Must win battles for marketers

PLEASE NOTE: This transcript has been created using fireflies.ai – a transcription service. It has not been edited by a human and therefore may contain mistakes 

 
00:03 
Dom Hawes 
Welcome to Unicorny, the antidote to post rationalized business books. I'm your host, Dom Hawes. This is a podcast about the business of marketing, how to create value, who's doing it well, and how you can help your business win the future. Today I speak to Georgina Gilmore, who you may remember from March 2023 when we spoke to her, and B2B marketing's Joel Harrison about marketing being excluded from the big issues. Well, today we're going to take a positive spin on life and we're going to continue with the infectious energy that Emma Kriskinans brought to the project last week. Oh, if you didn't listen to it, you need to go back and listen. It was a blast. Now, if you didn't listen to Georgie's last episode, well, first off, you kind of should.  

 
00:50 
Dom Hawes 
But in case you can’t, or even if you won't, let me introduce her. Georgie is an award winning and highly accomplished B2Bmarketer with over 30 years experience and she's worked for some of the world's leading brands. And I don't mean leading as in one of those crappy throwaway pr lines.  

 
01:06 
Dom Hawes 
I really mean leading Apple, Kodak, Cisco, Vodafone, Kaspersky, Centrica business solutions and more. She has been at the heart of creating and launching brands and technologies that we all now consider part of our daily life. Things like computers, laptops, digital cameras, wifi, security, mobile data and email. And she has built and led high performing teams all the way across the world. Her career kind of is second to none these days. She runs her own marketing consultancy called the B2B marketing expert and she works with B2B technology organizations to grow their businesses and she also provides coaching and career development for future B2B marketers. She is also an avid supporter of the B2B marketing community and has recently joined Propolis as their channel and strategy expert. Let's go meet Georgie. Hey Georgie, how are you?  

 
02:02 
Georgina Gilmore 
I'm very good, Dom. How are you doing?  

 
02:04 
Dom Hawes 
I'm really well and I'm delighted to welcome you back to the Unicorny studio.  

 
02:08 
Georgina Gilmore 
Thank you. It's good to be back.  

 
02:09 
Dom Hawes 
We've got something really interesting to talk about today. I think it's going to draw on a lot of the stuff we've been talking about on the Unicorny project over the last kind of maybe six to twelve months. Today we're going to try and put a positive spin on our discussion, I think, and look at what great marketing.  

 
02:25 
Dom Hawes 
Is or should be.  

 
02:26 
Dom Hawes 
Before we do that though, Georgie, what have you been up to since we last saw you.  

 
02:29 
Georgina Gilmore 
Really exciting stuff, actually. So the big thing for me is, and I know this is the same for you guys, is a lot more work with the propolis community of B2B marketing, which I really love supporting because I get to meet so many interesting different people with different B2B challenges and problems, and they get to rant at me and I get to listen, which is good, and then get to give them some ideas about how to approach things differently. Been doing lots of that stuff, and also work with some of my other clients who all seem to have a lot of the similar issues, funnily enough, Dom, and issues that you've been bringing up on a lot of the great podcasts.  

 
03:06 
Dom Hawes 
What's really interesting, Georgie, I think, is that when you get access to a community like that, and if you like, you get CMO at scale, you do get to take the temperature of what's going on and you start to realize that the issues that they think maybe are their own personal issues are kind of endemic. And this isn't a was. I think it was Shane pointed this out in the first episode this year. Shane Redding. This isn't an issue with marketing. This isn't an issue with the rest of the business and how it relates to marketing. That was a change moment for me. But access to those kind of communities so you can see what's going on and you can find out what's going on in the real world, I think is really invigorating.  

 
03:43 
Georgina Gilmore 
It really is, because you feel that you're not alone and that it's not that you're doing something particularly wrong and everyone else has got it right. So I think it's almost like a big confessional where people can go. It's really tough, really supportive, and I think I've noticed, having worked with those folks over the past couple of years, it's becoming an ever growing sort of community and different sort of vendors and different industries. So it's not just issues that are perhaps in the tech industry, it's the same issues across the board. And I think, like I said, a bit of a confessional that people can come and say, what do I do? Where do I go? And it is supportive, which I love being part of a I think that's.  

 
04:27 
Dom Hawes 
Really cathartic, but it's also very helpful to marketers who find themselves in a difficult situation. And one of the things I'm loving now, as this podcast matures, is getting some feedback from people in roles saying, hey, look. Wow. I thought it was just me. Firstly, they're saying, I thought it was just me. It's great to hear that I'm not alone. Two, it's great to hear what some potential solutions might be, some possible solutions. But three, one of the things I'm really loving about Unicorny at the moment is that there are three separate businesses that have now got in touch with us to tell us that they've either changed the language they're using in their organizations based on what they heard on this podcast, or they're changing how they do things based on what they've heard on this.  

 
05:05 
Georgina Gilmore 
That's amazing.  

 
05:06 
Dom Hawes 
And that's awesome, isn't it? So I will exchange action for enormous listenerships. Obviously, we've got a massive listenership. I heard last week that Rishi Sunak.  

 
05:17 
Dom Hawes 
Listens to us every Tuesday before he goes to work.  

 
05:20 
Georgina Gilmore 
Really?  

 
05:21 
Dom Hawes 
No, but can you imagine if he did? Anyway, so we're here to talk about some of these things today and try and bring some shape to it, and we're going to do it with a positive spin, I hope. We may need to dip below the kind of the neutral positivity line at times to identify some issues, but let's try and keep it net positive, shall we?  

 
05:40 
Georgina Gilmore 
Yeah, I'm quite a positive person, even though I do love a rant that must be part of the Irish in me. But ultimately, I like to rant. But then I want to look at the positive and how can we make things better? So I want to make things better.  

 
05:53 
Dom Hawes 
Well, believe it or not, I don't like to rant either. I just seem to spend most of my time. I don't want to be angry old man who wants to be one of those? Let's start today with a very positive thought. I mean, you and I talk a lot about this sort of stuff anyway, these days. What does a great marketer look like?  

 
06:07 
Georgina Gilmore 
I think these days actually no different from years gone by. So a great marketeer. For me, it's three things. One, which is they need to be commercial. By the way, don't read that as just is focusing on MQL’s, right? They need to realize that they are working within an organization that is there to do a job. And the job generally is to make business and profit for the company. Right? So be commercial. Understand the business first and foremost and what your role is in making that happen. Secondly, that shouldn't be at the cost of being creative, okay? And if you're a marketeer in house, for example, don't just think the creativity resides within the agencies of course, agencies like yourselves are also there to help provide that thought.  

 
07:00 
Georgina Gilmore 
But actually, the marketeer internally, if they're not creative, they become a bit lazy on that side of things. And I think they need to be pushing everyone to be creative as well. And then the other thing I think is really important is collaborative. And you'll have noticed here I've got three C’s. So it's almost like my four P's of marketing is now the three C’s. I like great marketers to be collaborative. What that means is that they don't care that they have got marketing in their title. They work for a company, a business, and actually they're in it with everyone else to make it a success. And so I think having that mindset of a winning, collaborative, positive mindset, where you actually want to work with other functions and you want to bring other functions in to make your stuff great, that's so important.  

 
07:51 
Georgina Gilmore 
I think that's been lost a bit, unfortunately. Here's a bit of my negative rank coming in here, but we need to bring that back.  

 
07:58 
Dom Hawes 
Those three C’s chime very well with something we changed, actually, in the strap line of this very podcast, because we now talk about the fact that we are for marketers and entrepreneurs, whether people have marketing in their job title or not. Who cares, right? But marketers are the entrepreneurs in their organizations. We think they've got to be really commercial. You got to understand numbers, understand what moves the dial, understand what it is that's going to make you successful, and then direct all your attention to do that.  

 
08:23 
Dom Hawes 
You've got to be creative because you.  

 
08:25 
Dom Hawes 
Can’t just do the same stuff. If you're an entrepreneur, you're by definition doing stuff that's new. And you have to be collaborative, because as an entrepreneur, it's not your solo effort that's going to make you win.  

 
08:35 
Georgina Gilmore 
You do. And I think marketeers need to get back out there into the market.  

 
08:39 
Dom Hawes 
Yeah, get a bit of mojo and.  

 
08:41 
Georgina Gilmore 
To understand what's going on. And the customer insight isn't the domain of one department, it's the responsibility of everyone. Understanding what your competitors are doing is the responsibility of everyone. And marketeers, more than anyone, should be doing this. So if there's exhibitions and trade shows going on just because you're not there, go there and listen and find out and figure out what's going on, how people positioning stuff. We've become a bit reliant upon too much data to be packaged up for us and then to try and make some sense out of it, rather than actually going instinctively being curious, maybe I can add a fourth c. Curious. I describe myself as curious, actually. A lot of people say I'm just nosy because I love to find out about people, but I think marketeers need to be like that to really delve into unearth.  

 
09:31 
Georgina Gilmore 
Why do people think the way they think? Why do they want something? One of the big things I was talking to a client about yesterday was, are you looking at things like win loss reports? Because, God, they're fascinating. When you figure out, why have you won a customer? What were the conditions when you won that deal? What was going on? What triggered it? What was the environment like? And then actually, how do you replicate that and try and make that happen again and again? And it's a very different way of looking at winning new business.  

 
10:05 
Dom Hawes 
I totally agree with you there. And we spoke to Scott Stockwell, actually, a few episodes ago about root cause analysis and particularly the five whys. And why is the most important should be the most important word to every marketer, to me, because we have to understand how things work. That is our job, literally understanding how our publics work, how their brains work, so that we can find that mental availability in them.  

 
10:27 
Georgina Gilmore 
Yeah, I was berated many years ago, I think I was working at Cisco, and I was asking one of the product directors for IP telephony or something new that was coming into the market, and I was literally giving him a grilling about the technology and what it was, and he was going on and on about how this works, and actually was a bit bothered about why I was asking so many questions. And I said, well, I'm trying to understand why a customer would want this, right? And unless you can explain it to me, how am I ever going to be able to think about how to position that to a customer? So I think at that point, it was when a lot of companies were starting to shift from product marketing into actually customer needs.  

 
11:12 
Georgina Gilmore 
And actually, I think companies like Cisco were probably some of the earliest companies to start to look at sort of solution based selling, et cetera, which has started to become more of the norm now. But that's only because I was really annoying and nosy because you asked the right questions. Probably not the right questions, Dom. 

 
11:33 
Dom Hawes 
There’s no such thing as the wrong question in my book. Actually, the more information you get, the better, literally, I think curiosity is a prerequisite. That's like, if you don't have curiosity, don't become a marketer, because you're not going to be able to do anything of value. I genuinely believe that. And I know these days there's a lot of kind of algorithmic marketers out there who think that there's a formula for everything, and I think we might come on to that a little bit later. But actually there isn't. There is no formula for the wider world and understanding psychology and understanding the pressures and the issues and the environment in which our customers are trying to operate. There's nothing more important than that from a market.  

 
12:11 
Georgina Gilmore 
There isn't. A few weeks ago I was talking to another client about profiles of customers and they just didn't understand the value of creating buyer personas. And yes, they're a bit of a marketing buzzword, I get that. But I said you have to get into the mind of who your customer is. And until you start to create a picture of who this customer is, and when I say picture, I mean really understand them and what their life is like, not what their KPIs are and all that kind of dry stuff, but what is motivating them, what is driving them. And that's where there's this blurring between b to c and B2B. So, Dom, I've worked for brands that do both and actually it's not massively different, honestly.  

 
12:54 
Dom Hawes 
No. I think what's going to be interesting, I think though, is there's a big move in B2B at the moment when everyone's talking about emotion and how you need to market to emotion and then they use that. I mean, there's that terrible trope which I absolutely hate. It's a much bigger emotional decision to buy an ERP system than it is to buy, insert a tube of toothpaste, toilet roll, whatever. It's such a fallacious argument. I'm going to do something on decision science very soon because I'm really interested in how that need for personal expression, how the personal motivators translate into B2B.  

 
13:24 
Dom Hawes 
I think what we're going to find is that while all that personality stuff exists, as we've just said, and like music tastes and all that other personal profiling that you want to do, they bring all of that stuff to work, but that's layered with something else, which may be ambition, or it may be desire not to look stupid, or it may be risk aversion.  

 
13:41 
Dom Hawes 
There are going to be a whole.  

 
13:42 
Dom Hawes 
Load of other drivers that do exist in the workplace that don't exist out of it. So I think that when we start to look at decision science in B2B, it's a much more complex picture, probably than it is in B2C 

 
13:53 
Georgina Gilmore 
I think that's where the other dynamics, like you said, what type of industry is it? Is it highly regulated? Are they terrified of making a decision? Because if they do, it's horrendous. Or who else within the buying group is also organizing stuff? What characteristics are they displaying? So it's not just looking at one person, it's really looking at the kind of the world that they're operating in as well, and what they're up against. And I think holistically looking at that is far better than looking at one individual and saying, well, they're the CIO or they're the head of it. Security. And here are the attributes.  

14:30 
Dom Hawes 
And therefore.  

 
14:31 
Georgina Gilmore 
Yeah, but I think we are making a difference. But, yeah, you're right. It's not suddenly that emotion is something new to b, because everyone clearly is a human kind of being. Most people, yeah, most people met a.  

 
14:44 
Dom Hawes 
Couple of robots in my time.  

 
14:45 
Dom Hawes 
I'm sure you have.  

 
14:47 
Dom Hawes 
Can we add a fifth c, please? Can we add capable?  

 
14:51 
Georgina Gilmore 
Well, I'm assuming they are.  

 
14:53 
Dom Hawes 
By that, I don't just mean I not being an idiot. I don't mean that because, like, if they're an idiot, they get found out what I mean by capable, maybe it's the wrong c. Maybe I'm just trying to squeeze it into a c. What I mean is, and we've discussed this again on a few of our recent pods, is we need some kind of basic capability framework. We need the equivalent of gap that the accountants have. Gap, if you like, genuinely accepted marketing principles.  

 
15:22 
Dom Hawes 
We all know that everybody understands about things like decision science, and behavioral science and psychology and pricing strategies and a basic level of knowledge, because I think one of the challenges that we have, particularly in digital, I think we're going to explore now where we think things might have gone a bit wonky over the last few years, is with this over focus on very short term goals and digital, there is a belief that you don't need to know the other stuff. And therefore, in my book, they are not capable of being a senior marketer because their knowledge is too narrow.  

 
15:56 
Georgina Gilmore 
And I know on a previous podcast, you mentioned Shane, my very good friend, and also my very good friend, Chris Wilson. And it drives Chris Wilson mad. In particular, the change in capability, as you said, of a lot of marketeers. And I think we're all responsible for that as well. I'm starting to see a shift in that, and there is a desire for that to get better.  

16:23 
Dom Hawes 
Being a marketer right now is tough. And I hardly need to tell you that. But isn't it exhilarating too? If you're the kind of person that likes a challenge, and I suspect you are, then although it's tough, I bet you're secretly loving it. I don't remember there being a more exciting time in this business with so much changing all at once. Technology, data, new working models, AI, and of course, our understanding of effectiveness. So much is up in the air that it's genuinely hard for every day not to be challenging. And that's what makes it so interesting. It's that challenge, that unknown, that feeling of constant change that most marketers run towards. But you know, there's no such thing as change without consequence.  

 
17:08 
Dom Hawes 
And one of the consequences of dealing with relentless change is that other people from within our organizations might think we just chase shiny things. Well, we might a little, I suppose, but that's because we're curious and creative. But being at the vanguard of newness isn't about changing our minds or chasing novelty for the sake of it. It's about understanding, appreciating and assessing the impact novelty might have on the psychology needs, desires and fears of our customers. From our conversations so far, it's clear that being a great marketer goes well beyond possessing individual skills or areas of knowledge. The magic happens at the intersections where creativity meets data, where strategies informed by deep customer insights, and where collaboration amplifies the impact of individual contributions. Successful marketing is inherently multidimensional.  

 
18:06 
Dom Hawes 
It needs a balance between analytical and creative thinking, a deep integration with the broader business objectives, and of course, an ongoing commitment to learning and adaptation. That's why it's so important to be curious. But long term has been out of vogue for a while. The mathematicians have ruled the roost and successfully convinced us that only measurable things matter. John Doerr excellent book Measure What Matters, maybe that's to blame, but measuring what matters is very different from saying if you can’t measure it doesn't matter. So let's get back to the studio and speak to Georgie again. Hey Georgie, thinking back, why do you think we've over indexed on the short term?  

 
18:52 
Georgina Gilmore 
If I think back to what has changed in the world, ironically, working in tech myself for many years, I actually blame tech for a lot of this. And I blame a lot of the tech vendors for over promising the holy grail to marketers, to other business function leaders, promising that systems are just going to take away the need for any original thought or for any capability to do stuff. So the system is going to do everything. Of course, the system is just an engine, okay? And you need to apply some thoughts about why you've got that engine, where you're going, your strategy, et cetera. Your system isn't going to figure that stuff out.  

 
19:34 
Georgina Gilmore 
And alongside the systems, what has happened is unfortunately, huge consultancies have also come in with their models and their frameworks, and they've come in and they've designed things like big cone shaped funnels and waterfalls. The world isn't like that. And what I observe has happened is marketing has gone from being a pretty rock solid, well thought of performing function who is able to make decisions, make changes, grow the business into overly obsessing analytics and data reverse engineering models up the funnel, spending their life trying to make things work rather than thinking. Actually, this model is constraining us. And this model doesn't work for my business. I believe that some consultancies have done such a great job of telling everyone this is the way it is.  

 
20:31 
Georgina Gilmore 
And by the way, everyone else has adopted this, that if you dared push back against it and said, that actually doesn't work like that, certainly not for our industry. All of these conversion numbers that you're talking about, if life were that simple, everything would be perfect. And it's allowed the CMO to think, oh, suddenly I'm going to have all these great metrics that I can prove to the CEO about how great marketing is. Unfortunately, it's gone the other way.  

 
21:01 
Dom Hawes 
Yeah.  

 
21:02 
Dom Hawes 
Any standardized statistics, any benchmarks that don't take account of individual difference. It's irony, isn't it, really? We help our colleagues differentiate, yet we think when it applies to metrics that one size fits all.  

 
21:17 
Georgina Gilmore 
Absolutely.  

 
21:17 
Dom Hawes 
How barking mad is that?  

 
21:18 
Dom Hawes 
Part of the output of that is.  

 
21:20 
Dom Hawes 
That everyone sells into fear all the time. They assume that fear of failure is one of the biggest drivers of our buyers. Otherwise. Actually, I've been looking at a bit of tech myself this week, and it's noticeable that when you get onto the homepage, the first thing they tell you is they're in gartner's magic quadrant.  

 
21:37 
Dom Hawes 
I don't care.  

 
21:38 
Dom Hawes 
I don't give a toss. What I want to know is, does it do what I need to do? For me, if gartner thinks it's in a magic quadrant, that's fantastic. I don't even know who the competition is. But by calling Gartner to my attention, they've now brought all their competition to my attention. Up till then, they have my sole attention.  

 
21:52 
Georgina Gilmore 
The market is different everywhere. Like you said, there's no such thing as a benchmark. I can’t tell you how many companies I've walked into where they've said, well, we haven't got conversion levels. Oh, let's just use a beep. Industry analyst benchmark numbers. And it's like you're setting yourself up for failure. People are terrified, like you said. You know what? I'm going to add another c to the list.  

 
22:12 
Dom Hawes 
Go on, then.  

 
22:13 
Georgina Gilmore 
To be courageous. I want marketing people to get back to being courageous.  

 
22:19 
Dom Hawes 
Yeah, take a risk.  

 
22:20 
Georgina Gilmore 
Take a risk.  

 
22:21 
Dom Hawes 
You're going to get fired anyway.  

 
22:22 
Georgina Gilmore 
Well, absolutely. Go out with a bang. Right. And be courageous. Take those risks. Do something innovative. Honestly, so much of the marketing that I see is so boring and it's so dulled down, it drives me insane. If I can’t be bothered to review a piece of content, why is a prospective customer even going to think about reading it?  

 
22:45 
Dom Hawes 
I'm just doing a review of briefs that are coming out of businesses into a number of different agencies. I've managed to get them anonymized. And this is one of my little hobby horses at the moment, is that some marketers, not all of them, but some marketers, have forgotten that marketing objectives are intermediate objectives. They're not a means to themselves. That when you're briefing somebody to support you in achieving an objective with a strategy, you also need to communicate the business objectives to them, too. In the military, we used to call that commander's intent. You've got to know why you're doing something so you can actually have the courage, the curiosity, and the creativity to actually deliver on it. And I think we're forgetting that we are.  

 
23:26 
Georgina Gilmore 
And again, I think this is because this sort of silo mentality that's created between departments, we've lost the fact that we work for a company. If I think back to many years ago, you talked about the military at Cisco. When I was there was this whole strategy around Must Win Battles. MWB’s, right? And it was around new technologies and platforms that were being launched. And basically every single person within the business, their objectives were aligned against the Must Win Battles. And those were cascaded from the top. Okay, so the must win battle on security, the must win battle on wireless, down to, if you wanted to raise POs in the system, there was coding against Must Win Battles. You could not do stuff if it wasn't aligned to that business critical goal that you were all aiming towards.  

 
24:21 
Georgina Gilmore 
And the beautiful thing that you had then was everyone was marching in the same direction to do stuff and understood, I'm working on this with you're working on security. So am I right? Let's all head in the right direction. And it was far more collaborative. We felt that were kind of in it together again, to sort of use that whole kind of military thing. We were moving in the same direction rather than I'm off doing my marketing stuff, you're off doing your sales stuff, and I have no idea, and maybe there might be a bit of a handover somewhere. People were just working on stuff together and understood where they should be focusing, and I would like to see that happening more and more.  

 
25:02 
Georgina Gilmore 
And in fact, again, I'm working with another company at the moment on trying to pull the marketing team together who are quite dispersed. And what I've said is we need to be looking at the overall business strategy. And actually, what are the CEO's KPIs? What's the CMO's KPIs? I want to get those cascaded down, and then I want to do some joint planning of objectives across everyone. It's kind of that simple. And then when other functions can understand what your objectives are. Okay, I understand your objectives. You're working with me on stuff. It's a different mindset.  

 
25:35 
Dom Hawes 
Okay.  

 
25:36 
Dom Hawes 
Must win battle. We just named the podcast. I say this a lot, but I'm going to say again, I absolutely love that concept. I love it so much I'm going to steal it and I'm going to identify what our Must Win Battles are in my day job, and then we're going to go from there. And if you're a pacifist, you might just want to mute us for about 20 seconds. Of course, the military has given us a lot of language we use in business from company and campaign and battle and fighting for market share, all that kind of stuff. So you can listen again, pacifist. So our job as marketers is actually kind of overtly offensive. Normally, obviously there's a defensive mode sometimes. We talked about that with Geoffrey Moore, the must win battle.  

 
26:13 
Dom Hawes 
I think getting that clarity of focus is a really interesting way of breaking down silos.  

 
26:19 
Georgina Gilmore 
It really is. And I think it creates an environment where people feel quite excited and positive about doing something because it feels like you're given license to think again creatively and differently about approaching something because it is a battle. And you've got to be smart about how you're going to do this. And you can’t hang around navel gazing, looking at numbers too much because otherwise something bad might happen. Okay, so how are you going to move quickly? Smart, work smartly together and really feel like it's corny, but a winning team. People love winning and feeling like they've achieved something together. And even if all the results aren't there, at least they've had a go and done something and learned from stuff.  

 
27:01 
Dom Hawes 
There are always small wins. Even if you don't get that big hairy goal you've always made. Small wins.  

 
27:05 
Georgina Gilmore 
Absolutely. There's an opportunity for marketers to actually take the lead on a lot of this stuff.  

 
27:11 
Dom Hawes 
Oh, quick break. Now, Georgie and I had a little rant at this stage about the issues that competition between departments create.  

 
27:18 
Georgina Gilmore 
I'd love to get rid of job titles.  

 
27:20 
Dom Hawes 
Job titles. Me too. But I really want to make this.  

 
27:21 
Dom Hawes 
A non ranty podcast.  

 
27:23 
Georgina Gilmore 
Job titles are rubbish.  

 
27:25 
Dom Hawes 
And we have talked about these things before, so we're going to gloss over that. Just bullshit.  

 
27:29 
Georgina Gilmore 
It is bullshit.  

 
27:29 
Dom Hawes 
And let's not pick up that issue.  

27:32 
Dom Hawes 
Let's just look at some of the causes.  

 
27:35 
Georgina Gilmore 
I wonder whether the whole tech thing has almost created this division between functions somewhat.  

 
27:42 
Dom Hawes 
An interesting view. So my view generally is the opposite, is that pre technology we needed departments because everything happened slower. A geography mattered then, which it doesn't now, so it made sense. And also, even when there was technology back in the land days, look it up if you're under 30. But back in the land days, you didn't have the ability to share data, to share information. Well, I suppose you could have had a WAN (wide area network) look that up too. But we didn't have availability of cloud systems like we do now. So it kind of made sense that sales operated in an environment on its own, that marketing operated an environment on its own, because the systems that if they were there, that were underpinning the activities were discrete, there was no connectivity between them. Now there's loads of connectivity.  

 
28:28 
Dom Hawes 
We don't even need departments, job titles, we need none of that. And actually the most progressive businesses are reorganizing around squads rather than hierarchies.  

 
28:36 
Georgina Gilmore 
I would say that squads are what existed years ago.  

 
28:39 
Dom Hawes 
Did you?  

 
28:39 
Georgina Gilmore 
Yeah, absolutely. You're just pooing another one of my. Sorry, Dom. And actually, I would argue the best form of communication is talking to people. We all know that so much gets lost in Team’s, Slack, et cetera. And it doesn't necessarily make you faster.  

 
28:56 
Dom Hawes 
None of it. No, it slows you down.  

 
28:58 
Georgina Gilmore 
It slows you down. And I think there is a massive place, obviously for a lot of automation and tech, but it shouldn't replace the fact that go and talk to somebody, pick up the phone and talk to somebody, walk down the hall, as they say, and actually find out what's going on. Dare I say it? Many, many moons ago, in the early ninety s, I was a smoker, right? My bosses always loved me because I knew what was going on in the business. She'd find out everything in the smoking room or wherever, okay? You'd find out what was going on in the warehouse, what was going on in HR, et cetera. People spent more time together.  

 
29:39 
Dom Hawes 
And Smokers was where all the cool people hung out.  

 
29:41 
Georgina Gilmore 
Absolutely.  

 
29:44 
Dom Hawes 
Disclaimer is a filthy habit and only morons do it.  

 
29:47 
Georgina Gilmore 
But I think being inquisitive, being nosy, being curious about stuff meant that actually you understood and people wanted to work together to do stuff. So yes, the tech is there for a reason, but I don't think it completely replaces actually how we operate as teams, as squads together.  

 
30:07 
Dom Hawes 
I don't think it does at all. I'm not even sure it supports it, if I'm honest. I think it puts barriers up at the moment, and I think more humanity, I think is needed. And that's at a time when we're actually seeing more computing power coming in, of course, and more people thinking that AI is going to be the solution to all their dreams in the way they thought the platforms was going to be the solution.  

 
30:26 
Georgina Gilmore 
And we're not going to talk about AI.  

 
30:27 
Dom Hawes 
We're not going to talk about AI. Thank you. I am a big believer and a big advocate in it for certain things. We do loads of stuff about AI and other shows, so I'm not going to come on to that today.  

 
30:40 
Dom Hawes 
OMG. I so nearly dived headlong into organizational design in that part of our conversation. But we have got a whole episode on how evolutionary organizational design theory can be embraced by marketers coming. That sounds great. Professor Steve Morlidge is going to join me in the hot seat for that. So remember to subscribe to this podcast to make sure you never miss an episode. Now I'm kind of glad I didn't get sucked into that rabbit hole, because our conversation so far has thrown up a few really interesting themes for further exploration in my spare time. First off, how technology and marketing can be a bit of a double edged sword. So tech, while it's a boon for efficiency and of course, data analysis, it can also promote reliance on automated solutions at the expense of original thought and creativity.  

 
31:29 
Dom Hawes 
And there's a risk here that this boxes marketers into rigid models, stifling innovation and killing creativity. And I think that's the wrong way around. Like tech supports us, we don't support the tech yet. Next up, I think that frameworks and given knowledge, we kind of need to think about those, because when there's so much change around things like benchmarking studies, frameworks and authoritative studies, they can kind of feel like sanctuary. But as Georgie highlighted in our chat, we've got to be suspicious of rigidity that fails to capture the nonlinear nature of customer behavior and also, of course, market dynamics. But no one knows your business better than you. And while benchmarking studies might inform us, we should be highly skeptical of knowledge we're given by others.  

 
32:19 
Dom Hawes 
We also talked about the importance of integrated objectives and collaboration, and I think I'm going to make that a theme for me this year. It's so important that our marketing objectives are aligned with, connected to, and measured against the broader business goals. One of the outcomes of the obsession with measurability is that the actions that create the data points, they kind of become objectives in their own right. That's a perilous path for us marketers to pursue. But unless we can correlate our activity directly with success that's meaningful to the wider business, we risk making ourselves less and less relevant. And by the way, that goes for agencies too. In fact, it's especially true for agencies like make your work matter by measuring your input to outcomes, not the outputs you create.  

 
33:12 
Dom Hawes 
That was a bit of a mouthful, but what I'm saying is focus on the business outcomes, not the shiny things that you create. That neatly leads me to the last part of today's discussion. Let's head back to the studio.  

 
33:26 
Dom Hawes 
How do we bring back the opportunity for marketers to shine and genuinely be part of the strategy discussion in their businesses?  

 
33:35 
Georgina Gilmore 
I think heads of marketing and CMOs need to be having the conversation with the CEO. Now I'm hearing it's starting to happen. Okay, we'd say we're customer centric, but let's just kind of do it now. Let's really look at our existing customers. There's too much focus on so many companies of chasing new business the whole time. And the outrageous thing is, they have no idea what's going on with their existing customers. And you'll know, Dom, and lots know. You've had Geoffrey Moore's of this world, et cetera, recently on the podcast that your existing customers are. They're your lifeblood, okay? And it's criminal, actually, lots of companies just don't bother talking to them. So they sign a contract, and then you never hear from them until day 364. And then it's, are you going to renew with us again? And nothing in between.  

 
34:30 
Georgina Gilmore 
They're so unloved. I actually don't even like the word customer satisfaction. I don't think that's enough just to satisfy a customer. I think you should be delighting your customer.  

 
34:39 
Dom Hawes 
Okay.  

 
34:40 
Georgina Gilmore 
And actually something, when I worked at Vodafone, they were particularly good at thinking about surprise and delight for customers. And not just consumer customers. I'm talking business customers here. And actually, one of the things I know we did really well within the organization was if a new big customer for a big bank was porting across to Vodafone, we had a whole team of people, actually, that was part of the marketing function, who would pitch up there and would help with a whole porting experience and handhold every single one of those employees, should they need it, through the experience. And they'd be there for the first two or three weeks from the customer.  

 
35:21 
Dom Hawes 
So the difference between satisfaction and delight, in my book is experience. What you're talking about there is amazing experience for the bank employees.  

 
35:30 
Georgina Gilmore 
Yeah. And I think customer satisfaction is hygiene. Does it work? Table steaks, tables, does it work? It's nothing. And that's okay. But would I really ever buy into you again? You have to delight. And it's that kind of, that moment of truth. It's the time where when you call the call center, they don't just solve the problem. They go above and beyond almost. It's quite surprising.  

 
35:55 
Dom Hawes 
But not by saying, is there anything else I can help you with today? Whoever invented that line needs to be shot.  

 
36:01 
Georgina Gilmore 
Absolutely. And also, unfortunately, some of the metrics that call centers are on is get you off the call, AHT’s, et cetera. That doesn't align to, do you really care and love your customers? And if you really care and love your customers, you won't care how long you're on the phone. If they want to talk to you about what they're doing that day, let them talk about it, because they will love you. And I think a great brand that I'm sure we hear about a lot on the radio at the moment and a lot of advertising is Octopus Energy. I mean, people don't like energy companies. I've worked for an energy company. People don't like them. Certainly not at the moment. Octopus, their customers love them, and they've capitalized on that. So the whole proposition is about how much their customers love them.  

 
36:45 
Georgina Gilmore 
They've got real customers on their radio ads talking very simple. Your service is brilliant.  

36:51 
Dom Hawes 
So they're understanding their customer psychology really understand it. So one of my problems with marketers is how polar most of us are. It's either this thing or it's that thing. And when it comes to existing customers versus new customers, the right approach is of course both. Just because you're chasing new customers doesn't mean you should ignore your existing customers. And if you go after your existing customers, it doesn't mean you don't need new, because you do.  

 
37:13 
Georgina Gilmore 
Sometimes your existing customers, you choose to lose them.  

 
37:16 
Dom Hawes 
That's very true.  

 
37:17 
Georgina Gilmore 
And again, when you look at sometimes the profitability of the customers from a CLV (customer lifetime value) perspective, and again, customer lifetime value, cost to serve, et cetera, are they profitable and actually are they the right customers for your business? And I think you have to be brave about that.  

 
37:33 
Dom Hawes 
I think it's interesting about Octopus is the key to winning your new customers.  

 
37:38 
Dom Hawes 
Is your existing customers completely.  

 
37:39 
Dom Hawes 
And what they've obviously got is they understand the psychology of their market very well. And so they're just putting them on there to say, do the biding for us. And I think many B2B organizations, if they knew their existing customers better, they'd find it easier to win new.  

 
37:53 
Georgina Gilmore 
I think some of the best content ever is customer references. Right. And I really advocate that with CMOs and clients that I work with. Oh my God, please just get some more customer references. Another initiative that I think was at Vodafone, I've done other companies, were able to demonstrate through having a really brilliant machine that we built for a customer reference program. We're able to say the value of that. And actually it wasn't the, we've written so many case studies. It was the fact that were able to match customers, to talk to other prospects through the buying process, to actually speak to them directly. Perfect.  

38:32 
Dom Hawes 
Brilliant.  

 
38:32 
Georgina Gilmore 
So when they're at that bid stage where things are a bit hairy and they're talk to another customer, we're able to make that almost like matchmaking. We're able to say this has helped deliver this much more revenue this quarter because we've had so many more customers on the customer reference program that should be marketing driven. I don't see that happening so much these days. There's a few. I've got a customer video, I've got this.  

 
39:00 
Dom Hawes 
That's a real shame because it's so powerful. I use that in M&A. When we've gone out to acquire targets in my day job very early on, I give them exposure to other companies that have joined us, warts and all, because that transparency also speaks to trust. And it's the same with customers. If you're making a major bid and you say you can speak to any customer of ours that you would like, then, and show that you have nothing to hide, you're going to be ticking all of those behavioral boxes that need to be ticked about, oh, my God, is this the right company? It's very risky. Price suddenly starts to become less important because guess what? You're laddering up your trust scale massively. So it sounds to me like the solution is this. CMOs do lunch very well.  

 
39:38 
Dom Hawes 
So CMOs basically need to take the CEOs out to lunch and have a conversation about a few things. One, we need to focus more on our customers. We need to stop thinking about customer satisfaction, start thinking about delight. How about this? How about the CMO going to the CEO and saying, we need to pick some Must Win Battles. That's what I want to talk to you about at lunch. What is the defining factor for us that's going to make us succeed this year?  

 
40:01 
Georgina Gilmore 
And the CMO should be driving the business strategy, the one, three and five year plan for the CEO. Okay. And I don't know in many corporations who is doing that today. I know that in past companies I've worked at marketing again, were leading that. I don't see it so much today. And I think this is where CMOs need to kind of be courageous now and say, I believe that we should be driving that, or at least working with a head of strategy.  

 
40:31 
Dom Hawes 
Is there a show not tell thing going on here? I always believed, certainly in my entrepreneurial career, you just do stuff. You don't wait to be given permission. If you want to do something, you get on and do it. And if you're doing a good job at it. I was about to say you get noticed, but you don't because actually you got to push yourself forward a bit. But if you want to take part in strategy discussion at a business, start doing it.  

 
40:53 
Georgina Gilmore 
Yeah, just show up and do it and drive it. Who's going to tell you off for it, really, quite frankly.  

 
40:59 
Dom Hawes 
Get back to your MQL’s. You've only delivered us 49 MQL’s. We've already flushed 48 of them down the bog. You need to deliver another 30 or you're fired.  

 
41:09 
Georgina Gilmore 
Oh, my God. Don't. If I didn't hear the word MQL again, it wouldn't be a moment too soon.  

 
41:15 
Dom Hawes 
Obviously I know what it stands for, but I'm not even sure what it means.  

 
41:18 
Georgina Gilmore 
Yeah, don't go there. Dorm.  

 
41:20 
Dom Hawes 
No let's not go there. Let's not go there. We said we're going to keep it positive. Okay. So look, I think 24 is going to be an interesting year for marketers in B2B because I think the market is going to be a little bit glassy. And we got two major elections this year. Although, did you know this year there are more elections around the world than in almost any other year ever?  

 
41:37 
Georgina Gilmore 
Really? How do you know?  

 
41:39 
Dom Hawes 
There's a Wikipedia page.  

 
41:41 
Georgina Gilmore 
Have you believed something that you've read?  

 
41:43 
Dom Hawes 
No, I have actually researched it using AI. It's probably made up. No, but I was looking at, because we've both got UK and Us elections, this mean, you know, generally markets slow when there's an election because everyone gets a little bit terrified. I think we know the outcome of both elections already, unfortunately. So we may see things slowing a bit earlier. But while I was researching that and thinking, oh, where else are there other elections? So there are elections in North Macedonia this year.  

 
42:09 
Georgina Gilmore 
Really?  

42:09 
Dom Hawes 
Yep.  

 
42:10 
Georgina Gilmore 
And how is that going to impact marketing, do you think?  

 
42:12 
Dom Hawes 
It won't impact marketing, it'll impact me in my day job because we have a unit there. But at the same time, there are elections all around the world this year, in all sorts of countries. And how that affects marketing is there's nothing that delivers uncertainty more than an.  

 
42:27 
Georgina Gilmore 
Election because it's change.  

 
42:29 
Dom Hawes 
And also it's one of the four pillars of your external analysis of your pest, and it's all change. So, in fact, in this country, maybe it's not change because everyone's a sort of slightly different flavour of the other. So maybe we should trade through against that rather long sort of pseudo ranty but very waffly backdrop. Being positive, where's the opportunity for CMOs in the year ahead?  

 
42:52 
Georgina Gilmore 
Put their brave pants on, be courageous. And like you said, just do it. At the end of the day, a lot of companies I see CMOs who are just feeling so drained by the environment and the unrealistic expectations that are there. And it's frustrating for them because they know the kind of the right thing to do. And I think it's about forming that closer relationship with the CEO to say, here's what I'm going to drive forward now with my must win battle, which is we're going to delight our customers, we're going to drive our customers towards here. This is how we're going to do it. This is what the impact is going to be. And it's about having a different conversation about increasing revenue for the business and leading that conversation rather than being told.  

 
43:39 
Dom Hawes 
That's a big one. Lead it.  

 
43:42 
Georgina Gilmore 
Why not?  

 
43:42 
Dom Hawes 
Don't wait. So my advice would be this. Take a week off.  

43:46 
Georgina Gilmore 
Why? Take the week, take a week off.  

 
43:47 
Dom Hawes 
Get some rest, sleep a lot, get your head really well sorted, then come back and be a dynamo and.  

 
43:54 
Georgina Gilmore 
Listen to some Unicorny episodes whilst you're off.  

 
43:58 
Dom Hawes 
Apparently. I heard the other day that all the best CMOs in the world listen to Unicorny.  

 
44:03 
Georgina Gilmore 
I'm sure that's very true.  

 
44:04 
Dom Hawes 
I know. So there you go. Georgie, thank you so much for coming to see us. As always, it's been really good fun to hang out, and I'm sure we'll see you again here soon.  

 
44:11 
Georgina Gilmore 
Thanks, Dom.  

 
44:16 
Dom Hawes 
Well, there you have it. The wonderful Georgie Gilmore. Full of fun and smart stuff, too. We started today looking for a blueprint for the future of marketing leadership, and we found the stuff you might expect. Strategic insight, customer obsession, the courage to innovate. As marketing leaders, our mission extends beyond the traditional boundaries of marketing. Our voice must be heard in strategy because it's our insight that helps shape the strategic direction of our businesses. And that was the core of our discussion today. For me and my must win battle on this podcast this year is to ensure that each and every marketing leader sits down and engages in strategic discussions with CEOs and senior executives. Now, I like the part of our chat when we discuss the shift from.  

 
45:06 
Dom Hawes 
Customer satisfaction to customer delight.  

 
45:09 
Dom Hawes 
And I know the whole exceed expectation things. It's a bit cheesy, but it's so important.  

45:15 
Dom Hawes 
Those in our industry who are actively.  

 
45:18 
Dom Hawes 
Engaged in customer experience design probably have a lot to say about this. Now, if that's you and you want to share and you want to come on the podcast and talk about CX, get in touch. You know, one of the things I'm loving about Unicorny project is the people I get to meet. Georgie is a great example. She's such fun, but she really knows her onions too. Now look, I hope you enjoyed today's show.  

 
45:40 
Dom Hawes 
Only a short wrap up today because.  

 
45:41 
Dom Hawes 
I don't think we needed much. If you enjoyed it, please refer a friend.  

 
45:47 
Dom Hawes 
That's all we have time for today.  

 
45:48 
Dom Hawes 
I am now off to the bunker to write down my own Must Win Battles for the year   

 
45:53 
Dom Hawes 
See ya. You've been listening to Unicorny, the antidote to post rationalized business books. I'm your host, Dom Hawes. Nicola Fairley is the series producer. Laura Taylor McAllister is the production assistant. Pete Allen is the editor, and Ornella Weston and me, Dom Hawes, are your writers. Unicorny is a Selby Anderson production.