CMO Awards Podcast Episode 13: Combatting the belief marketing is a discretionary spend

[Music] Thanks for tuning into the second season of our CMO Awards podcast, "Powered by MI3". This series is all about diving into the key themes, topics and issues that make up how marketing is a function and its leaders contribute to growth. Importantly, we want to share how marketing can elevate its stature in business. I'm Nadia Cameron, publisher and editor of Marketing at MI3 and the program lead the CMO Awards are on your host, this special podcast series. This podcast is brought to you by our Platinum CMO Awards partner, Adobe. Marketing leaders are under pressure to deliver more, more creativity, more personalisation and more measurable impact at a pace that keeps accelerating. The stakes are high and expectations keep rising. AI is changing how brands reach their audience, but more technology doesn't always mean better experiences. The challenge lies in using data and AI to engage customers with content that's relevant and useful, not just optimised. Adobe is turning AI promise into marketing reality, connecting teams, content and tools in a unified end-to-end solution powered by a gentick AI. The brands winning in the AI era aren't the ones chasing every trend. They're the ones with the right systems and strategy leading with insight, agility and innovation. From AI frenzy to marketing ROI, it starts with Adobe. Hello all and welcome to this latest edition in our CMO Awards podcast series powered by MI3. This time we're talking commercial aptitude and ensuring marketing's place as revenue generation and growth. It's the ongoing ball and chain around marketing leaders' ankles. Marketing continues to be perceived as discretionary spend and it's the first thing to be cut when times are tied. But what happens when you successfully reframe marketing as revenue, not cost and get that CFO on your side? Today I am joined by two CMOs from this year's CMOs of the year who have successfully navigated their positions as commercial marketers inside their organisations and are getting to do some bold things as a result. We are also joined by one of our CMO Awards judges and former marketer who's been in the CEO's seat to share some views from both sides of that perspective as well. So we're going to dive into how marketing leaders can work jointly with the CFO and CMO to embed an expansive mentality around marketing that beats those tired old perceptions of marketing and brand investment as a lag on the balance sheet. And we're going to explore some key tenants of meeting the leadership team and board on their terms as well as how we get people on side. We've got lots and lots to talk about. So joining me today, first up is Becht Dali who describes herself as CMO plus the culmination of over 25 years marketing experience across global and local brands plus C-suite experience spanning business strategy, P&L ownership, board directorship and chairperson responsibilities. Becht is CMO at TPG Telecom Australia's second largest telco group with responsibility across their diverse portfolio of brands including Vodafone, TPG, IINET and Felix. Becht was previously the CMO and Managing Director of Consumer at Domain Group and has held senior marketing roles at CBA, Westpac and IKEA. Becht was also named 15th in our CMO Awards last week. Joanna Robinson is CMO at the iconic and is known for driving transformation, growth and customer led innovation in complex fast moving markets. With nearly three decades of experience across Australia, Asia, North Africa, the Middle East and Turkey, Joe has worked across retail, e-commerce and FMCG with some of the world's leading brands. She brings deep expertise in business strategy, digital transformation, change management and building high performing teams with experience managing marketing budgets of up to 70 million. Joe is passionate as is many of the people on the podcast today about brand building, leadership diversity and advancing women in business and she was number five in the CMOs of the Year. And Paul Connell is a purpose driven CEO and MD with 20 years of experience rewriting consumer businesses to be commercially stronger, culturally healthier and built to last. He was a CMO Awards judge for the first time this year and is a former top three CMO 50 honorary and he's a working example of what happens when a CMO steps up into full commercial accountability. Paul has learned his craft at UniLever leading a $250 to $500 million FMCG business as GM of refreshments and GM of home care where he delivered two divisional turn-arounds led industry-wide circular economy shifts and set Australia up as a market to invest for growth. Along the way, he's stewarded some of the world's most love challenger and sustainable brands including Dove, Magnum Benengeri's seventh generation and Puka. He went on to become chief customer officer at Big Red Group then joined Naked Wines as MD through a liquidity crisis. Keeping Flath with 57 independent wine makers through their own solvency challenges while rewiring the business from the ground up, he left it with an ebit tripled supply chain rebuilt, AI embedded, team engagement at record highs and a business that's now the global blueprint for the group's recovery. So I'm going to start off with a short starting question when you think of the term commercial marketer. What are the first couple of words or maybe an attribute that springs to mind? Paul, do you want to kick us off? Yeah, sure. I think highly accountable, someone who's all in for the business outside of their lane. I think linked to that, someone who's got really good perspective, they want to know everything that's going on and then the four commerciality comes from that. And lastly, almost indistinguishable from anyone else on that leadership team. That's an interesting one. I'm sure we're going to talk about that as we go on as well. Joe, how about you? Commercial marketer, what does it mean? Well, first of all, I love the four words that the four descriptions that Paul just did. I think my words are customer obsessed, commercially disciplined, data informed, always and strategically curious. I like that too. Very nice. And Beck, how about you and what springs to mind? Yeah, I actually had two words and Joe has just touched on one of mine, which was the curiosity, always asking why, always seeking to understand and dig deep. But I've got another word actually, which is profit. Yeah. Understanding profit. So, you know, this is, as we know, how much of the net cash is falling to the bottom line. Is that a term that you would expect a commercial marketer to have? Absolutely. Is it one that we say a lot? No. No. And it's one that I know we're going to speak more about today. But if marketing is truly to be taken seriously amongst our sea, sweet and bored, understanding profit has to be part of the language of a commercial marketer. Yeah. And an interesting point, you bring that up actually because that was something the judges last year in our inaugural awards. Really talked to. There wasn't enough examples of profit in the submission. So there were some really good cases for how I've delivered impact, but profit wasn't one of them. So it's good that you brought that up and gets us going. So I did want to kick off by sort of understanding what the board and CEO expectations and perceptions of marketing are right now and potentially how different they are to what they've been five or ten years ago. Now, I come into this question having just recently spoken to a couple of the executive recruiters who've been saying to me, it has never been more evident in the briefs and in the conversations that they're having around placement of CMO roles. This very different, very commercial specific brief around what marketing leaders need to do. So they're certainly telling me it is different, but Joe, given your experience, have you found it different? Have you found it potentially even more crucial to have that commercial edge? 100% and I think it's becoming more and more the case. The modern marketer, the modern CMO, is being held way more accountable these days for the commercial outcomes. I also believe we have the right tools to be able to support that. So we've got more measurement and marketing effectiveness tools than we've ever had before and we've got data at our fingertips to be able to tell a story. But I think the role has evolved significantly. The modern marketer can't just be about storytelling or brand building. They've got to understand to bex point, revenue, profitability, retention, CLV has become the north star that we all need to talk about and that needs to be embedded across the whole enterprise. And I think that in ECOM, that expectation is even higher because we see customer behavior shifting in real time. So traffic conversions, frequency, retention, and that creates a much stronger expectation that marketing is not just sitting adjacent to the business, but it's deeply embedded within the commercial performance. Yeah, absolutely. Paul, how about from your experience, you've got both the being in the CMO seat and more recently being in the CEO seat. Do you think those perceptions have changed? Yes, put with a different horizon. Almost, I think, because Gemini both worked at Unilever and I think when you started at Unilever, you were a brand manager, you weren't a marketer. And in many ways that was running a business helistically with marketing as the core discipline. And so in a nice way, I think that's kind of almost coming back to the core. I say three shifts that I've seen and that I'm looking for. One is people that can think about capital allocation, not their marketing budgets, particularly if you're thinking about how to drive a customer experience. It's very rarely the advertising dollars at the best place to put your money. Second is not about commercials or tour. It's about leaders that can bring the whole business together. If your brand experience is your business, then everyone needs to come with you and those people that sit in the centre and make that happen are gold and few and far between. And then I completely agree with what you said about commercial fluency, like really understanding. the levers of the business, not just the area that you technically own. So those three. I think, but given you've had a more recent shift in terms of role as well, you've probably got quite a good perspective on how you've seen the perceptions of what you're being asked to deliver change as you've gone from domain and into TVG. So it tells me that. Yeah, I have. And, you know, I could even go further back over the last 10 years, but I think it's fair to say the expectation has absolutely shifted in the last few years. And it is very much to the points that Paul and Joe has mentioned, demonstrating the growth and demonstrating the ROI. But I would say the perception is still a barrier in some cases. And that barrier is CEOs and boards want marketing to demonstrate value, but there's still some skepticism around how we're doing it. Right. And it has really stuck up and do boards and CEOs truly understand the sophistication and the methodology and the approaches we're using to quantify. So I think we're well on our way. I think as a marketing community, we've never had better tools and capabilities at our disposal. But I think the level of understanding and trust from boards and CEOs is where we've still got some work to do. So how did that then factor in when you came into TPG and, you know, you knew for what we know you, we know you're going to do a bold program of work and you're clearly coming in because you want to be that transformative CMO. So knowing that, what were some of those first couple of things that you needed to do to make sure one, you recognised that element of it, but two, you could start to build the trust early. The single biggest thing I did when I started in the business and it might sound strange was that I actually didn't start a marketing. I started with the product team and I started with finance because I really wanted to get an understanding of the business, first and foremost, at a really deep level and I want to talk about some of that work that I did. But second to that, I really wanted to get a perspective on their perceptions of marketing and what marketing was doing. The most candidly marketing in the organisation was seen as auto-takers, not strategic partners right. And that was the single biggest moment of clarity for me in really understanding where the business was at today and where we needed to go. And then the key part was the steps in between. And those steps included those key stakeholder groups across finance and product in particular and then also within my marketing team. Right. And that really gave me the mix of, I know the vision that I want to take the business on. I know where the starting point is and I know how to meet the business there today. But also the clarity on what do I need to do to get there. So I do want to bring this to you as well because you came in and obviously subsequent to your arrival at the iconic, you've gone on to launch a very bold programme of work around brand. How did that look when you came in? Did you go through a similar sort of experience or journey? Very much so. Very much so. And I really do think that I timing is everything as well. I know when I came in, I think the iconic was at a tipping point and certainly in terms of the brand dilution. You know, we'd lost relevance and resonance with our audience. We were sort of really caught at the bottom of fun also. It was all about short-term conversion. And I think the market was tough so we'd ridden the tail winds of all things COVID and lockdown. Forgetting of course that of course that as soon as that was over everybody rushed back to physical retail and our competitors had raised the anti on their e-com offerings. So I think the iconic took a punch on someone who was in a traditional e-com marketer. I've come from FMCG where quite frankly marketing and consumer insights are at the core of everything they do. And I still advocate for the fact that the four p's are the same four p's that they always were and e-com is a channel. So you still have to put the customer at the core of everything you do and then you know manipulated navigate the four p's in a way that resonates for a particular audience. You're not trying to be all things to all people which was certainly I think where we were at the iconic. So I do think that I had the beauty of this beautiful brand that had a lot of legacy love and I talk about the fact that I just had to put the D-Fib on the brand essentially and bring it back to life. Now I think the most difficult part of that journey was educating around the importance of that and how it was going to drive that longer term brand demand but also reestablish ourselves back in the market. So I think there was perfect timing. So I think I was the right marketer at the right time for the iconic for where they were. But I also credit Erica Birch, I was the CEO at the time. And unbeknownst to me when I got the job with her she'd actually already resigned but she took some really big bold moves I think and one of the first was we did the shop the stop-signation which was the first fully integrated full funnel campaign that the iconic had done for a while. And the way that that was kind of received by our customers really then gave confidence in and the commercial outputs that that generated gave confidence in the fact that we needed to kind of reestablish the iconic master brand. So it was about some proof points but also I think taking some chances and some risks but you've got to be empowered to do that. So the right later at the time and subsequently have been very supported by Jerry Carms, the new CEO that came in when I did three years ago and also the CFO who's ex-coke and really kind of understands the importance of marketing and brand as well. And I do want to hear about all the things you've done to have such a fantastic relationship with the CFO because a lot of I do have some markers who say to me, you know, I've built a great relationship with the CFO but they're not that common. And we know it's one of those core relationships but before I ask that and I love this because you're both talking about brand and Paul again you're a huge believer in brand. We had Anuba from Lion on recently and she was talking about brand as the unit of value creation and we know there's that direct link with brand power and pricing power but again you've already intimated there. You're going to have to get early wins on the board before you can necessarily deliver those big things and of course there's still skepticism that brand does actually directly link. So when you were building that I'd love to understand a couple of those sort of expectation setting steps that you made because to your point you both know where you want to go but you also know you're facing a bit of skepticism as to whether this can actually deliver a short medium and long right. So beck talk us through a couple of those steps. Yeah I'd love to. I touched on the point that I spent a lot of time with finance and product when I started in the business. Marketing was running. The reason I did that was because as a commercial marketer I want to understand how the business makes money and if I truly understand how the business makes money I can then work out how marketing can help deliver more. And so to that end I spent a lot of time unpacking the unit economics and I want to really double down on this point because it has been the absolute heart of what we've now built at TPG Telecom. Recognising that TPG Telecom represents six brands. We have hundreds of products across a pre-pay, post-pay and fixed portfolio. I have a number of competing agendas from a mix of product teams. Couple with that I also have a finite budget and a finite resource profile. Everyone wants their love but actually those dollars and resources can only stretch so far. So how were we making the right select and strategic choices? What helped inform that was the work that I did on unit economics. What we basically did was look at across every product in every brand. What is the customer lifetime value and what is the tenure? What that allowed me to then do is understand for every dollar I have in marketing where do I invest it, both short and long term, to drive revenue. Talked about profit. How am I driving and maximising that return on every marketing dollar? We touched on the bold bets. It was the single biggest. But what it gave me was the fact-based through the lens of the language of the business to be able to tell that story. And so what we've actually done this year, I'm heading into my second year in the business, is really build a portfolio strategy that is very different to what it looked like historically. We've moved away from just driving new connections into the organisation. We're actually driving within the portfolio to the right volume of connections based on the spend to deliver the optimal revenue outcome. And that has fundamentally reshaped. What it means is some tough conversations, candidly, where some product teams are actually getting less from marketing and some product teams are getting more. And a really interesting and timely example, I had a conversation yesterday with one of our product leads who wanted increased marketing investment in the short term. a certain product line. I went back and said no. And the reason I said no was because that product line has a lifetime value of $57. Where he wanted to take it from was a product line that had a customer lifetime value of over $1,000. It's a pretty simple equation. But what you need to balance is the ask of the business and the short term need versus the long term growth. And that was a request for a short term need to pump up short term connections coming into the business, which sits fundamentally at odds with delivering long-term growth for the organisation. So this isn't always an easy conversation. I can imagine there's KPIs that come into that as well because there are. There are. There are. There are. There are. Any division that's being, I don't know, KPI on volume, for example, in that instance. Absolutely. And this is where the portfolio level becomes so important. I have to get all of my products stakeholders in a room. Based on the fact base, we need to rest light out. And we need to make those choices together. And that's the only way that you can drive this forward. In recognition to your point that one product lead will receive less. And therefore their results will somewhat be less. And others will receive more. But at a case study where we've seen completely the opposite to that is our field expraint, where you're on year, we're spending less. And we are driving greater return, both in terms of the revenue, the connections and the reduction in churn. And so that has really become a test case for us in the business of what this model can deliver. And what do you think is enabled that back? Trust. Trust. Trust in a solid fact base would be the true thing. And using the same language is something that I noted down and thought I could get that super important. Yeah. And what's that the language of the CFO? Like did that correlate with how the CFO was looking at things? Because obviously there was the tension point with the product. But when it came to the conversation with the CFO, firstly to get your fact base, but secondly to work out what that language looks like, how did you find that sort of conversation? It's been really interesting. The deep dive from a marketer into the commercials and unit economics of the business had not been seen before. And to the point that the CFO actually has commended myself and my leadership team on wow, you guys really understand the numbers. We should and that should not come as a surprise. But of course it's not without tension and in a business of the size and scale that ours is. That's a big leap of faith. And that's where beyond the fact base, the level of trust from my peers and my boss is really important. But that leap of faith and that trust also needs regular insight and reporting into how we're progressing. And so it's making sure that we've got the right cadences around the rhythms of showing the return on investment. Really demonstrating where the value lies. But equally, calling out we're not doing so well. Yeah, because it's not always going to be perfect. We won't always get it right. And that I think is part of the successful formula in building the trust. It's a point I've asked on multiple podcasts actually because marketers are glass-huffful people by their nature usually. And one of the pieces of feedback I'd heard from CEOs in the past was that marketers want to tell you the good story, the positive story. And everything can be too perfect to the point where you were saying you end up with some skepticism as to around what's really working on it. So it's been one of my questions every time I've sat in front of a marketer. How have you balanced that desire to be the glass-huffful with the reality of needing to demonstrate not everything's working. But we are, you know, I've got a really important portfolio at the moment that's underperforming. And the model we have built very clearly demonstrates marketing's contribution to those business KPIs. Now the portfolio is underperforming, but marketing is slightly down as well. We own that. And we call that and we do that together. And that's what creates that true team environment, that true culture of trust. And that real collaboration that team, we're in this together. How are we going to find ways to build on that? And that of course is balanced with the successes. Absolutely. Paul, I might bring you in here just to sort of understand this a bit. I've already touched on it a couple of times, you know, when we read the CMO award submissions, there's this sort of angle we see in terms of how people are demonstrating their commerciality, but also your own transition from this front. So there's a couple of questions here. One is the what Bex talking about. Is that sort of the music to your ears in terms of how marketers should be going about this? And as a CEO wearing that hat, is that what you wanted to hear when when the marketers were coming to you? And, you know, so I want to ask you that. But then secondly, I want to talk a little bit about what we saw across the judging. What I loved in that story was two things. And I think the linked and maybe I've linked them so you've got to tell me if I'm wrong. One is understanding what truly creates value in a business. And this idea of like permanent penetration and permanent increasing number of customers isn't always the way. And I think if you understand what creates value in a business, it also allows you then to focus in on having stronger brands. Because I think what gets in the way sometimes of true brand leadership is this trying to be everything to everyone. Yeah. And that normally is them. And you've got to train that team off that acquisition drug of more is more is more is more is more is more is more. Was actually the strongest brands don't always have the biggest audiences. But they've got incredibly valuable audiences that love what that brand does. And will then go on and buy more and more more experiences through that brand. So I think those were two things that I love seeing come together. Because that you've got the deep understanding of what creates value in a business, but then also the role of brand conversation. Because if you don't have a brand, your commodity and commodities will run a very different commercial model. So those two are absolutely love. And I think when I when I reflect on judging this year, which was an absolute privilege. And I'll say it because Nadia won't say herself. These are the only awards that actually judge marketers in the way that I think marketing should be judged. There's a lot of vanity out there. And so just as a student of marketing, I'm still a marketer even on this table. I absolutely loved it. I think what stood out and what gave me energy across the submissions was a few things. Those that were really in the corporate strategy and yeah, yeah, not to your point receiving this strategy or catching it later. And if you're not in there, those that found their way in like bringing insights to the table found their way to influence the plans before they had to polish what they were given. I think that was exceptional to see. We'll come onto this. I'm sure a lot later, but those that spoke about their leadership team as their partners, not their enemies. And I think the framing is really important. Like you are in this together. And the more you get into smaller businesses, like that's just normal. Suddenly when you're in larger businesses, it becomes the fights too much internally versus out with the people that you should be working against. I really liked it when you could see people making decisions for the business, not for their marketing budgets. And normally that's where they've done really exciting things in the product landscape, in the tech landscape, investing in store staff and training, like the things that really matter to customers. And the last one is the boldness, but the boldness was too full because sometimes I think marketing awards gravitate to the campaign boldness. I love seeing the strategic boldness and I think Joe and Betley could see that there were tough choices that had to be made strategically on the what that then allowed really fun work to happen on the how. Yeah, and like that, that for me was the absolute God. I've got some watch outs to like there were things that I'd love to see more. Yeah, we want to share them now. Yeah, happy. Yes, I love seeing the increasing level of measurement. I did not like seeing the delegation to that as a decision making tool. Yes. And there was a lot of I have used this tool to make my decisions and now I invest in these channels and approve my effect. Yes. Yeah. With with absence of strategy and understanding of customer and brand. And I think you've got to have both to make the right choices. I still think products and pricing was massively underrepresented. It's not sexy, but it's what drives value so much at the time. And it quite often creates the headroom for you to do the fun stuff. So lean in because when the house is in order, no one looks at what's going on in the backyard. And that's the best place to be as a marketer. And I would have liked to have seen a little bit more what I'd call like tangential growth like new business models, real innovation. It felt and I understand the environment. We're in. There was a lot more kind of rebuilding challenges and there's a lot of there's still been a lot of rebuilding, but not as much pioneering. Yeah. And maybe a lot more actually in the smaller brands, which is a watch out for some of the larger ones. Yeah. Yeah. That is a very that is a very fair point. Just to the point about the trust and a couple of things that we're just talking about there. One of the things actually when the way you framed Paul is a way we framed it in some of the previous episodes is market is moving from an individualistic view or a functional view into, okay, what does the business need from me? And then I'm going to do that. And there's two aspects to this one was the ten-year component. So we do notice the longer a CMO has been in the role. The more their mentality shifts to that. But I would argue one of the other challenges, of course, is that a lot of CMOs come into new roles and they're put on the defensive foot very quickly. because marketing hasn't done what the CEO wanted necessarily beforehand, and they maybe put in a position come into the new role and say, okay, well my last team won't very good, so what are you gonna do to prove that you're more than effective and you run a back foot, right? And you're not necessarily proactively owning the conversation, right? And it takes a bit of time to get sort of passed that. And again, you still gotta get some runs on the board and build the trust, right? - I think that's in any role though, isn't it? Like you gotta get runs on the board, I think it takes a good year to actually build the trend. The level of trust that you need to then drive really transformative change. - Yeah, it's also the best brief. Do you know how hard it is following someone that's excellent? - Yeah. - Wherever it's like they were great, they've done great work. I hope you can live up to. Oh my God, a turnaround brief is glorious in many ways because there's a job to be done and there's a burning platform that you can latch onto. - Yeah. - So yeah, it gives you some, you know, trust gaps to build, but it also gives you an open door to shape things up a little bit. - Yeah, and that's sometimes better actually, particularly when you can see things that maybe need to be worked on and you're worried actually about, you know, breaking trust by saying some of them. So I think it can work both ways and I think your example earlier of actually the iconic being in a tricky place but it didn't make it any easier but it created a window for change and that's fun. - And an appetite for change, I think, which is important because you can latch onto that. Can I just make a point on something you said that really resonated with Main Paul, which was around kind of the overreliance almost on measurement because I think within the marketing community that's something, as a CMO, we're always trying to balance, you know, what is the right level of measurement. And I had this amazing marketing director when I was at Colgate Pummel of years ago and I went in, I remember I was a senior brand manager or whatever and I went in to tell him that we were ready to launch and we tested it. We'd, you know, sort of done all the research and testing to within an inch of its life as FMCGs do and I said it's Greenlit for launch and he said that's great Joe, but what do you think? And I said, what do you mean, what do I think? (laughing) And he said, well, I'm not paying you just to run all the reports and to measure it, I'm also trying to build your confidence as a marketer. What is your intuition telling you? - I love that. - It's so much. - It has always stayed with me and I use it with my teams because there's a reason that we're in these roles and marketing is an art and craft and science and we need to use all the levers we have but not lose the ability to think from our gut. - Yes. - It's a love of feel from our gut. - Absolutely. - So important. - So important. - And as the pendulum swings more towards the science, the ROI, the accountability, it cannot be lost how instinctive this is and the art and the craft in what we do and the best modern marketers know how to balance those two, the art and the science together. - Absolutely. - I always describe marketing as a toolkit and it's just knowing which levers to pull at the right time to drive the outcomes that you need. And so I think that's such a beautiful conversation for us to bring in here where we're talking commercial marketing but that is not withstanding the balance that exists in what we do. - Can I reframe it though? 'Cause I think sometimes, and I don't disagree with you at all, but I think sometimes it's much easier to get resonance talking about the logic than the magic. And actually, like the magic is behavioral psychology. It is human behavior, it's what captures attention. It's all the things that actually marketers hold like as real IP but sometimes we could do a better job of saying, actually this isn't just my feelings, this is facts. And I think sometimes the best test is simply just the memorability test which is if it's not gonna move anyone internally and everyone's gonna forget it, you already know it's not good work no matter what the data says. And that is actually much more powerful like putting the work in front of people and seeing if it moves them, your staff, your team, it's the tricks of it, doesn't, what a waste of money. And that's where the commerciality comes in 'cause if you thought about it as your money, your business, if you like this work is academically good but frankly dull, you wouldn't do it. And I think if we can do that proudly and confidently, then it is a commercial argument. It's like I don't wanna waste anyone's money on this. I'll cancel the campaign and we'll wait. - Yeah, you've touched on a really pertinent point for me right now in this conversation and I've just launched some very bold work to market. - I love this work by the way. - Do you, thank you. - The riskiest place for a challenger brand to be right now is somewhere in the dull doldrums. And this absolutely for voter phone is us pushing hard. Again, returning to that brave, disruptive heartland. And yes, it starts with an element of insight and the science and the planning but there is also instinct in this. And I have sat in front of my executive team. I've asked them to back me on this. I've been doing this a long time. There is some of this that is instinct and there's some of this actually that I can't quantify to you. But I can tell you based on every ounce of my 25 years experience matched with all of the insight and data points I've got, this is the right moment and this is the time for us to be doing this work. - So how do you create that space? So I want to bring it back to the CFO because there is this perception of course that CFOs are not interested. And I will never forget Susan Colchill telling me about the opening the kimono analogy of getting the CFO in by bringing them in early. And actually they are curious about the work and they are curious to have a conversation and you can hit them emotionally. But I just want to bring it back to that. How do you create the space for what you're talking about, which is our magical behavioral science or our gut or instinct, our experiences, brand marketing people, how do you get that space with the CFO to make sure that happens? - I have got the most compelling example of that because it's been in the press but we're in the middle of a creative pitch at the moment. So we are undertaking the pictures this week and we did too. And we invited the CFO and the CEO to come to the pictures. And to see the impact that that has had on them to actually understand the power of creativity and these agencies are amazing. We've been so blessed with the agencies that want to work with us. And the CFO actually commented to me yesterday he said, "You know Joe, thank you for bringing me into the process." He said like, "I really am seeing the magic of what you mean now when you talk about creativity and brand building and how important it is." And yes, we need to pull it through the line. And yes, it needs to be attributable in terms of driving, you know, overall business objectives and then commercial outputs. But he said, "I really am starting to get a very strong understanding of what marketing is all about now." So I think first of all, I have a CFO and CEO that are open to being involved in that process but the trust is built by bringing them on the journey, not just kind of delivering the output to them at the end. - I know we always talk about, we've got to talk the language of finance, but I remember we did have an XCFO on one of the podcasts and they say, "I'm curious about the language of marketing too 'cause I'm trying to understand it." - Right, 100%. - It's not like I'm sitting there going, "I don't want to understand it." But it is, it's a different world, you know, from the numbers and the language that they've got. So I always feel like we're saying you've got to talk the language of business, absolutely. - Yeah. - But the fact that you can open the door to let finance understand what you're doing. - And if they're really open to it, to me that's where the magic happens, you know? - Absolutely. - And I'm so blessed I've got to see F-O and a CEO that are really open to it. So yeah, there was like a moment of magic that happened this week that I think really kind of represents what we're talking about here. - So fantastic. Can I build on that as well? - Yes. - And the point about the fact that marketers have to understand the language of the business, one of the most important things I'm doing at the moment is putting all of my marketing team through the Mini MBA program. I have also invited our finance team to join that. And that is a way for them to understand the fundamentals of marketing through the very ritz and way, which is so much fun in itself. - And plenty of swearing. - And my CEO, F-O, is a kind of ad. - He's a cracking Irish guy who loves a being. So we bond well. But it is also an opportunity for them to learn about us and our profession and what we do and see more than just an advertising banner online. Actually, very strategy behind what we do and helping them be on that journey with us is so critically important. I love what you're doing with that Joe. - Thank you. - Well, that very nicely ties into the question I had, which is what are some of the sort of formal or less formal and that's a good example of a slightly more formal structured way of connecting through to another department. But yeah, that question of what are some of the ways formally or less formally, you know, marketers can actually bridge that business gap. So I'm gonna use CFO here, but there may indeed be other functions that we should be talking about at this point in terms of commerciality. So Becky mentioned product earlier on as an example. we've all talked about compliance and legal as one of those challenges. But yeah, how about some of the other ways we've found we've been able to resonate with those, with those more commercially optimized functions. So Joe, you gave us a great example, but stepping it through the last couple of years, what else have you done to make that work? - I would say one of the key differences between the iconic of today and the iconic of yesterday is certainly the cross-functional approach that we have now. I think we were very siloed. I mean, we were certainly siloed within marketing and customer, but even more so across the business. And it was evident and we did functional plans for all of our budget reviews. So the rebase, the budget, the rebase, the three plus nine, the so on, the six plus 18. And they were all functionally done. And then the first kind of exposure we had to one another's plans when we sat sort of reviewing the commercial would go first. And then customer would go and then you'd have technology and then we'd try and force fit them all together. That has totally changed. And I think that I, myself and Gail, who is the Chief Commercial Officer, she heads up the other team really that, we kind of drive the two pillars able to support it by the other functions. But we've worked really hard to make sure that we are synergistically driving the business together. And we have done away with functional plans. We now do a strategic plan that is very much about how do we really use our two business units to drive towards what we call the three, four, five strategy. And I think that's another, you know, language is everything. We re-roached the overall business strategy last year. And it's really deeply embedded within the organization. So we want to be three million active customers. We want four order frequency and five star reviews. And putting it in a very simple framework, everybody, including the fulfillment center, where we have 500 amazing people that basically fulfill all the iconic packages, everyone can quote the three, four, five strategy. And it also enables a filter then that we all use in terms of being able to say no to things. Yes. And where are we going to invest? So if it does not correlate and go up the line in terms of being able to drive the three, four, five strategy, then we will hold hands and say we will not do it. And I think the other thing we talk a lot about trust, we're having some really good conversations at the SLT level where we know we need more engineers. I mean, I'm an in-ecom. So it's all about the product roadmap. So we're having conversations now. Instead of just looking at our own functions, are we managing to the budget, the HR resource, budget, or not? What we're saying is, well, Adam, can I put my role on hold and find you two more engineers? Because that will unlock more of the product roadmap. Those discussions were not happening even a year ago. But I think you've got to have trust at that SLT level. And you're all driving towards the same business objectives. But you're also all in with how we're going to do this. How are we going to find Adam two more engineers? If you touch on such a great point there, Joe, around the stakeholder piece, and operating at an enterprise level, and this is where market is most successful, we are not thinking about marketing. We are thinking about the business. And I can give you countless examples, which will seem counter-intuitive, where I've actually offered up the marketing budget to my piece. Because marketing is not going to solve all of the problems. Spending more is not the answer. In fact, I will give you some of my marketing budget to go and fix the customer experience problems, to bring in more engineers, to help solve the underlying business needs, because marketing is not your solution. It might sound counter-intuitive, but this is where we're operating as strategic partners and business leaders, not owners of a marketing pot of money. I think it's that application idea, isn't it, that you're applying marketing where it best makes sense? But actually, to my other point, we all know businesses and boards are asking to do more with less. That is one example of how you're facilitating that in a way that benefits everybody. Correct. It's at a business level. OK, I'm losing my budget. Yeah. And it's flipping the script on that entirely. This should never be about wrapping your arms around as much money as you can and sitting on the pot for marketing. This is about how do we, as a C-suite, drive the best possible outcome, ultimately for the customer, but through the needs of the board and the business to sustain long-term growth. But to Joe's point, I mean, you had to get past the functional planning first. To do that, right? There was your roadblock. So you had to get rid of that first. I think so, but that was a system behind it. I think that it was more about, there's that, absolutely. So you've got to build the infrastructure that supports that. But it's also built in the relationships. And we sat in a management meeting yesterday. And Gail, again, the Chief Commercial Officer, when we were talking about how we can drive hard-- I mean, it's a tough macroeconomic climate that everyone's facing. We're in retail. It's like a rollercoaster ride one day where high-fiving, the next day, there's a crisis management meeting. So that's just the way it is. But we were kind of all spitballing about, OK, how can we dial it up? What do we need to do? And Gail said, I think we need to invest more money in marketing. So conversely, it works the other way. I think building that transparency and operating as one team that is unified towards the business objectives, you're then able to have those conversations that's not about giving up money or cutting the marketing budget. It's actually about what are we going to do together with the part of money that we have as a total business to say how we're going to use it in the best possible way. And if that's more engineers in Vietnam, or it's plowing more into marketing because we know it works, then they're the kind of conversations we're having. And that takes a while to get to that point, I think. But it's so empowering because you really have each other's backs. I'm talking my business about the fact that I don't own the marketing budget. We're going to together. And particularly with my product leads, I sit down with them and we look at our spend. We have allocated for each of our product lines in every brand. We look at what is marketing's contribution to the business targets based on those figures. We sit every month and we talk about what do we need to do together? What do we need to change? So we are driving the commercial performance through the marketing budget together. So we will make the changes that we need to-- the pivots, the course corrections sitting there together. And that is the ultimate way of defining a level of trust and collaboration that we own that pot of money. And we own the outcome jointly. Yeah, it's that outcome link. Paul, you're going to jump in there. I think the one thing that really resonates that you just said there was the relationships. And I think investing in that is key. And I think there's two parts of that. I think these smarts are bringing financing to the room for a training course is as much about understanding marketing. It's about spending time getting to know each other and understanding each other's world. But then also just wasting time together. I think my biggest red flag in a business is where people get caught by their job titles. Marketing have done this. Who's marketing? Oh, that's Joanne. Oh, well, have you spoken to Joanne? She's your teammate. She sat right next to you. So I think if you can break down those silos informally and just get people to spend time to getting to know each other, I think that's super important. I remember being in a business and I won't name who, but myself and the CFO, we say we had a good radical kind of relationship is probably the best way of framing it. And the one thing that got us to a better place was just going out for a day with no agenda and spending time with each other. And after that was transformative. It was actually even better candor after that. But those are the things that I think sometimes we de-prioritize in businesses and particularly when you're building cross-functional teams. Yeah. We're very good at creating sub-cultures. Sometimes that's excellent in marketing. You need a bit of that. But if you want that person to play really well with their product teams and their engineering teams and the customers, well, they've got to get to know each other. And they've got to see themselves as a way to your point before anything can cause us. And then you can ask them, well, what do you want to do? What does great look like to you? But then it's a collective answer, not a individual. So I think the strategy side, excellent. But never underestimate us, the power of getting a really tight team. I'd rather have three people tightly knit than 30, always. When you stepped into the CEO and you're re-mit is everything then. OK, what we're talking about here as market is going beyond what we functionally see as marketing and being part of a leadership team and being able to collaborate cross-functionally. I mean, marketers are the ultimate influences from that point of view inside of business. But when you're in that role, what did it teach you about where the limitations had been? And how did it change your mindset? Did it change your mindset? Maybe, yes, maybe not. So I'll start with the note, actually. I think if you're a marketer-- like we're hearing about in the room today, you've always wanted to kind of have all ownership of the customer experience and therefore working across all the functions and being able to see that holistically is actually great. It's great. You now own the operations, the factory, the supply team, customer service. And you can help people see end-to-end. You've got that perspective of the end-to-end customer journey. And you bring that into the room. So I think you should always back yourself as a marketer to be able to bring that uniquely into the room and hold on to that. Don't lose it. Yeah. on the flips. side. And I join naked in the midst of a liquidity crisis. The immediacy in the priority of decisions that you have to make as a listed business where our going concern has just been removed were very different. And so you have to help people do two things. You have to help people see that the mission is the same. The business is the same. But the job to be done in that moment is going to make some different decisions the priority. And I love what Jay said about like having company priorities because if you can do that, then everything falls out of it. So that I think for me is the perspective. And I do remember working for a chairman in the past like this guy talks a lot about safety. It's the enemy of bravery. And now having sat in that seat a little bit more distinctly and held like direct responsibilities where you are personally liable for it. It does give you a lot more real empathy for why that was important. So I think that's probably the one thing I'd like to go back and not have just kind of cast a bias over that leader but said why? Like why is every second slide of every presentation about safety? Because for me, it felt counter culture, but actually sitting his shoes now I understand it a lot more. Paul, you touch on such a wonderful word there which is empathy. And I am a better marketer because I have run panels. You understand the pressure. I've run panels, I've run business strategy, I've run boards, I've been a chair of a industry foundation. It gives you such a different perspective of the challenges. It gets you outside of the marketing world. And that would probably be one of the things I would encourage everyone listening to this podcast is find an opportunity, find the advocates who will help you step outside of your core marketing function to take on a PNL role or a sales role or a strategy role. The exposure and the understanding and the empathy that you will gain from that will absolutely make you a better marketer. It is a great point. And having just run the PNL for the CMO awards, I understand what you're saying on a much smaller level. Can I just add one more other function I think is super important because I have the privilege of looking after both retail media and also within my portfolio, but also customer service. And there's been many a conversation about, well, should it sit in ops? And I fearmently fight to hold on to it because I think customer service is one of the most important touch points and data points for the customer, the voice of the customer. So that end to end ownership that you spoke about Paul for the customer, I was saying in my team, we need to push back if we see something that is a subpar experience for the customer because we have customer in our title and we need to be the advocate for them being at the heart and soul of everything we do because it's very easy to forget them in an e-commerce. We have so much data and one of the first things we did when we launched the launch program was we developed the inner circle, which was 50,000 people that we went out and said who would like to volunteer to be part of the building of their loyalty program. We had so many loyalists that put it their hand, but it was really important to me that we built the loyalty program that our customers wanted, not what we thought they wanted. So I think just a pure data collection plan. And not exactly. I always say just remember at the end of those data sets are human beings. So interpret the data but then go validate it with and go chat to them and sometimes what they say and what they do are two completely different things. So double click on that. I think you've got to be a little concern when you see people talking on LinkedIn about the fact that they've become signals. That's not a good feeling for any customer to have. But it is interesting that we talk about that because that first-body data collection and the value that's attached to that certainly does open up the lens or the aperture a bit on customer in our holistic way versus new customer acquisition. I think that has certainly helped at least open that conversation up more. But of course the challenge is the short term. How do you then compete with the short term when there are so many figures now in front of you that you can watch what's going on from day to day hour to hour? That's the balancing act. Because again, if there's so much more data in the CFO can see it, you've got to be careful they don't read it the wrong way, right? You've also got to be careful in your own teams. And I think to your point earlier about having big bets across the business, sometimes the amount of data that we have and that our teams have allows people to tinker. Tinker and can feel really productive and you can almost get addicted, the immediate gratification of what I look when I move. But you haven't necessarily got the lens of like, has that really changed the business in a positive way? And this is what I think is again really important. We talk about that cross functional perspective and that understanding what it really drives value. Sometimes the best and hardest thing to say to me is stop touching that because you've now put a week a month maybe into tinkering on that piece and I appreciate your craft and I love your endeavor for it. But it's really done nothing. And I think that's important as we get kind of more data rich and we get kind of more specialist in some places is that you don't build a whole team of tinkers because that is such a sad way to bend to you where everyone feels like they're working really hard. Everyone else in the business is something going, I can't tell if that made a difference. We'll run out of time. We're talking return on investment. But Paul, you touch on such a great point about return on effort. Yes. And you know, maybe that's another podcast for you. That is Angela Greenwood's words. That is not actually an answer. And I just talk about that. But this is always the balance for us in organizations where with finite budget, with finite resource, where are you channeling both of those to drive the best impact both in terms of commercial and also the effort? Well, and also, you know, if you talk to the recruiters or you talk to the people who are talking to the boards, they will say they want you to show that you're making compromises, that you're cutting something that you're getting in there and narrowing on something versus exactly what you're talking about. And that they're the right things. And that they're the right things because they're not always the easy things. It's not hard to cut the easy parts, but actually there are some real challenges and challenging conversations, cottage industries, passion projects, you got to call it. We know marketing budgets are very much under scrutiny and continue to be under scrutiny right now. We're also facing quite an uncertain economic climate and it's challenging to find growth full stop, right? So I do want to ask where the risk is for the marketers? Is there a risk in terms of falling backwards on what we're trying to commercially achieve? Given we've got so many short term pressures on us right now, Joe, can I put that to you? Great question Nadia. God, I think there are certainly a lot of risks. I think the key one is that we've spoken a lot about this today, marketing slips to being reactive and all of your energy goes into short term levers and I really believe that's a slippery slope to a rotting brand. We're not saying they aren't important at some stage. No, 100 percent. But this is kind of the position that the iconic was in when I joined in 23 and it's a really difficult place to rebuild from. And I think the challenge then is to stay commercially disciplined without becoming timid and in a tough market, you have to make tough choices. And I think that in a tough market like we're facing now, it's actually easier sometimes to be more conservative and the business starts wanting, you know, without even realizing it, they're trying to really manage their cost base. So you start becoming more timid potentially in terms of kind of where you're going to spend and how you're going to spend and you kind of default to a more conservative lens. And I think that it's actually there the times that you need to be more bold and more fearless. So you have to do that, but you also have to make sure that you're building the cultural environment in which that's a safe place to do that because then it's about taking risks but making it safe to fail and fail fast and take the learnings. Can I double down on the point which is we're not coming out of COVID, the brands and the businesses that did best were the ones who held their metal, who continued to invest, who stayed the course and fed the best. Now we're certainly not in a COVID crisis period, but there are some really critical learnings there that we should be carrying forward. In my mind, the differentiation has never been more important, but that has to be grounded in where is the consumer right now. And I always think about it like a van diagram. On one side you've got what is the value, the product, the service, the experience that your brand and business delivers? What are the needs of the consumer right now in the moment? What sits in the middle of that is absolutely where you should be playing right now. And doubling down on that is what is going to drive business growth. Yeah, very good point and I can visually picture that too. Also very thank you. Well, I am sitting here using my hands, whichever one at least needs, is going to meet Sarah. Yes, there's hands. Well, we might have to draw a diagram to add on to the end of the podcast, but Paul, how about you? I've got two asks and it's like the both linked positivity. The first one is it might be slightly less pop loss, like lose this victim mentality that sometimes we put ourselves and get in there. If you're the marketer, like sat in the middle of a problem and you're maybe being asked to take on a broader remake, get in there and grab it because this is the time when you can make change. Yeah. And I think that's really important. And the second is now having worked in big global multinationals and then small challenger like 30 person businesses, never you better than when you have constraint. And if you can be the person that says my Venn diagram, big bold ambition on one side, real or perceived constraints on the other and then get that team in a room and go, we can if you'll probably do your best work. In hindsight, naked during COVID, we were a little bit lazy actually, a little bit complacent. Naked in a liquidity crisis, best business of ever worked for. And so take that mindset in, bring that into the teams and you'll come out of it well. Great, great point of view. You've got me pumped up. I know. I've got into my pieces. I've got another round. Absolutely. Perfect for a Saturday. Let's go. Absolutely. Well, I think there was some good advice in there on that. So thank you all very much for that. Beck, Joe and Paul, thank you so much for being part of this podcast episode. Really appreciate your insights.