In a Digital-First World, Must Marketers Choose Between Brand-Building and Performance?
There was once a time when creativity was central in marketing, but the changing digital media landscape hasn’t spared the industry from a reliance on data-driven strategy and decision-making.
Speaking with LBB’s Tom Loudon, Mim Haysom, EGM brand and customer experience at Suncorp, and Hilary Badger, ECD at Ogilvy Melbourne, delve into shifting marketing dynamics and how things have changed.
Leveraging her eclectic background spanning diverse industries and an adept understanding of customer-centric strategies, Mim explores the pivotal role of creativity in amplifying Suncorp's marketing effectiveness.
Meanwhile, Hilary, drawing upon her creative agency perspective, discusses how she leverages storytelling, aligns brand objectives, and navigates the intricate balance between performance-driven marketing and creative branding in her work.
LBB> Many senior marketers have learnt their trade in a creative world, only to find themselves as keepers of customer data and trends. What is your background, and how do you keep abreast of shifts in the market?
Mim> I did a marketing degree at uni and then went straight into a career in creative agencies. I loved the diversity of the clients and industries and the breadth of projects I could work on. Being in diverse and fast-paced environments like the agencies I worked in required a strong learning agility and a curiosity to learn quickly about the clients, their industry and their customers, and it’s those skills that have stayed with me as I’ve moved through my career.
My starting point in a new role is always to immerse myself in as much information as possible, meet with those with experience and learn from them, and come with a fresh perspective and a curiosity about what could be done differently. The world is moving quickly. We all must be constant and curious learners to stay relevant no matter our role.
LBB> After a shift to performance, creative branding may be back in vogue. How do you manage this balance?
Mim> From my perspective, brand-building has always been in vogue. And it’s not an either-or decision regarding investment in brand or performance. We need to do both. Getting the balance right depends on the brand's business objectives, and we use our data and modelling to help us inform our decisions on where our investment is best placed.
LBB> Hilary, how has your educational and working background prepared you for your work with clients today?
Hilary> Although I knew I’d never make a lawyer, I’ve never regretted the law degree I did before my ad career. My legal training has helped me craft a good argument, which is the essence of persuasion. But when I left law behind (sorry, Mum and Dad), I found what I love in advertising. Commercial creativity is the ideal mix for me. My favourite challenge is understanding our client's business problems and strategic objectives and then communicating them with ideas and storytelling. I like to take complex things and make them simple, dynamic, and human. Surprisingly, my career as a children’s book author has also been beneficial in creating brand ideas. If you can engage a restless 8-year-old with a story, you can engage any target market with an ad. It’s about considering things from the reader’s point of view. I always ask myself how I can put the story in a way that will make people want to engage instead of forcing it on them.
LBB> How has the agency/client dynamic shifted from your point of view?
Hilary> I love that our clients are as invested in and ambitious for creativity as we are. The attention economy has created a shared belief that brands must be ideas-driven to truly engage because something that doesn’t add value to people’s lives is too easy to ignore. Creating authentic and impactful ideas requires a mutual ambition and a love of creativity. For us, this is a daily, reciprocal conversation with our clients. What a fantastic place for the relationship to be.
LBB> As the marketer's role changes, they become more closely integrated with the CEO and CFO. Does this impact their ability to demonstrate ROI in terms of creativity?
Mim> The CMO is accountable for marketing investment performance and driving growth in the organisation. Hence, they need to be skilled at stakeholder management and adept at using data and insights to prove the commercial impact their investments are having for the organisation. That is the CMOs' accountability; they must build that capability themselves. It won’t come from the CEO and the CFO, but the CEO and CFO will expect they can show a return on investment in marketing.
LBB> Are there any trends you expect to dominate marketing and branding in the coming years? How do you intend to respond to those changes?
Mim> There are many. However, my top three would be increasing speed of change in terms of customers' expectations, new technology enabling us to engage in new and different ways with our customers, and a changing regulatory environment influencing how we can engage with our customers. They all require marketers and teams to be agile, constantly learning and upskilling in new ways.
LBB> What do you look for in an agency partner? What do agencies need to do to demonstrate the value of their creativity to potential clients?
Mim> What I value in our partners is their desire to understand our business and their focus on helping us to deliver on our brand and business objectives. They support us strategically, inspire us with outside thinking, bring to the team a range of capabilities we don’t have in-house, and support us in growing our business. As a client, I want agencies to demonstrate they understand their client's businesses and show me how they have positively impacted their businesses through their creativity.
LBB> How can advertisers more effectively leverage their skillset in today’s industry?
Hilary> Monetising creativity has always been like catching lightning in a bottle. Ideas are elusive, creativity is intangible, and putting them on an Excel spreadsheet is difficult. Yet that doesn’t mean creativity isn’t commercially valuable. It’s the opposite - creativity is our product. To many creative people, thinking of an idea as a product is anathema. But I quite like that way of seeing our business. We are creators of ideas and sellers of insights. Ideamongers, perhaps? This way of thinking leads to a sense of expertise and professionalism that we should all own more. Our skillset may be intangible, but it’s a skillset all the same. So, I’ve made peace with the intangible.
