January 28, 2025 • 40 mins
Lisa Quest, Partner, Head of UK&I, Co-Head of Government and Public Institutions - Europe at Oliver Wyman, joins The Unicorny Marketing Show to discuss how marketing can transform from a cost centre into a powerful growth driver.
Drawing on her leadership experience, Lisa shares how aligning marketing strategies with leadership priorities and metrics can unlock unprecedented business impact.
What you’ll learn:
- How marketing strategy becomes a translator for leadership priorities.
- Why building resilient marketing teams is essential in today’s market.
- Insights into aligning marketing metrics with leadership KPIs for greater impact.
Listen in to learn how you can redefine your marketing team as a driver of growth and strategy
About Lisa Quest
Lisa Quest leads Oliver Wyman's Practice in the United Kingdom and Ireland working with public and private sector organizations to digitally transform, increase productivity, and drive effective and efficient public services for society.
Links
Full show notes: Unicorny.co.uk
Watch the episode: https://youtu.be/WbhVxauK0Cs
LinkedIn: Lisa Quest | Dom Hawes
Website: Oliver Wyman
Sponsor: Selbey Anderson
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I'm a huge advocate formarketing because I've seen the power
of getting it right. Manyprofessional services firms probably
suffer from this, particularlythose that are partnerships, is the
partners view themselves asmarketers. And I think the absolute
best thing a marketer can doif you're speaking to your leadership
team is understand how they'recomped and measured. And if you can
talk to me about how you canimpact the metrics upon which I am
(00:22):
graded, then all of a suddenyou have my attention, right? If
you come to me and talk aboutfor from your perspective as a marketer,
you have less of my attention.
Hello there, unicorners. Ihope the year started with a bang
(00:44):
for you and today, boy, havewe got a treat for you. Because we
are diving deep into an areaof business success that is often
overlooked and that ismarketing's role as the ultimate
translator and growth driver.So here's a question for you. What
if marketing wasn't just adepartment that designs creative
(01:05):
campaigns or spins data? Whatif marketing was seen as a core pillar
of the business that bridgesleadership's goals with real world
execution? Now, that might beyour reality already, if so, top
job. But for many of us, it'snowhere near reality. Because we
all know marketing is much,much more than just a creative playground.
(01:26):
It's the engine that alignsbusiness fluency, client insights
and leadership priorities intoa seamless growth strategy. But as
we've learned over the life ofthis pod, too many organizations
are missing out on this kindof untapped potential. We're simply
consigned to the promotionalP. So today we are going to show
(01:47):
you why and how that could andshould change. Because in a minute,
you will be meeting theextraordinary Lisa Quest, partner
head of UK and Ireland and cohead of Government and public institutions
Europe for global managementconsultancy firm Oliver Wyman. And
together we are going tounravel three powerful ideas. First,
(02:08):
we're going to look at howmarketing becomes the translator
between financial goals andlong term strategy. Second, we look
at why building resilience inmarketing teams is not negotiable
for surviving resistance inthe kind of traditional business
structures that we live in dayto day. And finally, we're going
to explore the overlookedgoldmine of tailoring value measurement
(02:31):
both for public and andprivate organizations. Now, today's
nuanced. It's practical, butit might just change the way that
you think about your marketingteam. Because we're also going to
uncover how these ideas alllink together to reveal a deeper
truth, which is this businessfluency that's the secret sauce.
(02:51):
When marketers speak the samelanguage as the C suite, they stop
being cost centers and startbeing growth multipliers.
And add in to that a healthy.
Dose of voice of the customer,long term vision, things like that,
and suddenly marketing isn'tjust at the table, it's setting the
agenda. So grab your earbuds.I'd suggest you probably grab a notebook
(03:12):
too. This really is anextraordinary interview. It's a must
listen for anyone who wants toredefine their marketing team as
a strategic powerhouse. Let'sget right into it.
Thank you for having me. I'mdelighted to be here. Well, we're
going to have a good chattoday and I'm very excited because.
I think in the hundred or so.
Episodes we've done, I thinkyou are our first non academic author
(03:36):
marketer. It's the first timewe've got some from like the leadership
side of the business to comeand talk to us about marketing. Oh,
thank you. And I think youwere referred into us by a colleague
of mine who'd seen you talk ata Propolis event. Yes, I did a fireside
chat with Joel Harrison at thePropolis event and it was fantastic.
We talked about how do themarketing departments talk to your
CEOs every time. We have oneof these interviews, as you'll know
(03:58):
unicorners, we have aconversation before we get in the
studio and we sort of say whatthe theme's going to be. I think
we've understood that. We'regoing to talk about things like breaking
down silos. We're going totalk about the ROI dilemma. It's
something I go on and talkabout a lot. I'm a bit boring about
it, but I'd love to hear yourview as someone in leadership on
(04:18):
how marketing justifies value.We're going to talk a little bit
about long term, short term.The broad theme I think probably
is going to be about howmarketing needs to move itself a
bit upstream. Stop thinkingtactically, start thinking strategically.
Let's start then thinkingabout marketing's role in strategy
and breaking down the silosomewhat because my observation certainly
(04:40):
over the duration of thispodcast and when I came back into
marketing actually I took abreak mid career and went out into
management myself. When I cameback into agency, I was quite surprised
to see that marketing as afunction had sort of slightly been
sidelined. And in manybusinesses it was seen as a kind
of supplementary or an add onsomething that oh, we better tell
marketing they better dosomething rather than being like
(05:04):
embedded into the rest of thebusiness or part of the planning
process. Your, I guess yourobservations are going to be guided
very much by who you are,where you've come from and, and obviously
your role. Why don't we start.I'd love you first off to give me
a bit of a perspective on thatissue and then maybe tell us a little
(05:26):
bit about you, where youstarted, how you trained and all
that kind of stuff. There'stwo observations that you've just
made which really resonateboth with how we run our business,
but also I think marketing andprofessional services, which is marketing
needs to come more upstreamand oh, we need to tell marketing,
right? So we were very much atthe place at Oliver Wyman where we
would develop a bunch of ic,we would be speaking to a bunch of
(05:49):
clients, we would be having anevent and then at the last minute
we'd be like, oh, we need tosell marketing, somebody needs to
come and capture this. Andwe've really started to go on that
journey, I think, and reallyprofessionalize the function and
get it upstream. So thebiggest thing for us is getting marketing
to come upstream, working withclient development and strategy for
the business. Actually thinkabout how are we packaging this all
(06:10):
together. And I think thefurther upstream you can get the
marketing team and the moreinvolved you are in early stage client
development and in strategysetting for the whole firm, the better
it is because then you becomea top issue for your CEO and you
can be on their kind of topthree agenda. And your route into
believing that is not throughmarketing. So you're advocating for
(06:31):
marketing, but you're not amarketer. Talk to me about your training
background and how you got towhere you are. Exactly. So my route
through the firm has beenpurely on the consulting side. So
I started in our capitalmarkets team as a consultant, went
up through that, became apartner, became the head of our government
and public institutionspractice, and now I'm the managing
partner for the UK and Irelandand I'm a huge advocate for marketing
(06:55):
because I've seen the power ofgetting it right. And when we're
working and we bring marketingproperly upstream in some of our
client development, themultiplier of that on the business
is enormous. So I know we'llget to the ROI dilemma later, but
the ability to enhance theactivities that we're doing is so
much more powerful ifmarketing is involved in helping
us shape it because we're alot of nerdy academics in some ways.
(07:18):
And I think marketing teams,when they are engaging with us earlier
on, are able to say that isfantastic for like your very nerdy
view of the world. But if youwant to broaden your horizon or open
your aperture, you need tostart thinking about X or Y. And
if they can shape thatupstream, it creates a much better
content platform, it creates amuch better client platform. And
then I've seen just themultiple effect of that. And I think
(07:40):
that's why I've become a hugeadvocate of marketing, especially
as I've become more senior inthe firm. And do you think you're
training as an economist givesyou a particular view on marketing
or the outcomes frommarketing? It's a good question and
I think it does. It gives me avery. I mean, my training as an economist,
I think, beats into you at anearly stage, like the need to quantify
(08:04):
everything in the world. Andso I always like to be able to measure
the specific value of things.And that has helped shape my view
on marketing both in terms ofsaying, listen, there are some things
around just brand equity orhalo effect that we won't be able
to quantify, and you need tocalm down your little economist brain
on that. But also I think it'sbeen helpful in the conversation
(08:24):
two ways to help theirthinking around. Actually, there
are things that we can startto put a quantification framework
around, if not specific pointsof quantification. And that's been
really helpful as we'veengaged some of the rest of the business,
because I think as aneconomist, I can end a huge believer
in marketing. I can helpprovide that bridge. So when you're
talking about quantificationframeworks, are you talking specifically
(08:45):
about things like halo effector brand equity? Halo effect and
brand equity are part of thequantification framework. But also,
how do we start to moredirectly tie the spend that we have
on marketing for specificevents, for specific publications,
to specific client revenues,or at least thematic revenues. So
to my view, when I talk abouta quantification framework, there's
(09:05):
parts of it that will just bemore qualitative, right? But we can
go along the spectrum ofthings to say, listen, we did X and
Y and therefore we've had thissuccess with this client that we've
never been in before, or we'vebeen able to expand this account
that we were really workingon. And I think it's those things
bringing it together. There'sthis belief that, you know, there's
even John Durst book about it.You know, what you measure what matters.
(09:27):
And if you can't measure it,it doesn't matter, you know, So I
think it's Very encouraging tohear someone in, in leadership who
is an economist saying thatactually some of the fuzzy stuff's
okay too. You have to meetyour leadership where they are. And
this is one of the things thatI talk about all the time. I think
your CEOs, your leadershipteams are incredibly busy and they've
(09:49):
got like their agenda full. Sothe more that you can meet your where
they are and if you have ahighly quantity leadership team,
find a way within thatquantification framework to say,
listen, I can't quantify thesethings. I can quantify these things
and therefore, you know, youcan get their attention in a different
way. So I think it's, I'm abig believer. I've been brought over
as a big advocate. I probablywasn't always like this in my career
(10:13):
and I think I've become a bigbeliever because people met me where
I was at the time and havekind of pulled me through. And do
you think professionalservices, I mean, do you think that's
a different, potentiallydifferent business than let's say
a SaaS business or a physicalproduct business? Does it, do you
think that gives you morefreedom to accept some of the fuzzy
stuff? I think being aprofessional services business is
(10:35):
definitely a double edgedsword. So I think number one, it
does probably give you somepermission to accept some of the
fuzzy stuff because the brandhalo effect and we're used to working
in kind of intellectualcapital businesses and you can't
touch and feel it. But the,the biggest problem, at least we've
had historically, and I thinkmany professional services firms
probably suffer from this,particularly those that are partnerships,
is the partners viewthemselves as marketers. And we have
(10:59):
many examples across the longhistory of the firm where because
you are an expert in yourfield, you have therefore decided
that you are an expert inevery field. And so we have too many
times in the past said, well,I'm an expert at this and I sell
this all the time, sotherefore I'm the marketer of this.
And I think it's hardersometimes for people to take that
genuine expert advice fromsomebody who is a trained marketer.
(11:21):
So double edged sword forprofessional services firms. And
that makes me immediatelythink about people because the market
is that you do have, are goingto have to be robust, resilient and
very flexible. I would imaginein your drive to, we're going to
talk a little bit later aboutmoving marketing upstream, but on
the people side of that, haveyou had to change the profile of
people that you look forslightly to enable that to happen?
(11:44):
You Hit the nail on the headwhen you talked about resilience
and professionalism of theindividuals. We've definitely gone
on a journey in terms ofincreasing both the profile of the
individuals, but also theamount of funding that we're giving
to the, to the function andmaking sure that that's also getting
more profile on our leadershipteams. Right. Marketing didn't used
to have a seat at the tablefor the leadership teams. Yeah. And
that I think was very tellingwith respect to kind of how we, how
(12:07):
we valued and how we, youknow, saw the function. Now it's
very different situation and Ithink the firm continues on that
journey. Let's move towardsROI or certainly let's move towards
measurement. Never movetowards our way. Return is a good
subject. Whether that's an ROIis always my issue or whether we
measure return in a differentway. But before we get there, one
(12:31):
of the reasons that marketersfeel they need to talk about ROI
is they constantly feel theneed to justify their existence,
their activity and theirspend. Spend. We understand there
has to, there has to be areason for a spend. Obviously from
a leadership point of view.What about marketing causes you sleepless
(12:52):
nights? Oh, there's a fewthings about marketing that cause
me sleepless nights. I think.I mean, first is obviously downside
risk management and especiallyin a professional services firm where
people are talking to thepress and they could say anything.
We rely on the marketing teamand function to make sure that everybody
who is out there is, you know,of sufficient quality of, you know,
(13:12):
briefed and on the rightmessages for their, for their piece
and making sure that, youknow, we don't have somebody in one
part of the business who sayssomething detrimental about another
part of the business,especially because there are different
and competing sectors. So Ithink the one thing that keeps me
up at night is downside riskmanagement. The one thing that I
think is gives me the mosthope though is when marketing are
(13:33):
able to kind of shape and helpus really support those kind of tier
one pieces. And so especiallywith the kind of professionalism
and the increasing marketingsupport that we've had lately, like
seen a real multiple on thebusiness. So I'd say sleepless nights
are related to downside riskmanagement. Most hope though is related
to the ability of marketing toact as a positive multiplier on like
(13:54):
our key growth vectors. Youkeep bringing the positives back
into our conversation.
I'm a bit of a bear at.
The moment because I seewhat's going out in the world and
I'm feeling a little bitBearish. But you're bringing me back
to positive all the time, sothank you for that. Well, particularly
in kind of economic downturns,though, I think we very much used
to view it as discretionaryspend. And I think the more you can
get leadership's mindset awayfrom marketing being a discretionary
(14:17):
spend that can easily be cutto bump kind of ROE for the year,
then that's a. That's amindset that you need to get people
into. And that's why I keepcoming back to kind of the multiplier
on the growth vector. Yeah.Because it needs to be seen as a
future driver of revenue. Andto create that link quite explicitly
in the quantificationframework, I think is really important.
(14:37):
Can you talk to me a little.
Bit more about that from.
From a leader's point of view?Obviously, the marketers are looking,
if you like, when they'retalking about quantification, they're
looking inside. Inside out.You're at the other end of that telescope,
looking outside in. That was areally bad mixed metaphor, but you
know what I mean. I'm withyou. You're looking at it from the
other side. You've mentionedthis phrase multiplier effect a couple
(15:01):
of times, which we've heardabout on the podcast before. Talk
to me a little bit more aboutwhat that is, how you see it, how
you measure it. We measurethis by getting the activity upstream.
But I think if I could takeyou on a bit of a journey, kind of
from where we've come from towhere we are, where we were from.
It was almost marketing tryingto push it on the business and saying,
hey, if you do X or you do Y,this will be great. And we flipped
(15:24):
the narrative a number ofyears ago and said, listen, marketing
is a scarce resource that weare going to reserve for our highest,
most productive partners andpractices who are driving these growth
factors. And it became muchmore of a pull from the business
to say, oh, wow, okay, if Iget these guys involved earlier on,
I can see how I can go from Xclient growth to Y client growth,
(15:45):
or X industry growth to Yindustry growth, and that's where
we are. So if we look at someof our future growth vectors around
AI or around particularsectors, how are we getting the marketing
team in and upstream, and thenhow are we tying that in to the business
performance? And I think theabsolute best thing a marketer can
do if you're speaking to yourleadership team, is understand how
(16:06):
they're comped and measured.Right. Because if you understand
how your leadership team arecomped like, what are the metrics
that I am graded on every yearby our global CEO? And if you can
talk to me about how you canimpact the metrics upon which I am
graded, then all of a suddenyou have my attention, right? If
you come to me and talk aboutfrom your perspective as a marketer,
(16:26):
you have less of my attention.In many organizations, that might
not be something that's veryeasy to find out because lots of
organizations aren't sotransparent. I think it is. And even
if you as a marketer, as asenior marketer, right, went to your
senior leadership on a peer topeer basis and said, listen, I want
to serve you better. Tell mehow you're Compton graded, what's
your balance scorecard thatyou're measured on and how can I
(16:47):
help serve you in that agenda?And I think if you flip that conversation
all of a sudden it becomes howyou help your leaders achieve their
ultimate goals. Particularlyif you think about a lot of the leadership
teams will come up via thatfinance route and so being able to
help you quantify on that sideis really helpful. And then you're
speaking their language andit's something that they understand
(17:08):
a bit more. So we're going toneed to talk about the I word, return
on investment. My belief isit's the wrong, that phrase is the
wrong phrase to use to measuremarketing, but it is a bit of a shorthand
and it is a term. It's a termfinance people understand. My challenge
(17:28):
is that I think it's betterused with fixed assets rather than,
or certainly assets that havea return over a fixed timescale.
And we know that lead timesare really long, certainly in any
business to businessrelationship and any relationship
based sale, I guess, which,you know, you're in professional
services, we're in businessservices, same thing. You know, our
(17:50):
own lead time could be two,two and a half years long. My challenge
is how we measure the returnon the money that we're spending.
Actually, look, this, thispodcast, for example, it's not very
heavily branded, but of courseit comes out of our own, our marketing
budget and measuring thispodcast is, you know, when I go back
to my board is a hot topic. Mybelief is that it works in the long
(18:14):
term. People listen to it,they like what they're saying, they
like who we're talking to. Andthat has that kind of positive effect.
From a leadership point ofview, though, how patient do you
think leadership can be? Andtherefore do you think, do you think
ROI is appropriate? Or, or doyou think I'M talking complete rubbish.
I don't think you're talkingcomplete rubbish, but I think there's
(18:35):
also a pragmatic answer tothat question as well. Right. And
so the pragmatist in me issaying, listen, if ROI isn't the
right measure, but it is whatthey value, how do you bridge them
from ROI to what you think isthe right measure? And that's what
I would focus on. Right. Andthat's what we focus on in terms
of long term value creation. Ithink we have a long history of having
(18:58):
marketing in a sense, and sowe can look at where have we changed
tactics and what is thedifferential in performance, taking
into account all the marketconditions and things like that.
But I think, and this is mypoint about meeting people where
they are, if you have aleadership team that really values
roi, find a way as themarketing team to bridge it. And
if you have a leadership teamthat really values quantitative metrics,
(19:21):
find a way to bring somequantitative metrics into those discussions,
even if you don't totallybelieve in it. So I totally believe
in quantitative metrics, bythe way. Yeah. The problem with ROI
is it incentivizes the shortterm stuff. And you mentioned something
just then. You were talkingabout the correlation because you've
got the length of time to lookat it. You can analyze the correlating
(19:42):
effect that the changes youmade had. And my firm belief is you
judge the success of themarketing by the success of the business,
kind of, not the other wayaround. And that means that if you
only index on immediatereturn, I think you miss the opportunity
(20:02):
to do some of the work thatyou're now able to do because you've
been measuring over a longerterm. I may be splitting hairs. I'm
not sure. I get a bit obsessedabout this. I think it's right though,
because so many people reallycare about roi. But I think the right
pragmatic solution is to takeROI as a measure and then break that
down into what I would call aquantification framework. But give
(20:24):
yourself the spectrum to saythis is what we measure on the short
term basis. I can measure thenumber of people who listen to this
podcast because you have adelightful Canadian on it. Or I can
measure the number of hits itgets on a social media or whatever
that is. Figure out what youcan measure in the short term, figure
out what you think is the longterm brand equity and the long term
halo effect and the long termthings that require multi year measurement
(20:47):
and then show them to say it'sthe yes and approach Right. It's
the improft approach to ROImeasurement. You say, yes, here's
how we think about ROI andbreaking that down and then kind
of walk them into your. Intoyour framework. That's what I would
do. And the more you can linkthat back directly to, again, how
they're measured and howthey're incentivized, the more share
(21:09):
of mind you have. And then ifyou call it roi, it doesn't really
matter, but it's a framework.Exactly. I just learned something.
I just learned something.There we go. That's now become the
new unicorn mantra, by theway. Thank you for that, Lisa. Not
a problem. What aboutmarketing departments that say, oh,
we're a profit center? I thinkthat is their version of trying to
bridge their leadership team.Right. I think nobody wants to be
(21:30):
a pure cost center. Yeah. Iwould not say, you know, I think
we are a profit center is aninteresting way to phrase that. I
think I would say I'm arevenue multiplier. Right. And what
you definitely don't want tobe is discretionary cost. And so
I think anything that moves itaway from that and brings it closer
to the business makes sense. Ithink, you know, whether you want
(21:53):
to call yourself a profitcenter or whether or not you want
to call yourself a revenuedriver, bringing yourself upstream
into how are you acting as amultiplier of the business is what
I think matters. I'm learningso much today, Lisa, thank you very
much. Well, this is why atprofessional services firms, the
partners who are totally nonexpert in what we do can just really
wax lyrically about fieldsthat are not our own. I think that's
why it's really interesting.Interesting though, having someone
(22:14):
who, who hasn't. Hasn't comethrough marketing to talk about the
same issues that I've beenspeaking to markets about for 100
or so episodes. Because I getquite bent out of shape over this
stuff. And I'm forgetting poolrule number one from Peter Went when
he came on, which is no onereally gives a shit about you or
your product, which in ifyou're a marketer is. It's not about
the marketing, it's about theoutcome. Exactly. And so I get obsessed
(22:37):
about whether we call it thisor whether we call it that. No one
else gives them monkeys. Yeah,could. So I need to get over it.
Basically. I think you shouldcare about it because it's what.
It's how you are motivated anddriven. But if you're trying to capture
the attention of a seniorleader of the business, put it in
their Terms because they don'tcare. And that's different depending
on the demands of thebusiness. I spent yesterday at a
(23:00):
private equity conferencewhich was really good fun, but you
know, there they have theirfive year cycle. Right. And I ended
up talking to a really niceCEO of a business who has become
a bit of a friend. He's inyear four of his cycle, has just
lit up a new advertisingcampaign that he knows will return,
(23:22):
but it ain't going to returnin time. Yep. So he can't do it because
he's in year five of a value,a four of a value creation program.
Public and private have verydifferent dynamics. I guess is is
where I'm coming at fromthere. And public companies, the
perceived wisdom is thatpublic companies think a lot shorter
term because they're drivenquarter to quarter. I wonder whether
(23:44):
you can talk to me and helpmarketers understand some of the
pressures, the pressure thatleadership faces and that with a
lens on marketing and theactivity that we do, when you are
part of a public organizationand you have that quarterly demand
and. I think the observationis, is right. Like publicly listed
companies have very strongquarterly results pressure. Right.
(24:07):
Which every one of theleadership teams of a publicly traded
company will feel veryacutely. And I think as a marketing
team, it's not just thatquarterly earnings pressure that
is what you need to optimizefor, but also the long term growth
trajectory. So yes, we havequarterly earnings pressure, but
equally we have long termgrowth, growth pressure. So because
you need to show strong andstable growth over those quarters.
(24:29):
Right. And so I think thiscomes back to the conversation we
were having earlier aroundunderstanding what incentivizes your
leadership team or how theyare measured and managed and speaking
to them in that language. Soit would be completely out of kilter
to speak to a kind of a fiveyear hold private equity fund, about
(24:49):
a 17 year strategy. Equallyyou have to speak to the management
of a publicly traded companyabout the quarterly and long term
growth. And to pitch somethingthat is hugely kind of in quarter
cost in a quarter where youknow you're having downward revenue
pressure or you're having costpressure would be completely counter
to everything that yourleaders are thinking about. And so
(25:11):
the more that you can speak tothem in the language that they're
used to, around what they'reexpecting in the same way that their
CFO or their CRO is speakingto them, just the more share of mind
that you have for them. Right.And so I think finding their language
and speaking in that and notwhere I, where I Used to get lost,
especially with marketing, waswhen marketing used to try to speak
to me as marketing. Right?Yep. When they speak to me as like
(25:35):
Kayleese, this is what youcare about and this is how marketing
is a multiplier of that. Andthey speak in my language, then I
understand. And I think itwould be lovely to live in a world
where all the leaders could,you know, more deeply understand
marketing and could speak inyour language. But the reality is
your leadership teams probablyaren't going to get there and you
can get there faster to speaktheirs. My prejudice, if you like,
(25:56):
or my bias was that whendealing with public company think
quarter to quarter. I hadn'ttwigged about that long term consistent
growth message too, which is areally interesting observation. And
it does make actually theprocess of being a marketer in a
public company noticeablydifferent than one that's either
private equity back from atraditional pe, house, family, office
(26:18):
and or still privately owned.I think that's really interesting.
But I think the other reallyinteresting you've just expressed
really well is we're told allthe time as marketers that we have
to change our language tospeak to the board. And again, I've
been resistant in the pastabout that because people, when it
gets polarized or dumbed down,you hear things like, don't go and
(26:40):
talk to one about brandbecause the, the leaders don't want
to hear brand, they want tohear reputation. And that's just
kind of dumbed down,euphemism, garbage. What I'm hearing
is that if the marketers takethe time to understand your commercial
priorities, they then need towork out how what they're doing supports
(27:02):
you personally in doing so.Actually, they're kind of inculcating
some of what they're doing.Their job isn't to teach you how
to do what they do, it's tohelp you understand why what they're
doing is relevant. Is that, isthat kind of right? It's not even
just what they're doing isrelevant, but it's their job to show
me how what they're doing willact as an accelerator for future
(27:24):
growth. Okay. Right, okay. AndI think it's like speaking a slightly
different language. But ifthey, if the marketers come to me
and they're speaking in kindof marketing, complex marketing language,
I kind of almost tune out alittle bit because it's not one of
the top three issues that I'vegot on my brain today because I'm
thinking about X or Y or Z.Right. But if they can come to me
and put marketing speak in thecontext of my top issues. All of
(27:49):
a sudden they have a biggershare of my mind and a bigger share
of my time. Because I thinkleadership teams, we were discussing
this earlier, especially inthe post Covid zoom world era, are
more pressed for time. Right.And so I think one of the things
that I like is when they comeand we're having a conversation and
it's already in the languagethat my brain is tuned into for how
(28:12):
I run the company. And that tome is really important just because
then they can bridge into themarketing priorities. Right. And
it's not that you ever want todumb it down, but it's almost like
a translation into somethingthat I'm speaking. What you don't
want is that long string ofthree letter acronyms that don't
really mean anything and eventhe marketers get confused about.
Right, exactly. Yeah. Whichbrings us on neatly to the concept
(28:33):
of how we move marketingupstream. It's something you've done
successfully. I wonder whetheryou can talk to me about maybe some
practical steps that marketerscan take to help them get them and
their teams and theiractivities taken a little bit upstream
in their companies. So it'ssomething where we're definitely
still on a journey. Right. SoI think we're doing it much better
(28:55):
than we did before. But thepractical steps, I would say, for
marketing, especially in aprofessional services firm, are genuinely
understand how and where yourfirm makes money. So in all of our
different sectors, we makedifferent levels of margin, we serve
different types of clients,they have different types of needs.
So step one is like genuinelyunderstand the P and L of your organization.
(29:15):
How do we make money? How dowe spend money? What do we look like?
The second is spend a lot oftime with the business development
team to say, okay, this is theclient strategies that you have.
These are the areas that we'retargeting. These are the growth vectors.
Bring in your expertise.You'll see loads of stuff as marketers
(29:36):
that the business never sees.Right. From different conferences
or different agencies. And sobring your expertise into that and
don't be a taker of that. Be athought partner, right? To say, listen,
we heard you. These are yourgrowth vectors. This is how the market
is seeing that. This is wherewe think we can be an accelerant
and get involved in thoseconversations early and upstream
and then stay in there. Sodon't just leave. Once the business
(29:59):
development side is done andyou've gone off and done the work,
stay in touch with the projectteams as well or with the delivery
teams to say, okay, how wasthis delivered? What worked well,
what didn't? Like speak toclients. Right. So don't just speak
in the business, as amarketing team, you should also be
speaking to our clientsbecause what they'll say to the marketing
team is often different thanwhat they'll say to the partners
(30:19):
with respect to how we servedthem or how we showed up or is what
we were doing there consistentwith our brand? Like there's a lot
of different things that Ithink you guys can unpack that maybe
we don't unpack in the sameway as a, as a, as line partner because
we, again, we thinkdifferently. And so I think your
connection in there is reallyimportant. I would hope that marketers
(30:41):
are speaking to customers. Iwould hope in many businesses now
I think I'm wondering whethermaybe professional services is slightly
different, but in productbusinesses that I've seen marketing
still a bit divorced fromstrategy. And it's still a bit divorced
from, I mean, even, even wherethey're using account based marketing,
(31:01):
there'll be a, there'll be aset of, a set of accounts where marketing
is involved because they'redoing that work. But they may not
be upstream enough. They maystill be thinking too short term.
I mean, I think for me theimplication of taking marketing upstream
is you're asking them to thinka lot longer term as well about strategy
and direction and all thatkind of stuff. Yeah, absolutely.
(31:22):
How do you equip your teams?Because that's not, it's not easy
to find a marketer. I don'tbelieve in the current market below
a certain age just because ofthe way marketing's developed over
the last 15 years. That's gota broad enough, a broad enough view
of the world of marketing andthe way the business works. I think
(31:45):
there's three just practicalthings that you can do both as a
marketer or a business leader.The first is they may not have the
particular skill set now, butif you have highly motivated, intellectually
curious individuals that areleading those functions, they are
able to learn. Right. So thefirst part is just raise the level
of literacy on both sides. So,you know, strategy team, leadership
(32:07):
team, who are setting thestrategy. This is what marketing
does. Marketing team. This ishow we set a strategy. Right. And
kind of raise the level ofliteracy on both sides, involve them
in the conversation and havethem have a seat at the table. Right.
And even if it's rocky thefirst couple of times, like have
them have a seat at the tableso that they can at least See how
it is formed. And then thirdis just create that feedback loop
to say, okay, this workedreally well this time, this didn't
(32:28):
this. And then you bring theminto that conversation. So I think
yes, you're correct. Like notall marketers will have that ability
to set strategy. Now. Not allleadership teams are particularly
good at setting strategy. Now.That's very true. Yeah, it's very
true. I mean, I think my, myobservation on marketing people particularly,
it's not a slurp because I amone, it's that these, these days,
(32:48):
particularly in business tobusiness, people come straight into
a functional role and theytend to grow in those functions.
Whereas in the past beforethere was so much stuff going on
in house, people would comeinto a very generalist and broad
role and specialize later. AndI think now the specialism happens
a lot earlier. And my concernfor, if you like, I'm gonna sound
(33:10):
like a grandfather here, butthe youngsters coming through is
have they got broad enoughexperience when they get into that
role where they're a kind ofhead off person? Have they got enough
of broad enough experience tobe able to serve leadership properly?
But I think you answer that.Well, actually that you, that actually
you, that's the role ofleadership, right? To understand
where the gaps are and thenfill them. I think if you're a leader
(33:31):
that's come up through aspecialized path and you feel like
you don't have that, then youhave absolutely every right to talk
to the members on your teamwho are doing the paths that you
didn't come up as. And I thinka sign of a really good and secure
leader is someone to say I'man expert at this and I have no idea
about this. So you personwho's 10, 20 years my junior, can
(33:51):
you just give me the 101 onthis? And I think a leader of a marketing
function that is secure inthemselves and ready to serve the
business would be having thatconversation very willingly. Let's
talk about leadership becauseearlier on you mentioned a lot of
people in leadership will havecome through a finance background.
And one of the wishes of manypeople who are following a marketing
(34:14):
career is that marketing mightlead to see the leadership too. And
it's not unheard of. I was ata conference yesterday, very, very
successful CEO, been throughmultiple transactions in pe who started
out as a marketer, but it'snot common. I wonder whether you
have a view you might be ableto share with us about the lack of
(34:36):
marketing representation inleadership positions or why it might
be that marketers might not becoming through into senior leadership
roles. More historically, ifyou look particularly at publicly
traded companies like the Pathto Power was P and L role, possibly
kind of CFO to then CEO.Right. I think marketing, it reflects
(34:56):
the fact that marketing hasn'thistorically had a seat at senior
leadership tables and has beenviewed as more of a discretionary
cost. Coming back to earlierdiscussions. So I think the more
that we tie marketing to kindof future revenue generation or kind
of acceleration of growthvectors, then they get that seat
at the table, they're involvedin the strategy setting, they're
(35:18):
seen as a genuine businessleader and then you have a credible
shot at those top roles. Ithink most of the major firms now
also have chief marketingofficers. Right. I'm trying to think
of one that doesn't. And so itnow is an official seat at almost
every top table. But there area number of seats at that top table
that doesn't ultimately leadto the top job. And I think the more
marketing can bring itselfinto the discussions around the future
(35:43):
strategy shape of the businessand be seen to be driving those,
then the more credible you areat running the top job. And I'm also
now seeing a link between theROI and or quantification framework
you're talking about and therelevance of that to marketers too.
Because obviously the top job,the EO job or the managing partner
job, a lot of that is going tobe numbers, finance, math driven.
(36:05):
That's just the nature of thejob. So the more marketers can be
versed in those numbers andthe economics of a business, the
better. I think just as amarketer, even if you're not naturally
a quantity person, being ableto name off the top of your head,
you know, last quarter, lastyear, sales, revenue, key top clients,
(36:25):
sales from key clients. Likeyou should be fluent in the metrics
of the business that theleadership team are measured on.
Right? Because then you'reappear in that conversation. Whereas
if I'm having thatconversation and you don't know who
our top clients are or thedifferential in the margins that
we have by different sectors,then I feel like I'm having a conversation
(36:46):
with somebody who's in justkind of support and not actually
a peer that's driving andleading the business. So I think
you've got the seat at thetable, own that seat at the table
to drive the business. Thatrequires a level of business fluency.
Get out. Understand themetrics that your senior execs will
be carrying in their heads andmake sure you're carrying it in Your
(37:06):
head as well. Yeah, that's areally good tip. Because a number
of corridor conversations thatI have with other senior partners
on the leadership team aboutthose metrics is very high. Right.
And so it is the numbers thateverybody is carrying in their heads
and your leadership teams willbe carrying their in their heads
all the time. And if you canhave those micro interactions where
you have all of thatinformation as well, and you can
(37:28):
have those more frequently,then you're seen more as a strategic
partner in the business. Well,you are also. Because those are the
levers. Right. Because thenumbers that you're holding in your
head and your understanding ofthem will give you the levers that
you can use to affect theperformance of the business. Exactly.
Yeah. Wow, Lisa, thank youvery much. That's a really, really
good, really good set ofobservations, I think for anyone
(37:51):
in marketing. I massivelybelieve in the function. I think
there's a huge amount of valuein getting this right for professional
services and I was delightedto be on. So thanks for having me.
Boom.
There you go. Huge thanks toLisa for coming to see us and for
sharing her wisdom. Let's takea very quick review.
I've got three key takeaways I think.
For you today from theepisode. Number one is marketing
(38:15):
as a translator. Remember,marketing isn't just about campaigns
or content. It's the bridgebetween leadership's financial goals
and long term strategy. Now,if you're not working your marketing
team hard to be a translatoracross business functions, you're
probably leaving seriousopportunity and value on the table.
(38:37):
Secondly, resilience, it's notnegotiable. Whether it's resistance
from traditional structures ornavigating market volatility, strong
marketing teams are built toendure. Because resilience, it's
not just about surviving. It'sabout finding a way of really succeeding
in the face of change andpushing the boundaries of what marketing
(38:58):
can do for your business. Andfinally, but by no means least tailor
how you measure value in yourbusiness. Not all ROI is created
equal and you will know if youlisten to this podcast. I talk a
lot about my disbelief of ROIas a realistic or relevant measure,
but I think Lisa might havechanged my mind on that. Today, public
(39:22):
companies often focus on shortterm gains and private organizations
sometimes have a luxury oftaking a much longer term view. So
you need to tell your metricsto match the expectations that your
board has. That's the secretweapon for staying relevant and effective.
Now, here is your homework.Today, take a moment to reflect on
your own company. Now askyourself Is marketing truly at the
(39:46):
table where strategicdecisions are being made, or are
you still stuck in thepromotions and campaigns lane? Now,
if it's the latter, have athink about what's holding you back
and your team back fromrepositioning marketing as the driver
of strategic conversations ofgrowth. Think about it, talk amongst
your team, and let that be thespark that redefines your approach.
(40:09):
As always, thanks you verymuch for tuning in to unicorny. I've
talked a lot at the end ofthis one, so I'm not going to say
any more. We'll see you next week.
I'm a huge advocate formarketing because I've seen the power
of getting it right. Manyprofessional services firms probably
suffer from this, particularlythose that are partnerships, is the
partners view themselves asmarketers. And I think the absolute
best thing a marketer can doif you're speaking to your leadership
team is understand how they'recomped and measured. And if you can
talk to me about how you canimpact the metrics upon which I am
(00:22):
graded, then all of a suddenyou have my attention, right? If
you come to me and talk aboutfor from your perspective as a marketer,
you have less of my attention.
Hello there, unicorners. Ihope the year started with a bang
(00:44):
for you and today, boy, havewe got a treat for you. Because we
are diving deep into an areaof business success that is often
overlooked and that ismarketing's role as the ultimate
translator and growth driver.So here's a question for you. What
if marketing wasn't just adepartment that designs creative
(01:05):
campaigns or spins data? Whatif marketing was seen as a core pillar
of the business that bridgesleadership's goals with real world
execution? Now, that might beyour reality already, if so, top
job. But for many of us, it'snowhere near reality. Because we
all know marketing is much,much more than just a creative playground.
(01:26):
It's the engine that alignsbusiness fluency, client insights
and leadership priorities intoa seamless growth strategy. But as
we've learned over the life ofthis pod, too many organizations
are missing out on this kindof untapped potential. We're simply
consigned to the promotionalP. So today we are going to show
(01:47):
you why and how that could andshould change. Because in a minute,
you will be meeting theextraordinary Lisa Quest, partner
head of UK and Ireland and cohead of Government and public institutions
Europe for global managementconsultancy firm Oliver Wyman. And
together we are going tounravel three powerful ideas. First,
(02:08):
we're going to look at howmarketing becomes the translator
between financial goals andlong term strategy. Second, we look
at why building resilience inmarketing teams is not negotiable
for surviving resistance inthe kind of traditional business
structures that we live in dayto day. And finally, we're going
to explore the overlookedgoldmine of tailoring value measurement
(02:31):
both for public and andprivate organizations. Now, today's
nuanced. It's practical, butit might just change the way that
you think about your marketingteam. Because we're also going to
uncover how these ideas alllink together to reveal a deeper
truth, which is this businessfluency that's the secret sauce.
(02:51):
When marketers speak the samelanguage as the C suite, they stop
being cost centers and startbeing growth multipliers.
And add in to that a healthy.
Dose of voice of the customer,long term vision, things like that,
and suddenly marketing isn'tjust at the table, it's setting the
agenda. So grab your earbuds.I'd suggest you probably grab a notebook
(03:12):
too. This really is anextraordinary interview. It's a must
listen for anyone who wants toredefine their marketing team as
a strategic powerhouse. Let'sget right into it.
Thank you for having me. I'mdelighted to be here. Well, we're
going to have a good chattoday and I'm very excited because.
I think in the hundred or so.
Episodes we've done, I thinkyou are our first non academic author
(03:36):
marketer. It's the first timewe've got some from like the leadership
side of the business to comeand talk to us about marketing. Oh,
thank you. And I think youwere referred into us by a colleague
of mine who'd seen you talk ata Propolis event. Yes, I did a fireside
chat with Joel Harrison at thePropolis event and it was fantastic.
We talked about how do themarketing departments talk to your
CEOs every time. We have oneof these interviews, as you'll know
(03:58):
unicorners, we have aconversation before we get in the
studio and we sort of say whatthe theme's going to be. I think
we've understood that. We'regoing to talk about things like breaking
down silos. We're going totalk about the ROI dilemma. It's
something I go on and talkabout a lot. I'm a bit boring about
it, but I'd love to hear yourview as someone in leadership on
(04:18):
how marketing justifies value.We're going to talk a little bit
about long term, short term.The broad theme I think probably
is going to be about howmarketing needs to move itself a
bit upstream. Stop thinkingtactically, start thinking strategically.
Let's start then thinkingabout marketing's role in strategy
and breaking down the silosomewhat because my observation certainly
(04:40):
over the duration of thispodcast and when I came back into
marketing actually I took abreak mid career and went out into
management myself. When I cameback into agency, I was quite surprised
to see that marketing as afunction had sort of slightly been
sidelined. And in manybusinesses it was seen as a kind
of supplementary or an add onsomething that oh, we better tell
marketing they better dosomething rather than being like
(05:04):
embedded into the rest of thebusiness or part of the planning
process. Your, I guess yourobservations are going to be guided
very much by who you are,where you've come from and, and obviously
your role. Why don't we start.I'd love you first off to give me
a bit of a perspective on thatissue and then maybe tell us a little
(05:26):
bit about you, where youstarted, how you trained and all
that kind of stuff. There'stwo observations that you've just
made which really resonateboth with how we run our business,
but also I think marketing andprofessional services, which is marketing
needs to come more upstreamand oh, we need to tell marketing,
right? So we were very much atthe place at Oliver Wyman where we
would develop a bunch of ic,we would be speaking to a bunch of
(05:49):
clients, we would be having anevent and then at the last minute
we'd be like, oh, we need tosell marketing, somebody needs to
come and capture this. Andwe've really started to go on that
journey, I think, and reallyprofessionalize the function and
get it upstream. So thebiggest thing for us is getting marketing
to come upstream, working withclient development and strategy for
the business. Actually thinkabout how are we packaging this all
(06:10):
together. And I think thefurther upstream you can get the
marketing team and the moreinvolved you are in early stage client
development and in strategysetting for the whole firm, the better
it is because then you becomea top issue for your CEO and you
can be on their kind of topthree agenda. And your route into
believing that is not throughmarketing. So you're advocating for
(06:31):
marketing, but you're not amarketer. Talk to me about your training
background and how you got towhere you are. Exactly. So my route
through the firm has beenpurely on the consulting side. So
I started in our capitalmarkets team as a consultant, went
up through that, became apartner, became the head of our government
and public institutionspractice, and now I'm the managing
partner for the UK and Irelandand I'm a huge advocate for marketing
(06:55):
because I've seen the power ofgetting it right. And when we're
working and we bring marketingproperly upstream in some of our
client development, themultiplier of that on the business
is enormous. So I know we'llget to the ROI dilemma later, but
the ability to enhance theactivities that we're doing is so
much more powerful ifmarketing is involved in helping
us shape it because we're alot of nerdy academics in some ways.
(07:18):
And I think marketing teams,when they are engaging with us earlier
on, are able to say that isfantastic for like your very nerdy
view of the world. But if youwant to broaden your horizon or open
your aperture, you need tostart thinking about X or Y. And
if they can shape thatupstream, it creates a much better
content platform, it creates amuch better client platform. And
then I've seen just themultiple effect of that. And I think
(07:40):
that's why I've become a hugeadvocate of marketing, especially
as I've become more senior inthe firm. And do you think you're
training as an economist givesyou a particular view on marketing
or the outcomes frommarketing? It's a good question and
I think it does. It gives me avery. I mean, my training as an economist,
I think, beats into you at anearly stage, like the need to quantify
(08:04):
everything in the world. Andso I always like to be able to measure
the specific value of things.And that has helped shape my view
on marketing both in terms ofsaying, listen, there are some things
around just brand equity orhalo effect that we won't be able
to quantify, and you need tocalm down your little economist brain
on that. But also I think it'sbeen helpful in the conversation
(08:24):
two ways to help theirthinking around. Actually, there
are things that we can startto put a quantification framework
around, if not specific pointsof quantification. And that's been
really helpful as we'veengaged some of the rest of the business,
because I think as aneconomist, I can end a huge believer
in marketing. I can helpprovide that bridge. So when you're
talking about quantificationframeworks, are you talking specifically
(08:45):
about things like halo effector brand equity? Halo effect and
brand equity are part of thequantification framework. But also,
how do we start to moredirectly tie the spend that we have
on marketing for specificevents, for specific publications,
to specific client revenues,or at least thematic revenues. So
to my view, when I talk abouta quantification framework, there's
(09:05):
parts of it that will just bemore qualitative, right? But we can
go along the spectrum ofthings to say, listen, we did X and
Y and therefore we've had thissuccess with this client that we've
never been in before, or we'vebeen able to expand this account
that we were really workingon. And I think it's those things
bringing it together. There'sthis belief that, you know, there's
even John Durst book about it.You know, what you measure what matters.
(09:27):
And if you can't measure it,it doesn't matter, you know, So I
think it's Very encouraging tohear someone in, in leadership who
is an economist saying thatactually some of the fuzzy stuff's
okay too. You have to meetyour leadership where they are. And
this is one of the things thatI talk about all the time. I think
your CEOs, your leadershipteams are incredibly busy and they've
(09:49):
got like their agenda full. Sothe more that you can meet your where
they are and if you have ahighly quantity leadership team,
find a way within thatquantification framework to say,
listen, I can't quantify thesethings. I can quantify these things
and therefore, you know, youcan get their attention in a different
way. So I think it's, I'm abig believer. I've been brought over
as a big advocate. I probablywasn't always like this in my career
(10:13):
and I think I've become a bigbeliever because people met me where
I was at the time and havekind of pulled me through. And do
you think professionalservices, I mean, do you think that's
a different, potentiallydifferent business than let's say
a SaaS business or a physicalproduct business? Does it, do you
think that gives you morefreedom to accept some of the fuzzy
stuff? I think being aprofessional services business is
(10:35):
definitely a double edgedsword. So I think number one, it
does probably give you somepermission to accept some of the
fuzzy stuff because the brandhalo effect and we're used to working
in kind of intellectualcapital businesses and you can't
touch and feel it. But the,the biggest problem, at least we've
had historically, and I thinkmany professional services firms
probably suffer from this,particularly those that are partnerships,
is the partners viewthemselves as marketers. And we have
(10:59):
many examples across the longhistory of the firm where because
you are an expert in yourfield, you have therefore decided
that you are an expert inevery field. And so we have too many
times in the past said, well,I'm an expert at this and I sell
this all the time, sotherefore I'm the marketer of this.
And I think it's hardersometimes for people to take that
genuine expert advice fromsomebody who is a trained marketer.
(11:21):
So double edged sword forprofessional services firms. And
that makes me immediatelythink about people because the market
is that you do have, are goingto have to be robust, resilient and
very flexible. I would imaginein your drive to, we're going to
talk a little bit later aboutmoving marketing upstream, but on
the people side of that, haveyou had to change the profile of
people that you look forslightly to enable that to happen?
(11:44):
You Hit the nail on the headwhen you talked about resilience
and professionalism of theindividuals. We've definitely gone
on a journey in terms ofincreasing both the profile of the
individuals, but also theamount of funding that we're giving
to the, to the function andmaking sure that that's also getting
more profile on our leadershipteams. Right. Marketing didn't used
to have a seat at the tablefor the leadership teams. Yeah. And
that I think was very tellingwith respect to kind of how we, how
(12:07):
we valued and how we, youknow, saw the function. Now it's
very different situation and Ithink the firm continues on that
journey. Let's move towardsROI or certainly let's move towards
measurement. Never movetowards our way. Return is a good
subject. Whether that's an ROIis always my issue or whether we
measure return in a differentway. But before we get there, one
(12:31):
of the reasons that marketersfeel they need to talk about ROI
is they constantly feel theneed to justify their existence,
their activity and theirspend. Spend. We understand there
has to, there has to be areason for a spend. Obviously from
a leadership point of view.What about marketing causes you sleepless
(12:52):
nights? Oh, there's a fewthings about marketing that cause
me sleepless nights. I think.I mean, first is obviously downside
risk management and especiallyin a professional services firm where
people are talking to thepress and they could say anything.
We rely on the marketing teamand function to make sure that everybody
who is out there is, you know,of sufficient quality of, you know,
(13:12):
briefed and on the rightmessages for their, for their piece
and making sure that, youknow, we don't have somebody in one
part of the business who sayssomething detrimental about another
part of the business,especially because there are different
and competing sectors. So Ithink the one thing that keeps me
up at night is downside riskmanagement. The one thing that I
think is gives me the mosthope though is when marketing are
(13:33):
able to kind of shape and helpus really support those kind of tier
one pieces. And so especiallywith the kind of professionalism
and the increasing marketingsupport that we've had lately, like
seen a real multiple on thebusiness. So I'd say sleepless nights
are related to downside riskmanagement. Most hope though is related
to the ability of marketing toact as a positive multiplier on like
(13:54):
our key growth vectors. Youkeep bringing the positives back
into our conversation.
I'm a bit of a bear at.
The moment because I seewhat's going out in the world and
I'm feeling a little bitBearish. But you're bringing me back
to positive all the time, sothank you for that. Well, particularly
in kind of economic downturns,though, I think we very much used
to view it as discretionaryspend. And I think the more you can
get leadership's mindset awayfrom marketing being a discretionary
(14:17):
spend that can easily be cutto bump kind of ROE for the year,
then that's a. That's amindset that you need to get people
into. And that's why I keepcoming back to kind of the multiplier
on the growth vector. Yeah.Because it needs to be seen as a
future driver of revenue. Andto create that link quite explicitly
in the quantificationframework, I think is really important.
(14:37):
Can you talk to me a little.
Bit more about that from.
From a leader's point of view?Obviously, the marketers are looking,
if you like, when they'retalking about quantification, they're
looking inside. Inside out.You're at the other end of that telescope,
looking outside in. That was areally bad mixed metaphor, but you
know what I mean. I'm withyou. You're looking at it from the
other side. You've mentionedthis phrase multiplier effect a couple
(15:01):
of times, which we've heardabout on the podcast before. Talk
to me a little bit more aboutwhat that is, how you see it, how
you measure it. We measurethis by getting the activity upstream.
But I think if I could takeyou on a bit of a journey, kind of
from where we've come from towhere we are, where we were from.
It was almost marketing tryingto push it on the business and saying,
hey, if you do X or you do Y,this will be great. And we flipped
(15:24):
the narrative a number ofyears ago and said, listen, marketing
is a scarce resource that weare going to reserve for our highest,
most productive partners andpractices who are driving these growth
factors. And it became muchmore of a pull from the business
to say, oh, wow, okay, if Iget these guys involved earlier on,
I can see how I can go from Xclient growth to Y client growth,
(15:45):
or X industry growth to Yindustry growth, and that's where
we are. So if we look at someof our future growth vectors around
AI or around particularsectors, how are we getting the marketing
team in and upstream, and thenhow are we tying that in to the business
performance? And I think theabsolute best thing a marketer can
do if you're speaking to yourleadership team, is understand how
(16:06):
they're comped and measured.Right. Because if you understand
how your leadership team arecomped like, what are the metrics
that I am graded on every yearby our global CEO? And if you can
talk to me about how you canimpact the metrics upon which I am
graded, then all of a suddenyou have my attention, right? If
you come to me and talk aboutfrom your perspective as a marketer,
(16:26):
you have less of my attention.In many organizations, that might
not be something that's veryeasy to find out because lots of
organizations aren't sotransparent. I think it is. And even
if you as a marketer, as asenior marketer, right, went to your
senior leadership on a peer topeer basis and said, listen, I want
to serve you better. Tell mehow you're Compton graded, what's
your balance scorecard thatyou're measured on and how can I
(16:47):
help serve you in that agenda?And I think if you flip that conversation
all of a sudden it becomes howyou help your leaders achieve their
ultimate goals. Particularlyif you think about a lot of the leadership
teams will come up via thatfinance route and so being able to
help you quantify on that sideis really helpful. And then you're
speaking their language andit's something that they understand
(17:08):
a bit more. So we're going toneed to talk about the I word, return
on investment. My belief isit's the wrong, that phrase is the
wrong phrase to use to measuremarketing, but it is a bit of a shorthand
and it is a term. It's a termfinance people understand. My challenge
(17:28):
is that I think it's betterused with fixed assets rather than,
or certainly assets that havea return over a fixed timescale.
And we know that lead timesare really long, certainly in any
business to businessrelationship and any relationship
based sale, I guess, which,you know, you're in professional
services, we're in businessservices, same thing. You know, our
(17:50):
own lead time could be two,two and a half years long. My challenge
is how we measure the returnon the money that we're spending.
Actually, look, this, thispodcast, for example, it's not very
heavily branded, but of courseit comes out of our own, our marketing
budget and measuring thispodcast is, you know, when I go back
to my board is a hot topic. Mybelief is that it works in the long
(18:14):
term. People listen to it,they like what they're saying, they
like who we're talking to. Andthat has that kind of positive effect.
From a leadership point ofview, though, how patient do you
think leadership can be? Andtherefore do you think, do you think
ROI is appropriate? Or, or doyou think I'M talking complete rubbish.
I don't think you're talkingcomplete rubbish, but I think there's
(18:35):
also a pragmatic answer tothat question as well. Right. And
so the pragmatist in me issaying, listen, if ROI isn't the
right measure, but it is whatthey value, how do you bridge them
from ROI to what you think isthe right measure? And that's what
I would focus on. Right. Andthat's what we focus on in terms
of long term value creation. Ithink we have a long history of having
(18:58):
marketing in a sense, and sowe can look at where have we changed
tactics and what is thedifferential in performance, taking
into account all the marketconditions and things like that.
But I think, and this is mypoint about meeting people where
they are, if you have aleadership team that really values
roi, find a way as themarketing team to bridge it. And
if you have a leadership teamthat really values quantitative metrics,
(19:21):
find a way to bring somequantitative metrics into those discussions,
even if you don't totallybelieve in it. So I totally believe
in quantitative metrics, bythe way. Yeah. The problem with ROI
is it incentivizes the shortterm stuff. And you mentioned something
just then. You were talkingabout the correlation because you've
got the length of time to lookat it. You can analyze the correlating
(19:42):
effect that the changes youmade had. And my firm belief is you
judge the success of themarketing by the success of the business,
kind of, not the other wayaround. And that means that if you
only index on immediatereturn, I think you miss the opportunity
(20:02):
to do some of the work thatyou're now able to do because you've
been measuring over a longerterm. I may be splitting hairs. I'm
not sure. I get a bit obsessedabout this. I think it's right though,
because so many people reallycare about roi. But I think the right
pragmatic solution is to takeROI as a measure and then break that
down into what I would call aquantification framework. But give
(20:24):
yourself the spectrum to saythis is what we measure on the short
term basis. I can measure thenumber of people who listen to this
podcast because you have adelightful Canadian on it. Or I can
measure the number of hits itgets on a social media or whatever
that is. Figure out what youcan measure in the short term, figure
out what you think is the longterm brand equity and the long term
halo effect and the long termthings that require multi year measurement
(20:47):
and then show them to say it'sthe yes and approach Right. It's
the improft approach to ROImeasurement. You say, yes, here's
how we think about ROI andbreaking that down and then kind
of walk them into your. Intoyour framework. That's what I would
do. And the more you can linkthat back directly to, again, how
they're measured and howthey're incentivized, the more share
(21:09):
of mind you have. And then ifyou call it roi, it doesn't really
matter, but it's a framework.Exactly. I just learned something.
I just learned something.There we go. That's now become the
new unicorn mantra, by theway. Thank you for that, Lisa. Not
a problem. What aboutmarketing departments that say, oh,
we're a profit center? I thinkthat is their version of trying to
bridge their leadership team.Right. I think nobody wants to be
(21:30):
a pure cost center. Yeah. Iwould not say, you know, I think
we are a profit center is aninteresting way to phrase that. I
think I would say I'm arevenue multiplier. Right. And what
you definitely don't want tobe is discretionary cost. And so
I think anything that moves itaway from that and brings it closer
to the business makes sense. Ithink, you know, whether you want
(21:53):
to call yourself a profitcenter or whether or not you want
to call yourself a revenuedriver, bringing yourself upstream
into how are you acting as amultiplier of the business is what
I think matters. I'm learningso much today, Lisa, thank you very
much. Well, this is why atprofessional services firms, the
partners who are totally nonexpert in what we do can just really
wax lyrically about fieldsthat are not our own. I think that's
why it's really interesting.Interesting though, having someone
(22:14):
who, who hasn't. Hasn't comethrough marketing to talk about the
same issues that I've beenspeaking to markets about for 100
or so episodes. Because I getquite bent out of shape over this
stuff. And I'm forgetting poolrule number one from Peter Went when
he came on, which is no onereally gives a shit about you or
your product, which in ifyou're a marketer is. It's not about
the marketing, it's about theoutcome. Exactly. And so I get obsessed
(22:37):
about whether we call it thisor whether we call it that. No one
else gives them monkeys. Yeah,could. So I need to get over it.
Basically. I think you shouldcare about it because it's what.
It's how you are motivated anddriven. But if you're trying to capture
the attention of a seniorleader of the business, put it in
their Terms because they don'tcare. And that's different depending
on the demands of thebusiness. I spent yesterday at a
(23:00):
private equity conferencewhich was really good fun, but you
know, there they have theirfive year cycle. Right. And I ended
up talking to a really niceCEO of a business who has become
a bit of a friend. He's inyear four of his cycle, has just
lit up a new advertisingcampaign that he knows will return,
(23:22):
but it ain't going to returnin time. Yep. So he can't do it because
he's in year five of a value,a four of a value creation program.
Public and private have verydifferent dynamics. I guess is is
where I'm coming at fromthere. And public companies, the
perceived wisdom is thatpublic companies think a lot shorter
term because they're drivenquarter to quarter. I wonder whether
(23:44):
you can talk to me and helpmarketers understand some of the
pressures, the pressure thatleadership faces and that with a
lens on marketing and theactivity that we do, when you are
part of a public organizationand you have that quarterly demand
and. I think the observationis, is right. Like publicly listed
companies have very strongquarterly results pressure. Right.
(24:07):
Which every one of theleadership teams of a publicly traded
company will feel veryacutely. And I think as a marketing
team, it's not just thatquarterly earnings pressure that
is what you need to optimizefor, but also the long term growth
trajectory. So yes, we havequarterly earnings pressure, but
equally we have long termgrowth, growth pressure. So because
you need to show strong andstable growth over those quarters.
(24:29):
Right. And so I think thiscomes back to the conversation we
were having earlier aroundunderstanding what incentivizes your
leadership team or how theyare measured and managed and speaking
to them in that language. Soit would be completely out of kilter
to speak to a kind of a fiveyear hold private equity fund, about
(24:49):
a 17 year strategy. Equallyyou have to speak to the management
of a publicly traded companyabout the quarterly and long term
growth. And to pitch somethingthat is hugely kind of in quarter
cost in a quarter where youknow you're having downward revenue
pressure or you're having costpressure would be completely counter
to everything that yourleaders are thinking about. And so
(25:11):
the more that you can speak tothem in the language that they're
used to, around what they'reexpecting in the same way that their
CFO or their CRO is speakingto them, just the more share of mind
that you have for them. Right.And so I think finding their language
and speaking in that and notwhere I, where I Used to get lost,
especially with marketing, waswhen marketing used to try to speak
to me as marketing. Right?Yep. When they speak to me as like
(25:35):
Kayleese, this is what youcare about and this is how marketing
is a multiplier of that. Andthey speak in my language, then I
understand. And I think itwould be lovely to live in a world
where all the leaders could,you know, more deeply understand
marketing and could speak inyour language. But the reality is
your leadership teams probablyaren't going to get there and you
can get there faster to speaktheirs. My prejudice, if you like,
(25:56):
or my bias was that whendealing with public company think
quarter to quarter. I hadn'ttwigged about that long term consistent
growth message too, which is areally interesting observation. And
it does make actually theprocess of being a marketer in a
public company noticeablydifferent than one that's either
private equity back from atraditional pe, house, family, office
(26:18):
and or still privately owned.I think that's really interesting.
But I think the other reallyinteresting you've just expressed
really well is we're told allthe time as marketers that we have
to change our language tospeak to the board. And again, I've
been resistant in the pastabout that because people, when it
gets polarized or dumbed down,you hear things like, don't go and
(26:40):
talk to one about brandbecause the, the leaders don't want
to hear brand, they want tohear reputation. And that's just
kind of dumbed down,euphemism, garbage. What I'm hearing
is that if the marketers takethe time to understand your commercial
priorities, they then need towork out how what they're doing supports
(27:02):
you personally in doing so.Actually, they're kind of inculcating
some of what they're doing.Their job isn't to teach you how
to do what they do, it's tohelp you understand why what they're
doing is relevant. Is that, isthat kind of right? It's not even
just what they're doing isrelevant, but it's their job to show
me how what they're doing willact as an accelerator for future
(27:24):
growth. Okay. Right, okay. AndI think it's like speaking a slightly
different language. But ifthey, if the marketers come to me
and they're speaking in kindof marketing, complex marketing language,
I kind of almost tune out alittle bit because it's not one of
the top three issues that I'vegot on my brain today because I'm
thinking about X or Y or Z.Right. But if they can come to me
and put marketing speak in thecontext of my top issues. All of
(27:49):
a sudden they have a biggershare of my mind and a bigger share
of my time. Because I thinkleadership teams, we were discussing
this earlier, especially inthe post Covid zoom world era, are
more pressed for time. Right.And so I think one of the things
that I like is when they comeand we're having a conversation and
it's already in the languagethat my brain is tuned into for how
(28:12):
I run the company. And that tome is really important just because
then they can bridge into themarketing priorities. Right. And
it's not that you ever want todumb it down, but it's almost like
a translation into somethingthat I'm speaking. What you don't
want is that long string ofthree letter acronyms that don't
really mean anything and eventhe marketers get confused about.
Right, exactly. Yeah. Whichbrings us on neatly to the concept
(28:33):
of how we move marketingupstream. It's something you've done
successfully. I wonder whetheryou can talk to me about maybe some
practical steps that marketerscan take to help them get them and
their teams and theiractivities taken a little bit upstream
in their companies. So it'ssomething where we're definitely
still on a journey. Right. SoI think we're doing it much better
(28:55):
than we did before. But thepractical steps, I would say, for
marketing, especially in aprofessional services firm, are genuinely
understand how and where yourfirm makes money. So in all of our
different sectors, we makedifferent levels of margin, we serve
different types of clients,they have different types of needs.
So step one is like genuinelyunderstand the P and L of your organization.
(29:15):
How do we make money? How dowe spend money? What do we look like?
The second is spend a lot oftime with the business development
team to say, okay, this is theclient strategies that you have.
These are the areas that we'retargeting. These are the growth vectors.
Bring in your expertise.You'll see loads of stuff as marketers
(29:36):
that the business never sees.Right. From different conferences
or different agencies. And sobring your expertise into that and
don't be a taker of that. Be athought partner, right? To say, listen,
we heard you. These are yourgrowth vectors. This is how the market
is seeing that. This is wherewe think we can be an accelerant
and get involved in thoseconversations early and upstream
and then stay in there. Sodon't just leave. Once the business
(29:59):
development side is done andyou've gone off and done the work,
stay in touch with the projectteams as well or with the delivery
teams to say, okay, how wasthis delivered? What worked well,
what didn't? Like speak toclients. Right. So don't just speak
in the business, as amarketing team, you should also be
speaking to our clientsbecause what they'll say to the marketing
team is often different thanwhat they'll say to the partners
(30:19):
with respect to how we servedthem or how we showed up or is what
we were doing there consistentwith our brand? Like there's a lot
of different things that Ithink you guys can unpack that maybe
we don't unpack in the sameway as a, as a, as line partner because
we, again, we thinkdifferently. And so I think your
connection in there is reallyimportant. I would hope that marketers
(30:41):
are speaking to customers. Iwould hope in many businesses now
I think I'm wondering whethermaybe professional services is slightly
different, but in productbusinesses that I've seen marketing
still a bit divorced fromstrategy. And it's still a bit divorced
from, I mean, even, even wherethey're using account based marketing,
(31:01):
there'll be a, there'll be aset of, a set of accounts where marketing
is involved because they'redoing that work. But they may not
be upstream enough. They maystill be thinking too short term.
I mean, I think for me theimplication of taking marketing upstream
is you're asking them to thinka lot longer term as well about strategy
and direction and all thatkind of stuff. Yeah, absolutely.
(31:22):
How do you equip your teams?Because that's not, it's not easy
to find a marketer. I don'tbelieve in the current market below
a certain age just because ofthe way marketing's developed over
the last 15 years. That's gota broad enough, a broad enough view
of the world of marketing andthe way the business works. I think
(31:45):
there's three just practicalthings that you can do both as a
marketer or a business leader.The first is they may not have the
particular skill set now, butif you have highly motivated, intellectually
curious individuals that areleading those functions, they are
able to learn. Right. So thefirst part is just raise the level
of literacy on both sides. So,you know, strategy team, leadership
(32:07):
team, who are setting thestrategy. This is what marketing
does. Marketing team. This ishow we set a strategy. Right. And
kind of raise the level ofliteracy on both sides, involve them
in the conversation and havethem have a seat at the table. Right.
And even if it's rocky thefirst couple of times, like have
them have a seat at the tableso that they can at least See how
it is formed. And then thirdis just create that feedback loop
to say, okay, this workedreally well this time, this didn't
(32:28):
this. And then you bring theminto that conversation. So I think
yes, you're correct. Like notall marketers will have that ability
to set strategy. Now. Not allleadership teams are particularly
good at setting strategy. Now.That's very true. Yeah, it's very
true. I mean, I think my, myobservation on marketing people particularly,
it's not a slurp because I amone, it's that these, these days,
(32:48):
particularly in business tobusiness, people come straight into
a functional role and theytend to grow in those functions.
Whereas in the past beforethere was so much stuff going on
in house, people would comeinto a very generalist and broad
role and specialize later. AndI think now the specialism happens
a lot earlier. And my concernfor, if you like, I'm gonna sound
(33:10):
like a grandfather here, butthe youngsters coming through is
have they got broad enoughexperience when they get into that
role where they're a kind ofhead off person? Have they got enough
of broad enough experience tobe able to serve leadership properly?
But I think you answer that.Well, actually that you, that actually
you, that's the role ofleadership, right? To understand
where the gaps are and thenfill them. I think if you're a leader
(33:31):
that's come up through aspecialized path and you feel like
you don't have that, then youhave absolutely every right to talk
to the members on your teamwho are doing the paths that you
didn't come up as. And I thinka sign of a really good and secure
leader is someone to say I'man expert at this and I have no idea
about this. So you personwho's 10, 20 years my junior, can
(33:51):
you just give me the 101 onthis? And I think a leader of a marketing
function that is secure inthemselves and ready to serve the
business would be having thatconversation very willingly. Let's
talk about leadership becauseearlier on you mentioned a lot of
people in leadership will havecome through a finance background.
And one of the wishes of manypeople who are following a marketing
(34:14):
career is that marketing mightlead to see the leadership too. And
it's not unheard of. I was ata conference yesterday, very, very
successful CEO, been throughmultiple transactions in pe who started
out as a marketer, but it'snot common. I wonder whether you
have a view you might be ableto share with us about the lack of
(34:36):
marketing representation inleadership positions or why it might
be that marketers might not becoming through into senior leadership
roles. More historically, ifyou look particularly at publicly
traded companies like the Pathto Power was P and L role, possibly
kind of CFO to then CEO.Right. I think marketing, it reflects
(34:56):
the fact that marketing hasn'thistorically had a seat at senior
leadership tables and has beenviewed as more of a discretionary
cost. Coming back to earlierdiscussions. So I think the more
that we tie marketing to kindof future revenue generation or kind
of acceleration of growthvectors, then they get that seat
at the table, they're involvedin the strategy setting, they're
(35:18):
seen as a genuine businessleader and then you have a credible
shot at those top roles. Ithink most of the major firms now
also have chief marketingofficers. Right. I'm trying to think
of one that doesn't. And so itnow is an official seat at almost
every top table. But there area number of seats at that top table
that doesn't ultimately leadto the top job. And I think the more
marketing can bring itselfinto the discussions around the future
(35:43):
strategy shape of the businessand be seen to be driving those,
then the more credible you areat running the top job. And I'm also
now seeing a link between theROI and or quantification framework
you're talking about and therelevance of that to marketers too.
Because obviously the top job,the EO job or the managing partner
job, a lot of that is going tobe numbers, finance, math driven.
(36:05):
That's just the nature of thejob. So the more marketers can be
versed in those numbers andthe economics of a business, the
better. I think just as amarketer, even if you're not naturally
a quantity person, being ableto name off the top of your head,
you know, last quarter, lastyear, sales, revenue, key top clients,
(36:25):
sales from key clients. Likeyou should be fluent in the metrics
of the business that theleadership team are measured on.
Right? Because then you'reappear in that conversation. Whereas
if I'm having thatconversation and you don't know who
our top clients are or thedifferential in the margins that
we have by different sectors,then I feel like I'm having a conversation
(36:46):
with somebody who's in justkind of support and not actually
a peer that's driving andleading the business. So I think
you've got the seat at thetable, own that seat at the table
to drive the business. Thatrequires a level of business fluency.
Get out. Understand themetrics that your senior execs will
be carrying in their heads andmake sure you're carrying it in Your
(37:06):
head as well. Yeah, that's areally good tip. Because a number
of corridor conversations thatI have with other senior partners
on the leadership team aboutthose metrics is very high. Right.
And so it is the numbers thateverybody is carrying in their heads
and your leadership teams willbe carrying their in their heads
all the time. And if you canhave those micro interactions where
you have all of thatinformation as well, and you can
(37:28):
have those more frequently,then you're seen more as a strategic
partner in the business. Well,you are also. Because those are the
levers. Right. Because thenumbers that you're holding in your
head and your understanding ofthem will give you the levers that
you can use to affect theperformance of the business. Exactly.
Yeah. Wow, Lisa, thank youvery much. That's a really, really
good, really good set ofobservations, I think for anyone
(37:51):
in marketing. I massivelybelieve in the function. I think
there's a huge amount of valuein getting this right for professional
services and I was delightedto be on. So thanks for having me.
Boom.
There you go. Huge thanks toLisa for coming to see us and for
sharing her wisdom. Let's takea very quick review.
I've got three key takeaways I think.
For you today from theepisode. Number one is marketing
(38:15):
as a translator. Remember,marketing isn't just about campaigns
or content. It's the bridgebetween leadership's financial goals
and long term strategy. Now,if you're not working your marketing
team hard to be a translatoracross business functions, you're
probably leaving seriousopportunity and value on the table.
(38:37):
Secondly, resilience, it's notnegotiable. Whether it's resistance
from traditional structures ornavigating market volatility, strong
marketing teams are built toendure. Because resilience, it's
not just about surviving. It'sabout finding a way of really succeeding
in the face of change andpushing the boundaries of what marketing
(38:58):
can do for your business. Andfinally, but by no means least tailor
how you measure value in yourbusiness. Not all ROI is created
equal and you will know if youlisten to this podcast. I talk a
lot about my disbelief of ROIas a realistic or relevant measure,
but I think Lisa might havechanged my mind on that. Today, public
(39:22):
companies often focus on shortterm gains and private organizations
sometimes have a luxury oftaking a much longer term view. So
you need to tell your metricsto match the expectations that your
board has. That's the secretweapon for staying relevant and effective.
Now, here is your homework.Today, take a moment to reflect on
your own company. Now askyourself Is marketing truly at the
(39:46):
table where strategicdecisions are being made, or are
you still stuck in thepromotions and campaigns lane? Now,
if it's the latter, have athink about what's holding you back
and your team back fromrepositioning marketing as the driver
of strategic conversations ofgrowth. Think about it, talk amongst
your team, and let that be thespark that redefines your approach.
(40:09):
As always, thanks you verymuch for tuning in to unicorny. I've
talked a lot at the end ofthis one, so I'm not going to say
any more. We'll see you next week.
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