuff done and sometimes they’re
the most hard-working. “They don’t stop, they get in, they
get the work done because they’re time poor… So as long
as you can show that it won’t impact work and that it’s just
something you need to be mindful of, it will work
for everyone.”
One of the inherent pressures of agency life can be
the fact the lifestyle feels like the norm. “If everyone else
is working until 8.00pm and you’re not, does that mean
you’re not as good?” Martin explains that bosses can be
known to find surreptitious ways to plant the seed that
you should be working late or you should be on-call out
of office hours, and that professionals should strive to find
somewhere that will actually care about their wellbeing.
Her advice on how to evaluate your own situation is to ask
yourself if you’re passionate about what you do. “If you’re
not passionate – and there could be a million reasons why
you’ve lost that passion – move on straight away. Because
that negativity hangs around and it’s important to move on
and explore different things.” Despite all her success and
different experiences, what stands out most for Martin isn’t
MARKETING 2019
Top five tips for getting
more personal fulfilment
from your career
Be proud of who you work for and what output
you create, regardless of what that is. And if you
don’t have that passion, move on to something or
somewhere else.
Don’t give up on finding your purpose. It’s a slow
journey and along the way you will learn some
amazing things about yourself.
Pull together a team of very smart people around you
that believe in your vision. Have fun with them while
you collectively smash your goals.
marketingmag.com.au
Be honest with your manager and team about what
your life looks like as a parent. At the end of the day,
most people just want to know you will still get your
job done – remember to highlight that this is the case
and collectively brainstorm solutions if there are
any hurdles.
If your company doesn’t currently give back, look at
ways you and your team can. Fundraise, volunteer,
do payroll giving or start a CSR program for your
organisation. What will you be remembered for and
what will your legacy be?
winning awards or achieving sales targets, it’s the moments
when her teams have grown and learned together.
So how did she know working for a charity was the right
move for her? It all began with her experience as part of The
Marketing Academy, a program that develops promising
marketers by providing mentorship and coaching. As part
of the program, Martin was encouraged to find her purpose.
She says it wasn’t a fast journey and that for her it has been
an ongoing one as well. But it’s her ability to not shy away
from questioning and holding herself accountable that
ultimately guided her. “It is an obligation that we have, the
more senior we get, that we actually need to be giving back
and doing good. And so it started a thread for me. If I’ve lost
the passion in agency land, where am I going to get it?”
 Her start was knowing that she could apply her commercial
acumen to better use, to do good with it. What initially
drew her to the Dymocks role was that it still had a
creative element – through books and storytelling – and
that it was within a wider business complete with a
business strategy, smart leaders and a board of directors
at the helm. Her commercial skills provide the charity
with opportunities to grow in new ways and achieve more.
She speaks about the strength of a heritage brand like
Dymocks (which is celebrating its 140th anniversary this
year) and how great it is to be part of a company whose
corporate social responsibility (CSR) program is embraced
throughout the business.
While the charity industry is completely different,
overall there are still a lot of similarities to commercial
marketing. “Charities are just like every other business –
managing the profit and loss, ensuring they’ve got enough
money coming in, knowing their customer and their
@marketingmag
business strategy. So it’s exactly like any other business,
except the output is just wonderful – you get to give books
to children!” As general manager, Martin is working on
how Dymocks Children’s Charities can create stronger
partnerships, whether that’s with corporates or other
charities, ensuring it brings value to partners, and also
wants to grow the overall profile of the charity.
Martin has really found her stride in embracing the
unknown and not just the learning curve but the learning
Top five books for kids
The Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle: a timeless and
simple book with beautiful illustrations.
Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney:
about the love of a mum and child.
Aaaarrgghh, Spider! by Lydia Monks: about a spider
who just wants to live in a house and impress the
humans, but they’re scared of him.
The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson: awesome book
about believing in yourself and having courage.
Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak:
about the wonderful things you can create with
your imagination.
THE NURTURE ISSUE
If you’re not passionate –
and there could be a million
reasons why you’ve lost that
passion – move on straight
away.
journey. “I walked into a business where I didn’t know about
education, I didn’t know about retail, I didn’t know about
publishing. But I’ve been really honest about my limitations.
When you’re honest about your limitations instead of
faking it, people will actually come to the party and say ‘let
me share some knowledge and I can help you’.” She says
one of the things that has made a big difference is being
supported by a team that truly believes in what it’s doing.
Dymocks Children’s Charities has three main
programs. The first is putting brand-new books in school
libraries. The sad reality, says Martin, is that a lot of school
libraries aren’t funded properly. “Their books are old and
not nice and the kids just don’t want to read them. We’re
trying to take them on a literary journey. The charity gives
brand-new books – not ones that can’t be sold in stores.”
The second program gives books to children in schools
to keep. “These are children who don’t have any books at
home, so it gives them ownership and builds their interest
in reading. Their whole journey of literacy and wanting to
read changes over the course of the program.”
The third program is collaborating with local
organisations to give books to places like indigenous
community centres, migrant centres and women’s shelters.
She also talks about providing books to women in prison
who then record themselves reading and send it to their
children. It also provides books to children in hospital and
hospice care and to those displaced by natural disasters.
For Martin, it has been life-changing to meet the children
who receive the books. “Just to actually experience that and
remind yourself how lucky and privileged you are to help
them. It has been one of the most incredible career changes and
learning journeys I’ve been on.” Overall, Martin’s experiences
are a testament to being true to our needs, listening to them
especially when it’s not an easy path and trusting that it
will work out for the best. It’s also about being realistic and
knowing that change isn’t instant and takes work. “The key
is to constantly question what it is that you really love. That
might just be the seed that helps you find your purpose.”
 Proudly brought to you by

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 44 CONTRIBUTED

When consumer advocacy

meets recruitment
The Royal Melbourne Hospital Allied Health
department’s decision to include former patients
in its recruitment process has delivered impressive
results. Desh Wheeler shares his experience.

T
he Royal Melbourne Hospital Allied Health
department’s decision to include former
patients in its recruitment process has
delivered impressive results in reducing
staff turnover. As a marketer I know
firsthand how the knowledge of consumers helps build
Staff turnover in any business is a burden, but in the
healthcare sector it causes significant financial strain.
Making up more than 90 percent of running costs,
staffing is the largest investment of an allied health
department. This is coupled with the attrition or loss
of healthcare workers, which speaks for an estimated

better teams and foster better internal culture. As a former
patient and now as a consumer representative in Allied
Health’s recruitment process, I can see how consumers
can not only help foster culture, but help foster employee
talent, loyalty and retention.
When I first met Associate Professor Genevieve
Juj, chief Allied Health officer at The Royal Melbourne
Hospital, I got an immediate sense that this is a woman
who not only knows the healthcare sector, but the
business of running it too. Her vision was to turn the
recruitment process of her department on its head
and adopt new ways to recruit in order to reduce staff
turnover. This new way was the inclusion of a former
patient (or consumer as they are internally known) as
part of the panel of interviewers.
“Staff turnover in any
business is a burden,
but in the healthcare
sector it causes significant
financial strain.”
marketingmag.com.au
5.8 percent of the operating budget (a combination of
direct recruitment costs and indirect costs from loss of
productivity and training). So, you can understand why
Juj saw it necessary to rethink the recruitment process.
At Royal Melbourne, Allied Health includes
physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech pathology
and audiology, clinical nutrition, pastoral and spiritual
care, psychology, social work, prosthetics and orthotics,
podiatry and music therapy. In other words, healthcare
professions distinct from nursing, medicine and
pharmacy, equally vital for patient care and recovery.
With a workforce of more than 500 across the
Parkville and Royal Park campuses, the finite nature of
healthcare resources, the shortages of staff across many
professions and the shortage of allied healthcare workers
in rural areas, you can understand why the success of
allied health at the Royal Melbourne Hospital depends
not only on the capability of its staff, but its staff retention
and recruitment strategies.
Recruiting clinicians who share behaviours
and attitudes that align to the culture, values and
strategic intent of a healthcare organisation is critical
to sustainable development and retention of staff.
Traditional interview techniques continue only to
prioritise clinical skills and competencies, but not
cultural fit. It is a known fact that person-to-culture fit
enhances job satisfaction, organisational commitment
and organisational efficiency.
A new recruitment model helps nurture talent and
focus on the development of staff, allowing all staff to

MARKETING 2019

play an active role in the supervision, coaching and
development of more junior team members.
The new, behaviourally-grounded recruitment model
for Allied Health includes a phone screening interview
where the top three to five applicants are selected from
a short list of all applicants and probed on their clinical
competencies for the specified role. This list is further
@marketingmag
shortened to one or two top candidates for an in-depth
face-to-face interview by a panel of three to four
interviewers, including a consumer. In the face-to-face
interviews, behavioural competencies are explored. These
behavioural competencies are broken into three key areas:
A chronological review of applicant’s career that
adopts a narrative approach to explore and expand on
clinical competencies and lived experiences,
a values and behaviours assessment that explores
values and behaviours in line with the organisational
core values, and
organisational capabilities assessment that digs deep
into behavioural attributes across respective skill
areas.
The inclusion of consumer advocates in care is well
established. Including them in the interview process
embeds the consumer perspective into the employment
processes of Royal Melbourne Hospital. Consumer
advocates along with Allied Health recruiting managers
underwent HR training in the new recruitment
model to facilitate the cultural shift from focusing
only on competency, to behavioural based recruiting.
Allied Health has identified that consumers bring
several perceived and unique benefits associated with
their inclusion on the interview panel, including an
unencumbered and commonsense perspective to the
recruitment discussion and demonstration to the
candidate that Royal Melbourne Health takes consumer
input into decision making seriously. Allied Health
THE NURTURE ISSUE
“Consumers bring several
perceived and unique
benefits associated with
their inclusion on the
interview panel.”
also believes that consumers have something more to
contribute as they’re not necessarily health professionals
but can relate to the human side of patient care. With my
background forged in corporate, I am no expert in the
health field or in recruiting clinicians, but when I am
on the interview panel I look for answers in a language I
understand – honesty, understanding and the need to be
listened to.
This new model, the first of its kind in the healthcare
sector in Australia was implemented four years ago over a
12-month period and has shown a decline in staff turnover
of five percent. Gaining the right staff for the right fit
has broader implications for the quality of patient care
which will improve even further over time as a result
of enhanced staff-to-organisation fit. Allied Health
under Juj’s stewardship has shown that behaviourally
grounded recruitment over the traditional competency
based recruitment models – along with the inclusion of
consumer advocates on the interview panel – improves
overall staff attrition rates, nurtures talent and builds
commitment and loyalty, all with patient care at its centre.
Marketers know how important knowledge and love
of customers is to a brand and its success, and when I was
approached by Allied Health at the Royal Melbourne
to be part of this new recruitment process, the decision
was simple. Customer advocacy in any discipline
pays dividends, but to include former patients in the
recruitment of healthcare specialists, speaks volumes to
the forward thinking at the Royal Melbourne Hospital
and genuine desire to keep the needs of the customer at
the forefront of everything they do.
With an extensive marketing background in the FMCG
and finance sectors, Desh Wheeler now utilises his skills
volunteering at various organisations, including the Royal
Melbourne Hospital.
SOCIAL MEDIA: WHAT WE NURTURE
It’s no secret that social media can play a detrimental role in mental health.
Does marketing exacerbate the problem?

WHO’S PLAYING?
TOTAL GLOBAL POPULATION: 7.7 BILLION
INTERNET USERS ACTIVE SOCIAL MEDIA USERS MOBILE SOCIAL MEDIA USERS
4.4 BILLION 3.5 BILLION 3.3 BILLION

57% OF GLOBAL
45% OF GLOBAL
42% OF GLOBAL
POPULATION POPULATION POPULATION

We Are Social and Hootsuite

TAKING HOLD
FROM 2018 TO 2019, SOCIAL MEDIA USE GREW ALMOST NINE TIMES FASTER THAN THE GLOBAL POPULATION

TOTAL GLOBAL POPULATION GROWTH: +84 MILLION (+1.1%)

INTERNET USERS ACTIVE SOCIAL MEDIA USERS MOBILE SOCIAL MEDIA USERS
+367 MILLION +288 MILLION +297 MILLION

+10%
We Are Social and Hootsuite

MARKETING 2019
 47 INFOGRAPHIC

WHO SAYS?
THERE’S A BIT OF BACK AND FORTH ON EXACTLY HOW SOCIAL MEDIA AFFECTS MENTAL HEALTH.
HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW FOR SURE.

Multiple studies have found an
association between social media
use and psychiatric disorders
including depression and anxiety
Sage Journals
Researchers have found a
positive relationship between
social media use and decreased
sleep quality
Texas A&M University
Studies show adolescent girls
are the most susceptible to
internalising mental health problems
stemming from social media
Sage Journals

WHAT THEY’RE WORRIED ABOUT

WE ASKED A SELF-ADMITTED SOCIAL-MEDIA-HOLIC 16-YEAR OLD WHAT CAUSES THEM STRESS ON SOCIAL

BODY IMAGE PRIVACY AND ANONYMITY EXCLUSION

X Instagram models X Targeted advertising on X Hyper-exclusive social
creating expectations social py” media circles
X Promotion of unrealistic X Comp I am” X Glorified view of
body types X Lac for tt inable status,
X Airbrush being available o ments r social currency
to everyone X Pre arguments ased feelings of
corrupting candid discourse ess or isolation

If you or someone you know is in emotional distress or experiencing mental health issues,
call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, call 000

THE NURTURE ISSUE

 To have excellent
communication
skills you have to
understand yourself
very well.
 ON
COURSE
Which skills can help marketers make it to senior management?
Marketing hears it firsthand from someone who’s made a
career of making the journey.

B
en Foote has used his
marketing chops to climb
the ranks more than
once. At Optus, he began
as a product marketing
manager before taking the reins
as strategy and insights general
manager. Following that, he spent
six years at Career One, where he
began as director of marketing and
communications before a promotion
to chief operating officer and finally
a two-year tenure as CEO.
Today, he’s CEO at the Australian
Institute of Management (AIM)
and Group CEO of its parent
company Scentia. He offers
advice for business leaders on
how marketing skills and a solid
understanding of customers can
be used for company growth on
an organisational level and career
success on a personal level.
A marketing professional who’s
made it to upper management time
and again and now leads a company
that develops marketing courses for
future success? He just may be the
perfect person to hear from in a mag
issue all about careers and skills.
Marketing: What is it about
marketing? Which skills have
been so relevant to overall
management that they’ve taken
you to the top?
Ben Foote, CEO AIM, Group CEO
Scentia: Marketing – as I think of
it – allows an immersion, of getting a
deep understanding of the customer.
And ultimately, when you’ve got a
very, very good understanding of
50 SPECIAL
It’s such a
technical job that
I think it’s even
attracting quite a
different individual
into the sphere.
the customer, you’re in a brilliant
position to influence a business
strategy and drive growth.
Has pushing the marketing
agenda been a battle for you at
times, or has the growth been
quite organic?
I’d like to say it’s been organic,
but I certainly see people taking a
different approach to marketing that
I don’t think is as effective in terms of
moving up into a more senior role. A
number of people look at marketing
much more as a communications
role rather than a strategic role.
Aligning product messaging
around the customer and also being
able to build strategies to make a
significant impact on the customer
journey can radically change the
business in which you operate. The
marketer who’s taking that approach
is sitting right in the middle of that
change and growth.
What are some of the biggest
changes you’ve seen in marketing
throughout your journey?
Well, it has become a very, very
technical role. From my earlier
career when there were certainly
elements of market research – which
MARKETING 2019
was quant and qual – there was
still a lot of gut instinct. Today it
requires a highly technical individual
to advance through a marketing
department. It’s such a technical
job that it’s even attracting quite a
different individual into the sphere.
Has anything – perhaps creativity
– been lost as a result of a reliance
on data and tech?
I don’t think so. It’s driving a couple
of really interesting things. Firstly, it’s
marketingmag.com.au
an amazing opportunity for young
marketers to very quickly advance
their careers. They are digital natives
and in many cases are quickly
understanding marketing platforms
and can move up and run marketing
departments quite quickly. They are
overtaking the generations above
them who are just not as comfortable
or confident within the digital
marketing space. That’s a great
thing because it gives people the
opportunity to advance their careers.
The second piece around
whether anything’s lost in
marketing? I don’t think so, but I
do think it’s a little bit more of a
challenge for people in marketing to
pull themselves back from the detail
around marketing automation, big
data, cost-per-lead and cost-per-
acquisition. Pulling themselves back
and remembering that there’s a real
person buying a product or service?
Pausing to think and understand
that person, their drivers and then
to be better set to go and make
an impact? It’s harder to get that
perspective, but ultimately it’s just a
more complex world.
123RF's rawpixel © 123rf.com
Tell us about your work at
the Australian Institute of
Management
It’s a very, very large provider in
short courses and one-, two- and
three-day training provider courses
in future skills across Australia.
It goes right up to accredited
education. The hallmark is our
MBA program.
What’s your training approach
for marketing skills? How is it
changing?
One of our popular programs is
digital marketing for non-marketers.
It’s an interesting area of marketing
as it becomes more and more
important as a business function.
Marketing has the potential to
take over some of the other
functions within a structure – like
customer service and potentially
the technology function as well – as
the business aligns to serving the
customer better than anybody else
in the market.
That ultimately leads to the
marketing function becoming
more and more prevalent within
organisations. What you’re seeing is
more and more of the management
layer within businesses needing to
upskill in understanding marketing
fundamentals and also knowing
what is happening within digital
marketing. What are the possibilities
of digital marketing and how can
[business leaders] harness them to
better perform their role?
They may be looking for
candidates if they’re in the HR
function, or looking at new ways
to interact with customers in a call
centre. A lot of this advancement is
really happening within marketing.
A lot of people are saying, ‘I need
these skills to better perform in
my current role, I need this cross-
functional knowledge.’ So, a lot of
people outside of marketing are
starting to take marketing courses.
We see that in the significant
demand for our digital marketing
THE NURTURE ISSUE
for non-marketing program.
We also see it in our mini MBA
programs – which aren’t full MBAs
– they’re just five-day programs,
but one day is completely focused
on the customer, understanding
the customer and key marketing
principles. These principles are at
the centre of not only marketing but
also can be used cross-functionally
in other management roles to better
perform. As businesses get more
and more complex, people need
to train cross-functionally, and
marketing is one of the key pillars
management need to train in to be
more effective.
How can people quickly build
that knowledge and work it into
their positions?
There are a few areas. Customer
journey mapping is a really
interesting thing for management
to do to understand the customer
journey, how it can be impacted
and how customers’ expectations

They are
overtaking the
generations above
them who are just
not as comfortable
or confident within
the digital marketing
space.
can be achieved within a journey
is a very valuable tool. It really sits
in marketing, but is very cross-
functional.
Next is getting an understanding
of the levels of targeting now
available to a marketing team. It’s
critical so that people can think
more deeply about the strategy of
the business and how to reach a set
of consumers, to target a specific
person or market. This is obviously
incredibly important if you’re a
sales leader, to understand how
sophisticated and personalised
marketing targeting and messaging
can become. Ultimately you want
to add to that strategy to make your
team perform better. And you want
to challenge that strategy, as well, to
ensure that your sales team is in a
very strong position.
Then you can look at finance.
Finance needs to understand
where significant money is being
spent on things like social media and
search engines, for example, and be
able to challenge marketers on how
that money is being spent and what
the outcomes are – what the key
performance measures are.
52 SPECIAL
They need to be able to talk
about CPMs, CPAs and CPLs with
confidence, and it’s not easy. It’s a
much more complex conversation
than it used to be when people
were talking about what the gut
feel of a campaign was. It’s a much,
much deeper conversation, but it’s
extremely important for the growth
of the business.
Everyone’s working on their
marketing skills. Should
marketers be worried?
No, marketing is growing in
importance. It’s certainly growing
not only in importance, but in how
central it is to business. Ultimately
you need to be connected with
the customer and that connection
is stronger within marketing if the
function is being run well. Marketing,
therefore, has the most ability to
have impact.
I haven’t seen statistics around
this, though my story’s in line with
it and executive recruiters I talk to
say the CEOs they’re finding jobs
for now are mainly from marketing
and product backgrounds. It wasn’t
long ago that those CEOs were
coming out of finance in most
cases. But finance is very much
seen as – with all due respect – an
important administration task now
within a business, because it’s less
connected to the customer. You
extrapolate that trend and you see
businesses where marketing is
much more front and centre. You
only have to look at your Steve
Jobses of this world, who was the
customer champion, who had the
MARKETING 2019
product and the customer aligned
in his vision to understand how
powerful that can be.
What would your advice be to
marketers who want to build
on their management skills and
work their way to the top spot like
you have?
Business used to be very linear. You
used to be able to manage up and
down, and now with technology
and the speed of communication,
marketingmag.com.au
businesses have become totally
complex. Communication goes from
everywhere to everywhere within an
organisation. There’s no structure at
all to communication channels. So in
order to be successful in business,
whether you’re a marketer – or any
position – you need to have excellent
communication skills. To have
excellent communication skills you
have to understand yourself very
well. You have to understand how
you come across and how to work
with people who are different than
you to get their support and to drive
to a great outcome with them.
Excellent communication skills,
which you can certainly learn and
improve all of the time, is number
one in terms of moving up in a
business. That’s a given. Then the
other skills are probably easier
to learn because they’re more
technical. Certainly, communications
combined with numbers is
important in terms of being able
to articulate a business case. So to
put numbers around your ideas and
plans is critical. I would say that is
second to communication.
 TV ads are remembered

than the average Facebook

or YouTube ad.

The most effective campaigns work because they are remembered right up to
the point of purchase.

In a perfect world we’d know exactly when that purchase decision would be
made so that we could run that ad at precisely the right moment. But we don’t
live in a perfect world, so it makes sense to choose a media channel that will
be remembered for longer.

THE BENCHMARK SERIES by

THE DIFFERENCE thinktv.com.au
 years of

2
Custom publications remain one of the
most effective ways to communicate
with a premium audience.

From tailoring a content strategy

creating
content
that
connects

through to concept, creation, design,

production and distribution, we’ll work
with you to create the bespoke solution
to your needs.

Tailored to your industry, for

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we deliver:
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• Lead nurturing
CONTACT US
+613 9948 4900
info@niche.com.au
Niche Media Pty Ltd
3 Bowen Crescent, Melbourne
Victoria 3004, Australia
 56 CONTENT PARTNER: UNLTD
Nurture: we’re only
doing half the job right
People in media, marketing and advertising
need to take better care of one another.
Chris Freel knows how.
O
ne dictionary’s definition of nurture is “to
care for or protect (something or someone)
while they are growing.”
I just love the word. It immediately
makes me feel warm, a sense of
responsibility and a feeling of community. It makes me
think of home-cooked Sunday roast dinners by the fire on
a cold English winter’s day. It makes me think of cuddling
up to my two boys on the sofa, keeping them cosy and safe.
It makes me think of growth, of planting a seed and tending
to it as it develops into a plant. It evokes very positive
thoughts and feelings for me. If we were all more focused
on nurturing each other, wouldn’t the world be a much
happier and more productive place? In many ways, across
the marketing, media and advertising industry, I feel that we
are nurturing.
In the workplace, mentoring opportunities are
abundant. Many organisations have a program that
enables internal or external mentoring for some or all
their staff. The mentoring program I experienced at Fairfax
was brilliant and gave access to, and support from, some
incredible people.
Feedback is also constant and progressive, it’s there
to be embraced and aims to help someone grow. During
my time at Pandora Music I recall our quarterly feedback
sessions which touched on hits, misses, tone and tempo
and lessons learned. The more casual, musical rhetoric
“Seriously, how many
‘offsites’ have you been on
this year?”
MARKETING 2019
Chris Freel is
CEO of UnLtd
lent itself to a more productive session that did help people
to grow. It was more like a leisurely jam than being called
to the principal’s office to go through the dreaded annual
report card.
Training, conferences and opportunities to learn
are also available everywhere. I reckon if you wanted to,
marketingmag.com.au
you could access a relevant training event or opportunity
every day of the year in any of the major Australian
markets. Whether it’s being offered via trade press, industry
bodies, event organisations, within your own organisation
or even through UnLtd, there’s just so much activity
happening, designed to support and nurture those working
in our industry.
Finally, there’s the ‘offsite’. Seriously, how many offsites
have you been on this year? Some people that I know hardly
ever seem to be ‘onsite’. How does anybody ever get any actual
work done? When it comes to learning and development, I
feel that our industry is very nurturing to its people.
However, it is the other side of nurture that I am keen
to focus on for this article. The definition reads “care for
or protect”. While we do provide so much technical based
support, it is only recently that we have really opened the
conversation on a more human level. How are we caring
for each other when it comes to the more challenging
and personal areas? The survey that we conducted in
conjunction with Everymind and Never Not Creative at
the end of 2018 revealed that people within the media,
marketing and creative industry are more likely to show
signs of mental illness, with 56 percent of respondents
showing mild to severe symptoms of depression compared
to the national average of 36 percent. This indicates that
we really aren’t nurturing each other anywhere near as
much as we should be. I think we all need to look after each
other more. I know that we can be fiercely competitive, but
I worry that this is coming at a critical cost to individuals
and the industry in its entirety. If we want our craft and its
 “I know that we can be
fiercely competitive,
but I worry that this is
coming at a critical cost to
individuals.”
people to continue to grow and blossom, and if we want to
attract new talent into it, then surely it is time for all of us to
step up and take an active role in ‘collective nurturism.’
Here are four ways that I think we can help to reduce
the levels of anxiety and stress for people in our industry
and make the marketing, advertising and creative world a
great one.
@marketingmag
1. CELEBRATE THE GOOD
As an industry, we often have a bad habit of focusing
on doom and gloom. Whether it’s more redundancies,
data transparency issues, a declining ad market or some
other scandal, the language that we often use through
this narrative is negative and defeatist. The positive
work being done falls below the fold. How does this make
people feel? As somebody who has operated in publishing
environments for more than two decades, I am aware that
eyeballs often follow more negative stories, but I feel this
overarching cloud doesn’t help to set a positive mood and
tone over the industry.
2. CHANGE WHAT WE BRAG ABOUT
Traditional metrics of time spent versus quality of output
need to be eradicated. The days of bragging about working
all weekend to get that pitch response out are gone. How
we burned the candle at both ends so that we were seen to
be committed. A ‘win at all cost’ mentality. Let’s continue
to celebrate good work but also highlight and celebrate
flexibility, diversity and equality. Quality over quantity has
always been a winning formula of mine. People have lives,
friends and families outside work and need to be able to
be present. I am proud to look after my five-year-old every
Friday morning and much more productive in all areas
because of that flexibility. Our team gets so much more done
by working at home on Mondays. Small things go a long way
and we often end up with much better outputs all round.
THE NURTURE ISSUE
3. SHARE STORIES
I love the recent work that PHD did with our friend Mitch
Wallis. Off the back of the UnLtd Mentally Heathy event,
they published an e-book of mental health stories from
within the agency. Showing and sharing our vulnerability
as people, leaders and colleagues is powerful. It is also
very brave and takes a lot for individuals to expose very
personal details about themselves. Most of all, sharing our
vulnerability shows that it is OK to not be OK and creates
an environment in which people feel much more at ease
talking to each other about that.
4. MINIMUM STANDARDS
It’s time we all reset the benchmark for what we deem
as acceptable. Increasing pressure and strain in recent
years has led to tougher working conditions. Off the
back of the recent survey, UnLtd and Never Not Creative
set up a ‘change group’ with a broad representation from
across the industry. This group is already busy working on
many great projects (coming soon!) including this one. The
time seems very appropriate to reset that norm to help all of
us and we look forward to working with all of you to drive
positive change.
At UnLtd, our purpose is to ensure that all young Australians
have the best opportunity in life. We do a lot of work with
our charity partners and young people at risk, but another
key focus of ours is to nurture people within our industry.
You may have heard the saying ‘charity begins at home.’ The
industry is our home and if we can help to get it in the best
mental shape possible, then collectively we will all be much
more capable of changing the world in a positive way.
Marketing is proud to have UnLtd as a
Content Partner. We urge you to visit
unltd.org.au and get involved.
 58 SPECIAL

TOO
MUCH,
TOO
QUICK
Marketers face real pressure to deliver real results in real time.
But where does this leave long-term brand building? Josh Loh speaks with
Troy McKinna, who’s revisiting the true role of great marketing.

MARKETING 2019
 I see a lot of
companies trying
to do it all.
 60 SPECIAL

T
oday, the world of
business has reached a
dizzying pace. Seduced
by fast metrics and
driven by technology
and an ever-present fear of
disruption, organisations have grown
obsessed with short-term results.
And brands are suffering.
Troy McKinna set out to help
marketers get back to the job
of building brands faster and
better than the competition. In his
book Brand Hustle: four critical
foundations to accelerate brand
growth, he explores moves by Mars,
Schweppes, Holden and more,
to uncover the hits and misses of
brand building.
much value of it on the balance
sheet. It’s not a valued asset within
the business. Most functions within
a business are really focused on
this quarter and this year. In my
experience, in meetings, it is very
much ‘what is the result that we are
delivering right now?’ Whereas a lot
of brand metrics will benefit in the
long term. You can spend money on
advertising this year, but you’re still
getting benefits from it next year
and the year after. Whereas today,
most investments are promotionally
driven, deliver results right here
and now and not in the long term.
Because not many people in
business are looking at the long
term, it’s not valuable.

Josh Loh: You speak a lot about
marketers today having to do
more with less, being forced to
focus on short-term results and
losing sight of brand value. Where
does this problem come from?
Troy McKinna: Business is
speeding up, which i think is a big
part of the problem. Business is
getting really fast and technology is
disrupting pretty much every brand
and category. What you find in most
industries, as well, is that you’ve
got big players, but then you’ve got
little start-ups that are chasing the
opportunities a lot faster than a big
start-up can move. Everyone’s on
the back foot to respond to that.
Part of it as well, is that businesses
are a lot more – and this is a big
generalisation – financially driven
these days. You see a lot more
CFO backgrounds behind leaders in
CEO roles.
Brands are treated as intangible
assets. If you build your own brand
in-house, you can’t actually place
In the book you discuss the
hangover effect of marketing
teams throwing everything and
the kitchen sink to meet this year’s
budget, without much regard to
what’s happening next year. In a
nutshell, what is your advice for
marketers struggling to find time
to think about the bigger picture?
I think the biggest challenge
marketing has is that it’s trying to
do too much. There are lots of new
media channels and new ways to
do stuff. I see a lot of companies
trying to do it all. But I see the really
successful ones are really focused
on a couple of media channels.
They’re really clear on their brand
strategy and where they’re heading.
My hope in the book is that
the first part of it really sets up a
definition of what marketing does
– which is build brand value – and
that marketers need to be clear on
where they’re taking the brand, with
the four critical foundations, so they
can make fast decisions. You can
see a lot of decision making takes a
long time in business, but if you’re
really clear on where the brand’s
going, you can make that decision
a lot quicker. It’s partly being able
to respond to stuff quicker, but it’s
[also] being really clear on what you
do and don’t do with your budgets –
and your brand, essentially.
Where have you found that
marketers stumble the most in
building brand and telling brand
stories?
I wonder if there’s not enough clarity
on what drives a brand, on the real
core consumer insights that they’re
delivering against. A lot of places,
particularly consulting agencies, will
say that they have lots of insight, but
really they’ve just got lots of data and
they’ve got lots of segmentations
– lots of the ‘what’ is going on. But

MARKETING 2019

It’s easy to get
distracted by all
the tactical things
that happen within
marketing but
it’s important to
understand the
strategic ‘why’.
they don’t really have the ‘why’ things
are happening. Why are consumers
behaving in the way they do? They
don’t know, so they’re not really clear
on what they’re building for. As I’ve
said, you get a lot of start-ups coming
through; there are lots of new entrants
into the market. So businesses just try
to respond by copying.
They’re doing stuff, a lot of stuff,
but without the clarity of why it’s
important and why it’s going to move
the dial. It’s easy to get distracted
by all the tactical things that happen
within marketing, but it’s important
to understand the strategic ‘why’;
why it’s important. There’s definitely
a sense that marketing was great
20 years ago and the advertising
world was great, with lots of budgets
and big teams. You can definitely
see it in the FMCG industry, where
there used to be a team of three or
four working on a brand, but now
in some places there might just be
one person. That one person might
be looking after a few brands now;
people are stretched a lot thinner.
What comes out of that is, well, if
you don’t have good foundations
and training for the next generation
coming through, it’ll just be assistant
brand managers and brand
managers as they work their way up.
THE NURTURE ISSUE
So there’s lots of factors going on.
I guess my overall thought would
be marketers are getting distracted
trying to do too many things and not
really focusing on strategic direction
or having great clarity on why what
they’re doing is important.
You say marketing is the action of
growing brands. Do you believe
CMOs in Australia have a big
enough seat at the boardroom
table? What do you say to those
agnostic to brand as a driving
force of business success?
I think the CMO roll is losing its
voice. In a lot of companies you’ll see
it’s being merged with sales roles,
or the chief commercial officer or
maybe it’s getting confused with
chief customer officer.
There are lots of different
roles, but I think why building
brand base is so important is it’s a
central point that brings everything
together. It connects your business
with your customer. It connects
all your product strategy with
your communication strategy. The
danger has been that the role has
really fragmented. You see tech
companies, for example, where the
chief information officer might be
doing parts of the product strategy
that once would have sat with
marketing. It’s a lot harder for a CMO,
now, to have enough control over the
real true brand levers. A lot of places
you see marketing turning into just
the advertising function, which is not
really the true calling of the brand.
Why I’m big on brand? I love
Warren Buffet’s work. A lot of his
message is ‘how do you build a moat
around your business to protect
it?’ Unless you’ve got patents or a
monopoly on the industry, the only

true way to protect it is the brand.
Customers have a choice and they’re
making really fast decisions; they’re
using the brand as the shortcut.
How you get chosen over your
competitors is the key driver for that.
It helps connect the business and
the consumer face.
Businesses that are growing fast,
that really have their brand strategy
in order, lots of them are pushing
behind that strategy in the same
direction. And it works.
Do you see the CMO role, as we
understand it today, dying? Is it
the most dangerous one around?
The stats show that the tenures are
getting shorter. Here, the US, the
UK, everywhere it’s the same. The
CMO role tenure is getting shorter
and it tends to be the shortest of all
the C-suite roles. It’s a high pressure
role. As I’ve said, lots of the business
depends on the strength of the
brand. But it’s also the hot spot if
things aren’t going well – it’s easy to
scapegoat the CMO. You can see the
business really struggle on the back
of that.
Was there a moment or a piece
of wisdom that you encountered
when putting together the
book that subverted your
understanding of marketing or
brand?
I’ve spent a lot of time working with
Mars and also Schweppes, working
on the Ehrenberg Bass principles
of building brands around light
buyers and just how much you
share your customers with your
competitor’s brand.
I think the biggest thing that changed
over the course of writing the book
was discovered chatting to brands
62 SPECIAL
The CMO role
tenure is getting
shorter and it tends
to be the shortest
of all the C-suite
roles.
like Four Pillars, Nike and Oakley.
There’s a point at which you can
actually be too big and too broad.
You start to lose sight of what you
truly stand for. And what that does is
it opens up the market for someone
to come in and do it better. One of
my big learnings from a brand like
Schweppes – a huge brand, been
around for a long time – it has really
become too reliant now on the high
volume grocers like Woolworths. Lots
of price-driven activity, it’s losing
sight of its core DNA which is great
mixing with the best bartenders. That
has allowed for a brand like Fever
Tree to come in underneath it and
start to really poach the best bars
and clubs in Australia, and around
the world for that matter.
That’s my biggest learning: ‘how
do you balance the need for growth
and the importance of light buyers
with the really targeted and core
consumer base?’ The best brands
have found a way to do both. You
can definitely grow a brand by
chasing light buyers and we’ve done
that a lot over the years.
Everyone knows they should be
doing long-term brand building. At
the start of it, I thought ‘there’s two
different books here’. One is the
fundamentals of building a brand for
the long term, but the real problem
we need to address as an industry
is ‘how does marketing deliver
MARKETING 2019
short-term outcomes while still
delivering in the long term?’ That’s
what inspired Brand Hustle. There’s
a need for marketing to speed up
and that doesn’t mean becoming
more promotionally and tactically
driven, it means doing strategic stuff,
but doing stuff that delivers in the
long term. That comes back to doing
great product innovation and service
innovation that helps build the brand
in the long term but also delivers the
short-term results. How do you find
sales channels that give you a sales
number but also help nourish the
brand? How do you do promotional
campaign activities that fit within
marketingmag.com.au
this 24/7 media cycle, but also help
build the credentials and attributes
of the brands long term?
That’s my key message, the need
to find ways to do faster stuff that also
has a strategic intent behind it.
r
SUBSCRIPTION OFFER:
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who purchase a two-year
print subscription to Marketing will
receive a free copy of McKinna’s
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terms and conditions on page 81.
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Breeding awareness
Background: New York City
thrives on the uniqueness of its
inhabitants, and we’re not just
talking people. More than 100,000
dogs reside in The Big Apple, and
each of them is pretty unique,
too. Puppo, a New York-based
pet nutrition company, created
a product that caters to every
dog’s uniqueness by personalising
nutrition plans for each dog’s
individual dietary requirements. This
refreshing take on pet nutrition got
us thinking: If a dog food company
can create a product that’s tailored
for every dog, why shouldn’t its
advertising be equally unique? To
reflect Puppo’s personalisation in
our advertising and to introduce the
brand to New York City, we created a
unique ad for every registered dog in
the city. All 100,729 of them.
Dog food products are generally
categorised by size, either made
for small, medium or large breeds,
64 CASE STUDY
Campaign
Every dog has its ad
Client
Mars Puppo
Agency
Colenso BBDO
but this isn’t necessarily what’s
best for them and may not be
answering any health concerns.
We were tasked with introducing
Puppo to NYC, to break through
the FMCG mass-market, and to
differentiate the start-up from other
pet food companies.
Objectives: In order to raise
awareness of the unique functional
product benefits that Puppo
provides, we wanted to tell a unique
story to dog owners who were
already buying quality nutritional
food and who had an instinctive
feeling of responsibility towards
their dog’s health. We aimed to
increase the share of voice in an
incredibly competitive market by
demonstrating that each dog requires
a unique dietary plan, and in turn,
direct owners to sign up for a Puppo
subscription nutrition plan for their
dog. We also wanted to raise Puppo’s
MARKETING 2019
marketingmag.com.au
profile in the offline world and
integrate it with Puppo’s rising online
presence and organic conversations.
Strategy: Even though it’s
backed by Mars Petcare, Puppo
is still a start-up company and a
new challenger to the market. It
didn’t have the resources for large
scale advertising. Fortunately, a
smaller, highly targeted campaign
was the best solution to tell the
story of Puppo’s personalised
product and service.
Pet nutrition is an established
and very competitive category
and its brands typically employ
mass-marketing tactics. We saw an
opportunity to break through the
noise of big competitors by playing
off the uniqueness of Puppo’s
direct-to-consumer business
model. We strayed from the typical
one-ad-for-100,000 consumers
format, instead creating one ad for
 each dog that was registered in New
York City. This allowed us to connect
with owners in a more meaningful
way, and help them find the right
diet for their dog.
‘Every Dog Has Its Ad’ was a
data-driven tech campaign at its
core. This was also aligned with
@marketingmag
Puppo’s use of data – Puppo gathers
information from each customer in
order to create a bespoke meal for
each pet.
We used three key data sources:
1. Dog registration information:
dog owners residing in NYC are
required by law to license their
dogs and the data was publicly
available from the DOHMH
Dog Licensing System within
the Department of Mental
Health and Hygiene, under The
Freedom of Information Law.
2. Breed, health issue and health
benefit information.
3. NYC zip code boundaries.
Finally, we used Google Maps
for zip code definitions and
boundaries.
Execution: In order to create a
unique ad for each of the 100,729
dogs registered in New York City, we
created a world-first, bespoke piece
of technology that algorithmically
created personalised ad placements.
It utilised data from the NYC Dog
Licensing Dataset and linked each
dog to a unique Puppo health
benefit. It then inputted all of this
data into a sophisticated modular
copy and art direction system to
generate thousands of combinations
of iconography, colours and fonts
alongside the dog’s name, breed and
health benefit.
To ensure dog owners saw their
dog’s individual ad, we deployed
posters and digital OOH that
targeted owners by zip codes within
dog-walking distance to where they
live. Placements were supported
by geo-targeted digital displays to
ensure we achieved the reach and
scale needed for every NYC dog
parent to see their advert.
The way we implemented
this data allowed us to begin a
one-on-one conversation with dog
owners, driving them to start a
shopping experience tailored to their
dog via a unique QR code from their
poster or click through from their
digital display.
Results: New Yorkers responded
well to the ambitious idea of
100,729 unique ads for dogs,
and in turn sought out to order their
dog their very own personalised
meal plan. The Puppo website saw
a 68 percent spike in new users in
just one week. From those,
THE NURTURE ISSUE
28 percent of new users came
directly from our posters. In
addition, there was a 144 percent
increase in organic web searches
for Puppo.
We set out to create a data-
driven tech campaign in order
to individually address each
dog in New York. We designed
‘Every Dog Has Its Ad’ to break
through the traditional format of
one-ad-for-100,000 consumers,
and instead created an ad for every
individual dog.
Use of data allowed us to
design this audience
personalisation. By personalising
our advertising, we were able to
connect with our audience on a
one-to-one level, and individualising
the consumer experience evoked a
positive response.
Personalisation further defined
Puppo’s functional product
benefits, but moreover, it beautifully
illustrated the brand’s genuine
belief that every dog is unique and
deserves to be treated as such.
At a time when ecommerce
businesses are struggling to define
their offline presence, Puppo’s
campaign demonstrates the
flexibility that start-up companies
and direct-to-consumer brands
must possess in order to thrive,
particularly as a new challenger to
the market.

The slow treatment
Background: Since rebranding
in 2015, industry superfund-owned
bank ME has differentiated itself
from other Australian banks by
developing and executing a social
strategy that is not what you’d
typically expect from a bank. Its
social content is responsive,
relevant and relatable to its
community and leverages the cool,
clever and cheeky tone of voice
upon which the brand is built.
At ME, the team operates under
a core purpose to ‘help all
Australians get ahead’ and in line
with that, the company values are
built to fully empower every staff
member to bring their full selves
in to work every day and create
unique experiences people wouldn’t
expect from a bank.
Go to the moon: don’t be afraid
to fail
Love Monday: love what you
do and put yourself in the game
every day
68 CASE STUDY
Campaign
Slow TV
Client
ME Bank
Agency
Either Either
Have a swing: push yourself to
do more than you’ve ever done
before
Stay hungry: keep looking,
learning and growing, and
Ride the subway: get out there
and see what our customers see,
want, dream of and aspire to.
The social team often employs the
values in developing its content and
creating its own slow TV content
piece was definitely having a
swing. It has tried its hand in ‘Tasty’
style videos with a twist, built a
community of advocates around
a fake debit card that gets you
free sausage sizzles at Bunnings,
launched faux-influencers and
launched a fragrance line for April
Fools’ Day.
This year, the ME social and
content team set its eyes upon the
slow TV trend, harnessing the oddly-
satisfying real-time marketing trend
by publishing a video of a bank card
being hand-crafted entirely from
scratch. The content lead wanted
MARKETING 2019
marketingmag.com.au
to try their hand at long-form video,
and a slow TV style content piece
was seen as the perfect antidote to
the barrage of bite-sized, attention-
seeking video content online.
Taking elements from the popular
‘oddly satisfying’ trend, the video
showcases a pink silicone mix being
poured into a mould and bank card
numbers being laser cut and hand-
applied with delicate tweezers. All
the sounds were recorded to capture
the autonomous sensory meridian
response (ASMR) elements as a
subtle nod to the growing audiences
who enjoy ASMR – a sensorial
phenomenon triggered by visual
or auditory stimuli. The result was
an hour-long piece of hero content
launched with a craftsperson hand-
making a ME Buck Debit Card using
plastic moulds and a paintbrush
that delighted the online community.
ME worked with Either Either, a
Melbourne-based creative agency
and multimedia studio specialising in
video content.

Objectives: ME’s social channels
play a crucial role in developing
brand awareness, engagement and
ultimately creating brand advocates
through creating emotional
connections. The foremost objective
of creating this content was to
delight a specific segment of ME’s
community, as well as create a
unique long-form piece of hero
content that is not tied to a
particular event.
The measures of success for the
@marketingmag
campaign was reach, watch time
and engagement with the media.
Strategy: The insights that
informed the content piece were
gleaned through observations of
the type of video content that was
resonating online. Some notable
examples that inspired the team
were the Slow Summer TV series
aired by SBS, the rise of slime
artists on YouTube, ASMR work by
sustainable cosmetics brand Lush,
or Diageo’s 45-minute commercial
which features Nick Offerman
drinking whiskey in silence next to a
crackling fire.
ME reviews its social content
frequently and dissects what
resonates and what doesn’t so
the team understands what gets
to the heart of its community, and
customers. From assessing what
content resonates, it’s clear that when
a brand can tap into internet trends
and find clever ways to integrate
themselves into the zeitgeist, it
delights consumers, forging a
memorable bond and creating a
‘moment that matters’ with the brand.
Execution: The ‘Buck TV’
concept was developed in-house
by ME’s social and content team,
outlining the insight, strategy and
creative vision. After the concept,
storyboards and visual art direction
was signed off. Development of the
project took roughly three months,
most of which was spent as Either
Either experimented with materials
that could withstand the tiny scale
of the numbers and thinness of the
card. Sound design was also a major
part of the project, in keeping with
the ASMR concept. Either Either
co-founder and creative director
Mete Erdogan was interested in
moments like the shirt sleeves
sliding against the paper tablecloth,
the scalpel cutting through the card
and the silicone mould peeling off
the resin.
For the digital execution, a
hero piece of content running 60
minutes was launched on YouTube
and Twitter, and various teasers
ranging from 60 minutes down
to 10 minutes were launched
across Facebook and Instagram, all
directing users to enjoy the full 60-
minutes experience on YouTube.
The social team timed the launch
of the content to land just as SBS
aired its four-week #SlowSummer
TV series special every Sunday
night in January. The campaign
was launched on 13 January and
ran for two weeks offering viewers
the pleasures of slow viewing
THE NURTURE ISSUE
anytime. However, one of the piece’s
objectives was to have longevity as
an evergreen hero content piece that
has relevance to a specific audience
all year round, and the results show
that Buck TV did just that.
Results: The hero piece of content
on YouTube generated more than
27,000 views, and effectively
infiltrated the ASMR and oddly
satisfying craft-loving communities
of YouTube. Of the 27,000 views,
24 percent of the audience watched
the entire 60-minute video. The
comments section attracted many
fans of the style of the video, paints
and materials used and sound design.
One user summed it up nicely with:
“One last video before I go to bed! No
but really, never been this interested
in banking in my whole life…”
The promotion of the video
across social channels reached an
additional 335,000 with Facebook
generating 112,900 views of
the 60-second trailer and an
engagement rate of 2.68 percent
(not including views).
The social team also used this
as an opportunity to publish its
first piece of longer form content
to IGTV. The unique nature of the
content piece resulted in three trade
media pieces being written, further
extending the content through PR.
For a piece of content that was
born of one of ME’s unique values,
‘have a swing’, the team is really
happy with its first crack at long-form
evergreen video content. Now the only
question is... what to tap into next?

Going Fyral
Background: Shutterstock is a
leading global technology company
offering high-quality content,
tools and services through its
creative platform. The company
provides creative professionals and
businesses with high-quality images,
video and music for any project,
while also improving their workflow
through innovative content creation
and editing tools, all in one platform.
In January 2019, Shutterstock
launched ‘It’s not stock, it’s
Shutterstock’, the company’s first
global ad campaign in six years.
The primary goal of the campaign
was to challenge the perception of
stock imagery and show, rather than
tell customers how the content can
be used to develop eye-catching
campaigns with high production value
that’s also cost effective. Following the
launch, we discovered an opportunity
to extend the campaign off the back
of the Fyre Festival documentaries.
72 CASE STUDY
Campaign
Fyrestock
Brand
Shutterstock
We quickly created the ‘Fyrestock’
video to show how one simple
creative idea made entirely from
Shutterstock footage and music
can be created quickly, with a small
budget and have a lasting impact.
Objectives: With great
content right at our fingertips,
our communications, social
and creative teams reacted
immediately to the buzz that
followed the release of the Fyre
Festival documentaries on Netflix
(Fyre) and Hulu (Fyre Fraud). Our
goal was to grab the marketing,
creative and design community’s
attention with a compelling
showcase of Shutterstock footage
and music, drawing people in with
an engaging story and creating
something that would ultimately
change their perception of stock.
The target audience for this
campaign was Shutterstock’s key
MARKETING 2019
marketingmag.com.au
customer segment who make up
the marketing, creative and design
community. The main challenge was
turning the concept around quickly.
As part of the brief, we wanted
to communicate two things: first,
how cost effective it is to create a
high-quality promotional video with
Shutterstock footage and music and
second, how convenient it is using
entirely Shutterstock footage and
music to make something engaging
with high production value. The
creative concept was certainly
different to our past campaigns
because it was more ‘show than
tell’, and we wanted to illustrate that
we’re just like any of our customers
— we use our own assets and tools
to tell our stories. Success was also
measured a little differently. We
wanted to emphasise that creating
high-quality video content does
not need to cost a fortune and that
you can create viral content while
working with a limited budget.
BLUE PLANET STUDIO: SHUTTERSTOCK VIDEO. AILA IMAGES: SHUTTERSTOCK VIDEO.
NEJRON PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK VIDEO MARIDAV: SHUTTERSTOCK VIDEO

Strategy: In a world where
creativity has become mission-
critical for businesses of all sizes, we
wanted this video to gain notoriety
from the ground up. With a limited
budget and a desire to create
something that could go viral among
@marketingmag
our core audience, we knew that
attaching our next idea to a cultural
moment would help us achieve
maximum buzz. Before we knew it,
the perfect opportunity presented
itself. The creators of Fyre Festival
blew their budget on a promo video
with models, yachts and swimming
pigs. It was the perfect opportunity
for us to insert Shutterstock into the
cultural conversation in a fun and
lighthearted way, while showcasing
the endless possibilities of stock
footage and music. The video we
produced emulated the video that
was used to promote the real Fyre
Festival. We made our video in
24 hours and entirely out of stock
footage – and from the office. The
US$2000 in stock footage we used
to create the parody highlighted
the stark budget comparison to the
original Fyre Festival promo video.
We could have run a commercial
on TV that said ‘you can make
amazing media from our assets very
quickly and at a fantastic price’ but
in this particular situation, a piece of
social content felt like the best tool
to get the job done. We felt that the
strength of the video and the timely
alignment with the conversation of
the moment meant that we could
build engagement organically.
We wanted to reach the marketing,
creative and design community
first, because they’re the ones
using stock content and we thought
this would be a great way to show
them that you can truly create
anything you want from the millions
of Shutterstock video clips, and
thousands of music tracks in our
PremiumBeat collection – and that it
can be cost-effective to do so.
Execution: We launched the
video across all Shutterstock
social media channels on Tuesday,
29 January, sharing it with our
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and
LinkedIn followers.
Once the video was live, we
quickly reached out to key media
outlets to make them aware of the
content in order to reach our target
audience of marketing and creative
professionals and boost visibility
and engagement for the video.
Our outreach focused on media,
advertising and marketing press
in Australia, the US, UK, Germany
and Brazil.
We continued outreach the
following morning and as both of
THE NURTURE ISSUE
these efforts kicked in, and the
video had taken on a life of its
own across the web, we expanded the
promotion with paid media. Without
going over a US$15,000 budget,
we were able to put some money
behind it, to hyper-target our creative
audience who were sharing it across
their own social channels.
Results: Our final budget included
just over $2000 in footage and
$15,000 in paid social media.
There is no formula to making
something go viral, but this video
exceeded all our expectations and
reached a much broader audience.
The satirical tone and swift timing
resonated with audiences worldwide
and was the perfect combination
for social media success. Another
unexpected outcome of the video
was being included in stories and
comments around Super Bowl
commercials, which coincidentally
was happening at the same time.
While we didn’t spend a single
advertising dollar with the Super
Bowl, we still found comments like
‘Shutterstock wins the Superbowl’
all over the internet.
Our video definitely caught
fyre, resulting in over two million views
in the first week, plus over 100 pieces
of global top-tier media coverage. Best
of all? Nobody went to jail.
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QUANTUM
LEAP Ever thought of making a career change? Anna Grodecka-Grad did.
Now, she holds a suite of skills other executives could only dream of. By Josh Loh.
@marketingmag
T
here is a very specific
kind of person in this
world, and they are
few and far between.
The kind who appear
as though everything comes to
them without effort, like life has
predetermined a winning path
for them. Anna Grodecka-Grad
is one such person. Except she’s
not. What you don’t see when
Grodecka-Grad makes her career
– spanning science, technology,
mathematics, programmatic and
executive relations – look easy is a
ferocious appetite for knowledge, an
impregnable drive for improvement
and the tenacity and grit required to
get there.
In her past life, Grodecka-Grad
spent her time publishing papers
titled ‘Indirect spin dephasing via
charge-state decoherence in optical
control schemes in quantum dots’
77 INTERVIEW
and ‘Influence of acoustic phonons
on the optical control of quantum
dots driven by adiabatic rapid
passage’. With a PhD in theoretical
quantum physics and close to a
decade studying and teaching in
tertiary academia, she decided it
was time for a seachange.
In 2013, Grodecka-Grad began
her new professional journey with
martech, programmatic and data
management company MediaMath.
Today she is responsible for clients’
activation onboarding, ongoing
services, consulting and support,
custom solutions and integration as
chief services officer.
Marketing caught up with
Grodecka-Grad to discuss her views
on the future of work in the marketing
technology and programmatic
landscape, the changing role of
data within complex organisations
and how she translates the skills
THE NURTURE ISSUE
brought from theoretical physics to
our industry.
Josh Loh: How do you see work
in the programmatic world
evolving over the next five to
ten years? Is there a limit to
the role automation can play in
programmatics or will we see a
full lights-out operation one day?
Anna Grodecka-Grad, chief
services officer at MediaMath:
Whether it be in programmatic,
digital, advertising, marketing – we
talk a lot about technology, but we
don’t talk that much about talent,
actually. We see a lot of stuff in the
press around machine learning, AI,
automation and standardisation,
and I think as we evolve technology
in the way we work, the jobs and
the talent that is associated with
these technology offerings is also
going to evolve. The talent today and
 78 SPECIAL

marketingmag.com.au
That’s the
similarity between
my previous life in
academia and now
– always learning,
always evolving.

MARKETING 2019

That
programmatic
promise to
automating
everything is not
there yet – the
technology is
complex, but there
are a lot of different
tasks to fulfil, and a
lot of manual work
that needs to be
done.
tomorrow is going to be the same.
The way we’re going to be doing
these jobs is going to be different.
Some of them are going to disappear
or transition into different roles. We
may need less specialisation in one
area, but then more specialisation in
other areas.
If I were to answer that question
in one sentence: I see talent
and people in advertising and
programmatics changing their jobs
from being media doers and media
execution teams into more of a
consulting team – more of a media
consultancy approach.
The way things are being done
at the moment; it’s still manual. That
programmatic promise to automating
everything is not there yet – the
technology is complex, but there are
a lot of different tasks to fulfil, and
a lot of manual work that needs to
be done. A lot of it is data collection
and rationalisation of different data
79 INTERVIEW
sources, but you still also have
reporting and insights. That manual
stuff is going to disappear. There
are certain jobs – think about ad
trafficking – where some level of
reporting, when we have to merge
many different sources of reporting,
are done in Excel and other formats.
Believe it or not, those jobs still exist,
but I think these are the ones that are
going to disappear.
Technology applications in
the programmatic landscape
are going through a perpetual
state of change – we’re seeing
media giants like Google shift its
auctioning model from second-
to first-price. How does this
impact the philosophy of a
programmatic role?
The answer to that question is
probably different if you’re a part
of the world guns like Google,
Facebook and Amazon. It’s different
if you are part of an independent
and transparent technology
company like we are. It also depends
on whether if you are working for the
demand-side or supply-side.
We have to be ready to respond
to any changes that any of the huge
players, any of the public players,
are making. Our philosophy is
always to put the customer first,
and by customer, I don’t mean our
clients necessarily. Of course, we
are very client-centric, but it’s also
thinking about the person in front of
the screen, and making sure that we
are able to provide an independent
platform and service that’s executed
in a transparent way. We still are
linked to Google Exchange and the
way it runs its inventory, so of course
if Google makes any changes,
moving from second-price auction to
MARKETING 2019
first-price auction, we need to very
quickly adapt with our technology,
with our optimisation algorithm and
in the way that we make decisions
on behalf of our clients.
So there is an ongoing
product roadmapping. We can set
our roadmap for a year, but we
constantly have to look at what other
changes there are in the industry
and adopt accordingly.
How is the role of data within the
marketing function evolving? Has
its trajectory been impacted by
the public’s recent concern for
data privacy and transparency?
As you say, the only constant in
this industry is change. And it’s
funny, whenever we think about our
talent or hiring, we are always very
open about the fact that this is an
ever-changing industry – roles are
changing, technology is changing
– this is an industry for agile and
nimble people that thrive in change.
That’s the similarity between my
previous life in academia and now –
always learning, always evolving. And
it’s sometimes hard to also find talent
that likes keeping up everything.
The other point is data privacy.
MediaMath is a global company, and
our tech and teams are designed to
be deployed globally. So whenever
there are new data policies, like
GDPR for example, we want to make
sure that we are always respecting
the customer, and that we are
thinking customer-first.
Believe it or not, there is such
a thing as negative marketing. You
can actually harm your brand and
make your customer exhausted
when there’s just too much. Think
of any website, YouTube, even the
games on your phone; how often

are you seeing five of the same ads
at the same time? It just becomes
annoying. So it’s important to
make sure that we’re not sharing
the data that customers don’t want
shared, not storing cookies they
don’t want stored. Some people
like targeted advertising, but some
don’t, and some don’t want to see
any advertising at all. Our approach
has always been customer-
centric, always acknowledging and
respecting the customer.
We have a really strong team,
and we’ve invested a lot into our
teams to make sure we’re ahead
of it, to always have our technology
ready whenever there’s another
@marketingmag
25 May with GDPR rolling out.
Making sure the tech is ready, that
we make the right adjustments to
the way we store colleague’s data
and the way we report analytics on
it. We also have our teams trained
so they are fully educated and aware
of our strategy and any data privacy
related initiatives.
What spurred you to move from
theoretical physics to marketing?
I’ve always been a very curious
person, always wanting to learn,
always reading a lot of books. That’s
kind of what drove me into physics
in general. I actually started out
studying mathematics, but it was
too theoretical for me, too slow in a
sense. Then I switched to physics,
and I was actually doing my masters
degree in physics in the engineering
department. That was very heavy
on technology and engineering.
And I was always very interested in
electronics and newer technologies
and so on; so when I did my PhD I
was working with nanotechnology
companies building quantum
80 BRAND TALK
Quickfire
WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO
SECURE YOUR JOB AGAINST THE
IMPENDING AI REVOLUTION?
I don’t feel insecure, so then I
don’t know what I would do about
it. My overall guiding principle, or
philosophy, is to stay current and
evolve together with the industry
and together with the clients I
work with. To make sure that I add
value today and tomorrow.
IS MARKETING MORE OF
AN ART OR A SCIENCE?
It’s a combination of both.
A BRAND DOING IT RIGHT?
That’s a good one. I’m a fan of
Nike. I think it is doing a lot of
things right. I think Apple, though
I’m not necessary fan of many of
its management styles, there are
quite a few things it is doing it
pretty well.
computers with quantum dots – very
little physical systems that could act
in a quantum way.
Then I was on the theoretical part, I
was actually coding for 10-plus years
myself and running simulations,
but always really close with the
experimental teams tech companies.
The reason I made that switch:
at some point it became more
paperwork and less of the research
and the doing. The more senior you
MARKETING
THE NURTURE
JUNE | ISSUE
JULY 2015
are in academia, the more it just
becomes admin. I was looking for
a job where I would still be doing,
where I would still be close to
clients and the technology we were
building. That’s how I ended up here.
How did you find the transition?
Have you found many of the skills
transferable?
It was actually much easier than I
had anticipated. Both jobs are very
collaborative. Project management
and being able to explain very
complicated things in a simple
language – you see that in both
worlds. It’s so funny because at some
marketingmag.com.au
points in academia when you want
to do different research projects,
you start with writing a proposal,
then you have to go and pitch it to a
committee or submit it somewhere,
then you have to discuss it and then
you get it or don’t get it. After that
you have to set up a team, activate
and deliver. Sound familiar?
I found, actually, more similarities
than I was expecting. And it also
helps that – though I haven’t coded
for a few years – I can still read the
code, understand JavaScript and
understand how the internet works.
Part of my teams are software
developers – very technical, very
analytical – there’s a lot of data
scientists on my team too. Having
those technical skills helps me get
the credibility and understanding of
what our team is handling.
I work really closely with our chief
product officer, chief technology
officer and head of engineering,
and these conversations tend to
be very technical. So that helps
me, understanding algorithms,
understanding how you create a data
workflow.
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Rogue cells
Steve Sammartino used to believe that great careers could
only be built at great companies. These days he realises
our loyalty to one another nurtures us further than any
corporation or brand.
Steve Sammartino
is an author, futurist, speaker
and Marketing columnist.
82 STEVE SAMMARTINO
I
remember graduating from
university. The race with all
the other freshly qualified
students to gain a graduate
position with a top leading FMCG
firm was on. The type of firm that
had big TV advertising budgets,
modern four Ps marketing and
golden handcuffs to boot. The type
at which people wanted to spend
their entire marketing career, under
the security of their corporate
blanket. These positions were
difficult to come by, as it was
believed that only firms like this
could nurture great careers. I used to
believe that great careers could only
be built in a great company. That
was until I realised that people have
careers; companies have jobs.
‘We’re like a family here at
Corporation X. Work-life balance
matters in our firm. Work hard and
Corporation X will look after you.’
How can a company look after a
person when it isn’t even real? Let’s
review what companies really are
before we decide if they can help,
look after or even nurture the people
that move inside them.
Corporations are semi-fictional
constructs created by people with
the goal of accumulating money,
power and influence, while removing
their own personal and legal risks.
They are not, as they often claim,
MARKETING 2019
bodies, people or anything real
or human. The word ‘corporation’
itself is designed to obfuscate. In
many ways a company is a bit like a
virus. It establishes itself inside the
host (the market). If it is successful,
marketingmag.com.au
the number of cells (employees)
inside it grows. If the virus does
well, it spreads to other hosts (new
markets). Cells within the virus may
reproduce or die (employees come
and go). The only thing that matters
to the virus is self perpetuation. It
doesn’t even care about its market
hosts – corporations damage
the environment with pollution,
externalities, privacy invasions,
dangerous products – so long as it
continues to grow. It doesn’t care
about the cells it’s made of either,
as long as there’s enough of them to
get the job done and the new cells
which arrive know how to operate in
its system. If the host or the cells get
damaged, it doesn’t care, so long as
it continues to thrive and reproduce.
That doesn’t sound very nurturing
to me, let alone being able to have a
human’s best interests in mind.
For anything to nurture, it needs
to be able to feel. If it doesn’t feel
it can’t nurture because it can’t
experience empathy. A market can’t
feel anything, it’s just a numerical
construct where we measure things.
The only things that can feel the

effects of a market’s movement are
the people inside it. The people who
lost or gained jobs, the people who
had their river polluted or instituted
protections to ensure their water
stayed clean. So too, a brand can’t
nurture its loyalists, but loyalists
can certainly nurture a brand. It’s
the people that bring the humanity
to the marketplace. If we want to
@marketingmag
start nurturing anything from a
marketing perspective, we have to
start with the things that can feel
and that means that we can only
ever nurture living things. Things
that experience emotions such as
pain, pleasure, sadness, joy, hope
and fear. The brands, the buildings,
the organisations and the markets
are mere shells which should be
built in ways that allow us to nurture
one another.
So how do we build brands that
operate on an emotional level when
all the things we use, interact and
transact in and use human terms
to describe can’t feel anything? It’s
actually simpler than it sounds. We
need the courage to let people make
human decisions and do the right
thing by the people that operate
within market constructs. We need
to let humans make decisions that
are outside of the Brand Manual
and corporate policy. We need to go
rogue, operate like rogue cells and
do what’s right for the other cells,
even if it means we get attacked by
other corporate drones.
All this reminds me of how
I’d work with my team members
during my life as a manager in
large Fortune 500 corporations.
Whenever I hired anyone to work for
me, on day one, I’d take them aside
and tell them this:
“The company we work for does
not care about us. They don’t care
about me, and they don’t care about
you. But I’ll try and help you as a
person and in your career. If that
means you need to work elsewhere,
I’ll help you get to a better place.
If that means I need to be more loyal
to you than to the company we work
for, I’ll do that too. If your goal is to
exit the corporate world and finally
get to work on that start-up dream,
then tell me how I can help. I’m here
for you. In the end, companies will
come and go. We’ll be inside one for
a period, and then we’re gone. And
the company won’t care. Moments
after we leave the building, it will be
as if we never existed. A few people
will care, but the company can’t care,
because it doesn’t feel anything. The
thing that really matters while we
are working together is each other.
I hope that our relationship will
outlast the company we now work
for, so let’s look after each other
first. If we have the courage to
do this, the companies we
work for will, ironically, always
be a core beneficiary.”
This may sound counterintuitive,
anti-corporate, or maybe even
THE NURTURE ISSUE
“
We need
to go rogue,
operate like
rogue cells and
do what’s right
for the other
”
cells.
disloyal. But in my experience it is
the start of true loyalty and what the
nature of human constructs should
be about – the people inside them.
It almost always ends up with better
long-term outcomes in projects and
businesses of any size. When the
people are put first – customers,
staff, employees, citizens, you name
it – the benefits always lands on the
organisation with the courage to do
what’s right. It’s where brands will
need to start focusing again as we
wade through a swamp of terms and
conditions designed to trick people
and dehumanise our interactions.
The thing smart brands and
organisations will be remembered
for in the future is having people
inside them who aren’t scared to
bend or even break the rules of the
place they manage.

Sell your services,
not your soul
Let’s leave branding to the brands – Sérgio Brodsky grapples
with ‘personal branding’ and the suppression of self.
Sérgio Brodsky (L.LM,
MBA) is an internationally-
experienced brand strategist,
a marketing lecturer at
RMIT and chairman at
The Marketing Academy
Alumni. He is passionate
about cities, culture and the
role of brands and tech in
society, an intersection that
inspired Urban Brand-Utility,
his innovative approach
to brand communications.
Connect at www.sergio-
brodsky.com or through
Twitter @brandKzar
84 SÉRGIO BRODSKY
A
s Shakespearean scholar
Harold Bloom argued,
“Before Shakespeare there
was characterisation; after
Shakespeare, there were characters,
men and women capable of change,
with highly individual personalities.”
Centuries later, characterisation
– men and women redefined as
consumable labels with highly
diluted personalities – may
be making a comeback. The abuse
of personal branding and social
media is turning our innate
characters into manufactured
caricatures of ourselves.
Or, as Facebook’s COO
Sheryl Sandberg said, “When we
are packaged, we’re ineffective
and inauthentic.” We each have
a voice, she added, which can
be complex, contradictory and
sometimes wrong. Her advice?
“Don’t package yourself. Just speak
honestly, factually and from your
own experience.” Still, personal
branding has hit the mainstream.
“All around the world, job
counsellors are telling people
to come up with three to four
words that reflect their authentic
self,” according to Ilana Gershon,
associate anthropology professor at
Indiana University Bloomington.
From professional influencers
to YouTube celebrities and anyone
MARKETING 2019
with a social media account, people
are shoving content onto the web in
the hope of selling ‘brand Me’ to the
highest bidder.
According to a survey
commissioned by Barclaycard,
marketingmag.com.au
nearly one in 10 UK shoppers admit
to buying clothing only to take a
photo on social media. After the
‘outfit of the day’ makes it online,
they return it back to the store.
People have flocked to YouTube with
hopes of turning wacky hobbies
– like commenting about video
games or live demos on how to
make slime – into dollars. The truth
is that even channels among the
top three percent of viewership can
bring in as little as $16,800 a year,
as reported by the New York Times.
Even worse, more than 250 people
had accidental deaths in the last six
years thanks to moronic attempts to
take eye-catching selfies.
As summarised in a recent
Quartz article, marketing has
reached the peak-influencer point
in a “marketplace so saturated that
fake influencers are now posting
advertising-like content that nobody
even paid them for, there are signs
that our individualist culture of
achievement and brand alignment
has jumped the shark.”
This drive for transacting the self
has hit individuals in high positions.
 The former McKinsey consultant,
Afghanistan veteran and now US
presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg
recently debuted a new logo, new
website and a design toolkit meant
to ignite a ‘grassroots movement’
supporting brand Pete Buttigieg™.
Buttigieg has made the choice to
focus on branding before policies –
signalling that he cares more about
projecting a certain image than
anything of actual substance.
At its core, branding is a process
of creating meaning that becomes
relatable to people. Some call it
brand essence. For companies, this
has been a triumph. A company with
meaning beyond what it sells can
broaden its appeal, but it may happen
in a deceptive way when meaning
does not match reality. When spinning
@marketingmag
the mirror onto ourselves, disparities
enhance further.
We all have essences. Nature
and nurture continuously do this for
us. No need for manufacturing. We
can all enjoy lives of autonomous
creativity and civic participation.
Therefore, to say that a paid influencer
is more authentic than a professional
actor, hired to promote a brand, is
nonsense. Anyone living their personal
brand is not living their authentic
self but expressing a persona that
may maximise an opportunity to
transact. Our trust crisis may even
have something to do with people
living and breathing their personal
brands rather than themselves.
According to a recent survey by media
agency UM, UK: “only eight percent
of people believe that the bulk of
information shared on social media is
true, dropping to four percent when it
comes from influencers.”
Jeff Bezos famously said that
your brand is what people say about
you when you’ve left the room.
The problem with the statement
is the confusion between brand
and reputation. Like it or not, we
all have reputations. And, that is
indeed what others may say about
us. Brand, however, is built in a
transactional context. Whatever
the motif, narrative, colours or
taglines, everything a brand does is
in exchange for something else. It’s
a fine line, but looking from afar, it’s
not that hard to spot the difference.
Brands’ stories are their currency,
people’s stories are their lives.
Obviously memoirs, biopics and
other genres allow people to trade
“
Anyone
living their
personal
brand is not
living their
authentic
self.
”
on their life stories. But even then,
the intent is clear.
This is not to say that our
personal reputations are unimportant
or that making an effort to portray
the better version of ourselves is a
bad thing. The reality, however, is that
personal branding is a limiting factor
to maximising reputational success
and a burden for our complex, fluid
and multilayered human nature.
Sustaining a personal brand means
working around the clock. If you fail at
being consistent, responsive to your
audiences and in sync with culture,
your brand can suffer negative
consequences that may also cost
thousands of dollars.
THE NURTURE ISSUE
But when the self becomes a
representation of your latest selfies,
how do you enhance your personal
‘market value’ without suppressing
your ever-evolving human identities?
Is this even possible?
Yes, it is. A brand is not what
it says but what it does, the
experiences it enables or interfaces
with, either in real time or in the form
of a memory or expectation. Wearing
a black turtleneck and holding a six
dollar latté in a cool setting will not
show how creative you are. It may
create an impression, but what are
the proof-points validating it? An
awarded portfolio with a supporting
endorsement is a more effective
way of developing a positive brand
image, even if you don’t have the
look. Producing value and then
communicating it is the formula to
ensuring what is promoted is, first,
real and second, directly related
to a service or product of value
to a target audience – not just a
momentous fantasy.
Media communications have
tremendous influence. Relevant
messages can convert audiences
and build reputations. The
mindset of beating the system
(i.e. algorithms) to cut through (by
producing clickbait) is not a worthy
trend but a symptom of the many
empty personal brands cluttering
the web. To stand out is less about
being different and more about
making a difference, through your
work, not your self.
It’s up to the sender to decide
what game to play. Do I want to
express a view that will help me sell
something or help me be heard? It’s
easy to mix things up and many of
us can trip on temptation. So, brand
the things you want to transact on
and with, making clear boundaries,
before being branded by those
transacting on you and your life.
 Way
Out
T
his year we celebrate the
50th anniversary of what
may be humanity’s
greatest achievement:
sending a man to walk on the moon
and bringing him safely back again.
On that journey and expeditions that
followed, one brand claimed a
unique association that it has
nurtured to success ever since.
Watches evolved over centuries
from clocks to become jewellery
of the nobility. Available as devices
worn on the wrist for more than 100
years, the evolution of Japanese
quartz models in the 1960s turned
the mechanical watchmaking
industry of Europe on its head.
The Swiss, leaders in the market,
feared being subsumed by these
cheap and accurate wristwatches.
In response they embarked on a
marketing masterstroke: joining the
party and embracing the threat,
rather than rebelling against it. The
superbly named Swatch brand
championed fashion and affordability
and flourished globally, meeting the
challenge head on and upping the
ante with European style. This clever
Swiss counter elevated its traditional
mechanical brands to an even more
86 WAY OUT
Associate professor
Con Stavros is the
program director of
postgraduate marketing
studies at RMIT University
and one of Australia’s
leading commentators on
marketing matters.
Tweet him @constavros.
elite form of aspirational luxury,
where authentic heritage was an
unmatchable advantage.
The Swatch Group now
encompasses a range of brands.
The brightest star in the portfolio
is arguably Omega, whose strategy
since 1848 is testimony to the
lesson that successful branding is a
process of investment.
Omega understands that in
modern times we rarely need a
watch. Time is all around us. The
wristwatch, however, serves a greater
purpose. Its practicality is connected
to a visible expression of how we see
ourselves. Branding is not just what
you do to the product, it’s what you
do to the mind of the consumer.
Omega is famous for a range of
activities that stimulate consumers
to accept it as exceptional: celebrity
endorsements, James Bond product
placements, Olympic Games ‘official
timekeeper’ status since 1932 and
other sporting engagements that
reflect cutting-edge development. Its
most famous connection, however,
is the priceless link to NASA.
The Omega Speedmaster was
adopted as the first flight-qualified
wristwatch of the space program.
MARKETING 2019
Since 1965 it has travelled with
astronauts to space and the surface
of the moon. The Speedmaster
Professional is known to many
as the ‘Moonwatch.’ The back of
each carries an engraving noting
its suitability for space travel, a
claim Omega earned through an
investment in quality – not marketing
– years before the moon landing, as
NASA sought a timepiece that could
withstand the rigours of space travel
and training. The Speedmaster was
reportedly the only watch tested
by NASA that survived its rugged
experiments. It gave the brand
the ability to leverage the most
significant technical achievement of
the past century in a way that keeps
it relevant, despite the emergence of
smart watches and devices that, on
a practical level, offer much more.
marketingmag.com.au
That luxury watches endure
is an incredible act of brand
management that defies rationality.
Spending thousands on a device
that offers little beyond an aesthetic
is clearly an emotional decision.
The luxury watch industry, including
Omega, has adapted its marketing
extremely well. Such watches, more
generally, are now an ‘investment’,
safeguarded for one generation
to pass on to the next and an
expression of style for anyone
serious about their image.
As luxury watch prices rise,
demand remains high for brands that
manage the concept of aspiration
carefully and encourage collectors.
The advertising of luxury watches
remains formulaic, yet somehow
reassuringly appropriate. Here too
Omega excels with its Speedmaster
advertisement of President John
F Kennedy and his famous quote
“We choose to go to the moon” – an
iconic piece of marketing history that
intertwines the desirability of the
luxury watch with the practicality of
human endeavor in a way that is out
of this world.