110. Marketing: the strategic powerhouse many businesses are missing with Lisa Quest

I'm a huge advocate for marketing because I've seen the power of getting it right. Many professional services firms probably suffer from this, particularly those that are partnerships, is the partners view themselves as marketers.

And I think the absolute best thing a marketer can do if you're speaking to your leadership team is understand how they're comped and measured. And if you can talk to me about how you can impact the metrics upon which I am graded, then all of a sudden you have my attention, right?

If you come to me and talk about for from your perspective as a marketer, you have less of my attention.

Hello there, unicorners. I hope the year started with a bang for you and today, boy, have we got a treat for you.

Because we are diving deep into an area of business success that is often overlooked and that is marketing's role as the ultimate translator and growth driver. So here's a question for you. What if marketing wasn't just a department that designs creative campaigns or spins data?

What if marketing was seen as a core pillar of the business that bridges leadership's goals with real world execution? Now, that might be your reality already, if so, top job. But for many of us, it's nowhere near reality.

Because we all know marketing is much, much more than just a creative playground. It's the engine that aligns business fluency, client insights and leadership priorities into a seamless growth strategy.

But as we've learned over the life of this pod, too many organizations are missing out on this kind of untapped potential. We're simply consigned to the promotional P. So today we are going to show you why and how that could and should change.

Because in a minute, you will be meeting the extraordinary Lisa Quest, partner head of UK and Ireland and co head of Government and public institutions Europe for global management consultancy firm Oliver Wyman. And together we are going to unravel three powerful ideas.

First, we're going to look at how marketing becomes the translator between financial goals and long term strategy.

Second, we look at why building resilience in marketing teams is not negotiable for surviving resistance in the kind of traditional business structures that we live in day to day. And finally, we're going to explore the overlooked goldmine of tailoring value measurement both for public and and private organizations.

Now, today's nuanced. It's practical, but it might just change the way that you think about your marketing team.

Because we're also going to uncover how these ideas all link together to reveal a deeper truth, which is this business fluency that's the secret sauce. When marketers speak the same language as the C suite, they stop being cost centers and start being growth multipliers.

And add in to that a healthy.

Dose of voice of the customer, long term vision, things like that, and suddenly marketing isn't just at the table, it's setting the agenda. So grab your earbuds. I'd suggest you probably grab a notebook too. This really is an extraordinary interview.

It's a must listen for anyone who wants to redefine their marketing team as a strategic powerhouse. Let's get right into it.

Thank you for having me. I'm delighted to be here. Well, we're going to have a good chat today and I'm very excited because.

I think in the hundred or so.

Episodes we've done, I think you are our first non academic author marketer. It's the first time we've got some from like the leadership side of the business to come and talk to us about marketing. Oh, thank you. And I think you were referred into us by a colleague of mine who'd seen you talk at a Propolis event.

Yes, I did a fireside chat with Joel Harrison at the Propolis event and it was fantastic. We talked about how do the marketing departments talk to your CEOs every time.

We have one of these interviews, as you'll know unicorners, we have a conversation before we get in the studio and we sort of say what the theme's going to be. I think we've understood that. We're going to talk about things like breaking down silos. We're going to talk about the ROI dilemma.

It's something I go on and talk about a lot. I'm a bit boring about it, but I'd love to hear your view as someone in leadership on how marketing justifies value.

We're going to talk a little bit about long term, short term. The broad theme I think probably is going to be about how marketing needs to move itself a bit upstream.

Stop thinking tactically, start thinking strategically.

Let's start then thinking about marketing's role in strategy and breaking down the silo somewhat because my observation certainly over the duration of this podcast and when I came back into marketing actually I took a break mid career and went out into management myself. When I came back into agency, I was quite surprised to see that marketing as a function had sort of slightly been sidelined.

And in many businesses it was seen as a kind of supplementary or an add on something that oh, we better tell marketing they better do something rather than being like embedded into the rest of the business or part of the planning process. Your, I guess your observations are going to be guided very much by who you are, where you've come from and, and obviously your role.

Why don't we start.

I'd love you first off to give me a bit of a perspective on that issue and then maybe tell us a little bit about you, where you started, how you trained and all that kind of stuff.

There's two observations that you've just made which really resonate both with how we run our business, but also I think marketing and professional services, which is marketing needs to come more upstream and oh, we need to tell marketing, right?

So we were very much at the place at Oliver Wyman where we would develop a bunch of ic, we would be speaking to a bunch of clients, we would be having an event and then at the last minute we'd be like, oh, we need to sell marketing, somebody needs to come and capture this. And we've really started to go on that journey, I think, and really professionalize the function and get it upstream.

So the biggest thing for us is getting marketing to come upstream, working with client development and strategy for the business. Actually think about how are we packaging this all together.

And I think the further upstream you can get the marketing team and the more involved you are in early stage client development and in strategy setting for the whole firm, the better it is because then you become a top issue for your CEO and you can be on their kind of top three agenda.

And your route into believing that is not through marketing. So you're advocating for marketing, but you're not a marketer. Talk to me about your training background and how you got to where you are.

Exactly. So my route through the firm has been purely on the consulting side.

So I started in our capital markets team as a consultant, went up through that, became a partner, became the head of our government and public institutions practice, and now I'm the managing partner for the UK and Ireland and I'm a huge advocate for marketing because I've seen the power of getting it right.

And when we're working and we bring marketing properly upstream in some of our client development, the multiplier of that on the business is enormous.

So I know we'll get to the ROI dilemma later, but the ability to enhance the activities that we're doing is so much more powerful if marketing is involved in helping us shape it because we're a lot of nerdy academics in some ways. And I think marketing teams, when they are engaging with us earlier on, are able to say that is fantastic for like your very nerdy view of the world.

But if you want to broaden your horizon or open your aperture, you need to start thinking about X or Y. And if they can shape that upstream, it creates a much better content platform, it creates a much better client platform.

And then I've seen just the multiple effect of that. And I think that's why I've become a huge advocate of marketing, especially as I've become more senior in the firm. And do you think you're training as an economist gives you a particular view on marketing or the outcomes from marketing?

It's a good question and I think it does. It gives me a very. I mean, my training as an economist, I think, beats into you at an early stage, like the need to quantify everything in the world.

And so I always like to be able to measure the specific value of things.

And that has helped shape my view on marketing both in terms of saying, listen, there are some things around just brand equity or halo effect that we won't be able to quantify, and you need to calm down your little economist brain on that. But also I think it's been helpful in the conversation two ways to help their thinking around.

Actually, there are things that we can start to put a quantification framework around, if not specific points of quantification.

And that's been really helpful as we've engaged some of the rest of the business, because I think as an economist, I can end a huge believer in marketing. I can help provide that bridge. So when you're talking about quantification frameworks, are you talking specifically about things like halo effect or brand equity?

Halo effect and brand equity are part of the quantification framework.

But also, how do we start to more directly tie the spend that we have on marketing for specific events, for specific publications, to specific client revenues, or at least thematic revenues. So to my view, when I talk about a quantification framework, there's parts of it that will just be more qualitative, right?

But we can go along the spectrum of things to say, listen, we did X and Y and therefore we've had this success with this client that we've never been in before, or we've been able to expand this account that we were really working on. And I think it's those things bringing it together.

There's this belief that, you know, there's even John Durst book about it. You know, what you measure what matters.

And if you can't measure it, it doesn't matter, you know, So I think it's Very encouraging to hear someone in, in leadership who is an economist saying that actually some of the fuzzy stuff's okay too.

You have to meet your leadership where they are. And this is one of the things that I talk about all the time.

I think your CEOs, your leadership teams are incredibly busy and they've got like their agenda full.

So the more that you can meet your where they are and if you have a highly quantity leadership team, find a way within that quantification framework to say, listen, I can't quantify these things. I can quantify these things and therefore, you know, you can get their attention in a different way. So I think it's, I'm a big believer.

I've been brought over as a big advocate.

I probably wasn't always like this in my career and I think I've become a big believer because people met me where I was at the time and have kind of pulled me through.

And do you think professional services, I mean, do you think that's a different, potentially different business than let's say a SaaS business or a physical product business? Does it, do you think that gives you more freedom to accept some of the fuzzy stuff?

I think being a professional services business is definitely a double edged sword.

So I think number one, it does probably give you some permission to accept some of the fuzzy stuff because the brand halo effect and we're used to working in kind of intellectual capital businesses and you can't touch and feel it.

But the, the biggest problem, at least we've had historically, and I think many professional services firms probably suffer from this, particularly those that are partnerships, is the partners view themselves as marketers.

And we have many examples across the long history of the firm where because you are an expert in your field, you have therefore decided that you are an expert in every field. And so we have too many times in the past said, well, I'm an expert at this and I sell this all the time, so therefore I'm the marketer of this.

And I think it's harder sometimes for people to take that genuine expert advice from somebody who is a trained marketer. So double edged sword for professional services firms.

And that makes me immediately think about people because the market is that you do have, are going to have to be robust, resilient and very flexible.

I would imagine in your drive to, we're going to talk a little bit later about moving marketing upstream, but on the people side of that, have you had to change the profile of people that you look for slightly to enable that to happen?

You Hit the nail on the head when you talked about resilience and professionalism of the individuals.

We've definitely gone on a journey in terms of increasing both the profile of the individuals, but also the amount of funding that we're giving to the, to the function and making sure that that's also getting more profile on our leadership teams. Right. Marketing didn't used to have a seat at the table for the leadership teams. Yeah.

And that I think was very telling with respect to kind of how we, how we valued and how we, you know, saw the function. Now it's very different situation and I think the firm continues on that journey.

Let's move towards ROI or certainly let's move towards measurement. Never move towards our way. Return is a good subject. Whether that's an ROI is always my issue or whether we measure return in a different way.

But before we get there, one of the reasons that marketers feel they need to talk about ROI is they constantly feel the need to justify their existence, their activity and their spend. Spend. We understand there has to, there has to be a reason for a spend. Obviously from a leadership point of view.

What about marketing causes you sleepless nights?

Oh, there's a few things about marketing that cause me sleepless nights. I think.

I mean, first is obviously downside risk management and especially in a professional services firm where people are talking to the press and they could say anything.

We rely on the marketing team and function to make sure that everybody who is out there is, you know, of sufficient quality of, you know, briefed and on the right messages for their, for their piece and making sure that, you know, we don't have somebody in one part of the business who says something detrimental about another part of the business, especially because there are different and competing sectors. So I think the one thing that keeps me up at night is downside risk management.

The one thing that I think is gives me the most hope though is when marketing are able to kind of shape and help us really support those kind of tier one pieces.

And so especially with the kind of professionalism and the increasing marketing support that we've had lately, like seen a real multiple on the business. So I'd say sleepless nights are related to downside risk management.

Most hope though is related to the ability of marketing to act as a positive multiplier on like our key growth vectors. You keep bringing the positives back into our conversation.

I'm a bit of a bear at.

The moment because I see what's going out in the world and I'm feeling a little bit Bearish. But you're bringing me back to positive all the time, so thank you for that.

Well, particularly in kind of economic downturns, though, I think we very much used to view it as discretionary spend.

And I think the more you can get leadership's mindset away from marketing being a discretionary spend that can easily be cut to bump kind of ROE for the year, then that's a. That's a mindset that you need to get people into. And that's why I keep coming back to kind of the multiplier on the growth vector. Yeah.

Because it needs to be seen as a future driver of revenue. And to create that link quite explicitly in the quantification framework, I think is really important. Can you talk to me a little.

Bit more about that from.

From a leader's point of view? Obviously, the marketers are looking, if you like, when they're talking about quantification, they're looking inside. Inside out.

You're at the other end of that telescope, looking outside in. That was a really bad mixed metaphor, but you know what I mean. I'm with you. You're looking at it from the other side.

You've mentioned this phrase multiplier effect a couple of times, which we've heard about on the podcast before. Talk to me a little bit more about what that is, how you see it, how you measure it.

We measure this by getting the activity upstream. But I think if I could take you on a bit of a journey, kind of from where we've come from to where we are, where we were from.

It was almost marketing trying to push it on the business and saying, hey, if you do X or you do Y, this will be great.

And we flipped the narrative a number of years ago and said, listen, marketing is a scarce resource that we are going to reserve for our highest, most productive partners and practices who are driving these growth factors.

And it became much more of a pull from the business to say, oh, wow, okay, if I get these guys involved earlier on, I can see how I can go from X client growth to Y client growth, or X industry growth to Y industry growth, and that's where we are.

So if we look at some of our future growth vectors around AI or around particular sectors, how are we getting the marketing team in and upstream, and then how are we tying that in to the business performance? And I think the absolute best thing a marketer can do if you're speaking to your leadership team, is understand how they're comped and measured.

Right. Because if you understand how your leadership team are comped like, what are the metrics that I am graded on every year by our global CEO?

And if you can talk to me about how you can impact the metrics upon which I am graded, then all of a sudden you have my attention, right? If you come to me and talk about from your perspective as a marketer, you have less of my attention. In many organizations, that might not be something that's very easy to find out because lots of organizations aren't so transparent.

I think it is.

And even if you as a marketer, as a senior marketer, right, went to your senior leadership on a peer to peer basis and said, listen, I want to serve you better. Tell me how you're Compton graded, what's your balance scorecard that you're measured on and how can I help serve you in that agenda?

And I think if you flip that conversation all of a sudden it becomes how you help your leaders achieve their ultimate goals.

Particularly if you think about a lot of the leadership teams will come up via that finance route and so being able to help you quantify on that side is really helpful. And then you're speaking their language and it's something that they understand a bit more.

So we're going to need to talk about the I word, return on investment. My belief is it's the wrong, that phrase is the wrong phrase to use to measure marketing, but it is a bit of a shorthand and it is a term.

It's a term finance people understand. My challenge is that I think it's better used with fixed assets rather than, or certainly assets that have a return over a fixed timescale.

And we know that lead times are really long, certainly in any business to business relationship and any relationship based sale, I guess, which, you know, you're in professional services, we're in business services, same thing. You know, our own lead time could be two, two and a half years long. My challenge is how we measure the return on the money that we're spending.

Actually, look, this, this podcast, for example, it's not very heavily branded, but of course it comes out of our own, our marketing budget and measuring this podcast is, you know, when I go back to my board is a hot topic. My belief is that it works in the long term. People listen to it, they like what they're saying, they like who we're talking to.

And that has that kind of positive effect. From a leadership point of view, though, how patient do you think leadership can be? And therefore do you think, do you think ROI is appropriate?

Or, or do you think I'M talking complete rubbish. I don't think you're talking complete rubbish, but I think there's also a pragmatic answer to that question as well. Right.

And so the pragmatist in me is saying, listen, if ROI isn't the right measure, but it is what they value, how do you bridge them from ROI to what you think is the right measure? And that's what I would focus on. Right.

And that's what we focus on in terms of long term value creation.

I think we have a long history of having marketing in a sense, and so we can look at where have we changed tactics and what is the differential in performance, taking into account all the market conditions and things like that.

But I think, and this is my point about meeting people where they are, if you have a leadership team that really values roi, find a way as the marketing team to bridge it.

And if you have a leadership team that really values quantitative metrics, find a way to bring some quantitative metrics into those discussions, even if you don't totally believe in it. So I totally believe in quantitative metrics, by the way. Yeah.

The problem with ROI is it incentivizes the short term stuff. And you mentioned something just then. You were talking about the correlation because you've got the length of time to look at it.

You can analyze the correlating effect that the changes you made had. And my firm belief is you judge the success of the marketing by the success of the business, kind of, not the other way around.

And that means that if you only index on immediate return, I think you miss the opportunity to do some of the work that you're now able to do because you've been measuring over a longer term. I may be splitting hairs. I'm not sure. I get a bit obsessed about this.

I think it's right though, because so many people really care about roi. But I think the right pragmatic solution is to take ROI as a measure and then break that down into what I would call a quantification framework.

But give yourself the spectrum to say this is what we measure on the short term basis. I can measure the number of people who listen to this podcast because you have a delightful Canadian on it.

Or I can measure the number of hits it gets on a social media or whatever that is.

Figure out what you can measure in the short term, figure out what you think is the long term brand equity and the long term halo effect and the long term things that require multi year measurement and then show them to say it's the yes and approach Right. It's the improft approach to ROI measurement. You say, yes, here's how we think about ROI and breaking that down and then kind of walk them into your.

Into your framework. That's what I would do.

And the more you can link that back directly to, again, how they're measured and how they're incentivized, the more share of mind you have. And then if you call it roi, it doesn't really matter, but it's a framework. Exactly.

I just learned something. I just learned something. There we go. That's now become the new unicorn mantra, by the way. Thank you for that, Lisa. Not a problem. What about marketing departments that say, oh, we're a profit center?

I think that is their version of trying to bridge their leadership team. Right.

I think nobody wants to be a pure cost center. Yeah. I would not say, you know, I think we are a profit center is an interesting way to phrase that. I think I would say I'm a revenue multiplier.

Right. And what you definitely don't want to be is discretionary cost.

And so I think anything that moves it away from that and brings it closer to the business makes sense.

I think, you know, whether you want to call yourself a profit center or whether or not you want to call yourself a revenue driver, bringing yourself upstream into how are you acting as a multiplier of the business is what I think matters. I'm learning so much today, Lisa, thank you very much.

Well, this is why at professional services firms, the partners who are totally non expert in what we do can just really wax lyrically about fields that are not our own.

I think that's why it's really interesting. Interesting though, having someone who, who hasn't.

Hasn't come through marketing to talk about the same issues that I've been speaking to markets about for 100 or so episodes. Because I get quite bent out of shape over this stuff.

And I'm forgetting pool rule number one from Peter Went when he came on, which is no one really gives a shit about you or your product, which in if you're a marketer is. It's not about the marketing, it's about the outcome. Exactly. And so I get obsessed about whether we call it this or whether we call it that. No one else gives them monkeys. Yeah, could.

So I need to get over it. Basically.

I think you should care about it because it's what. It's how you are motivated and driven.

But if you're trying to capture the attention of a senior leader of the business, put it in their Terms because they don't care.

And that's different depending on the demands of the business. I spent yesterday at a private equity conference which was really good fun, but you know, there they have their five year cycle. Right.

And I ended up talking to a really nice CEO of a business who has become a bit of a friend. He's in year four of his cycle, has just lit up a new advertising campaign that he knows will return, but it ain't going to return in time. Yep.

So he can't do it because he's in year five of a value, a four of a value creation program. Public and private have very different dynamics. I guess is is where I'm coming at from there.

And public companies, the perceived wisdom is that public companies think a lot shorter term because they're driven quarter to quarter.

I wonder whether you can talk to me and help marketers understand some of the pressures, the pressure that leadership faces and that with a lens on marketing and the activity that we do, when you are part of a public organization and you have that quarterly demand and. I think the observation is, is right. Like publicly listed companies have very strong quarterly results pressure. Right.

Which every one of the leadership teams of a publicly traded company will feel very acutely.

And I think as a marketing team, it's not just that quarterly earnings pressure that is what you need to optimize for, but also the long term growth trajectory. So yes, we have quarterly earnings pressure, but equally we have long term growth, growth pressure.

So because you need to show strong and stable growth over those quarters. Right.

And so I think this comes back to the conversation we were having earlier around understanding what incentivizes your leadership team or how they are measured and managed and speaking to them in that language. So it would be completely out of kilter to speak to a kind of a five year hold private equity fund, about a 17 year strategy.

Equally you have to speak to the management of a publicly traded company about the quarterly and long term growth.

And to pitch something that is hugely kind of in quarter cost in a quarter where you know you're having downward revenue pressure or you're having cost pressure would be completely counter to everything that your leaders are thinking about.

And so the more that you can speak to them in the language that they're used to, around what they're expecting in the same way that their CFO or their CRO is speaking to them, just the more share of mind that you have for them. Right.

And so I think finding their language and speaking in that and not where I, where I Used to get lost, especially with marketing, was when marketing used to try to speak to me as marketing. Right? Yep.

When they speak to me as like Kayleese, this is what you care about and this is how marketing is a multiplier of that. And they speak in my language, then I understand.

And I think it would be lovely to live in a world where all the leaders could, you know, more deeply understand marketing and could speak in your language. But the reality is your leadership teams probably aren't going to get there and you can get there faster to speak theirs.

My prejudice, if you like, or my bias was that when dealing with public company think quarter to quarter. I hadn't twigged about that long term consistent growth message too, which is a really interesting observation.

And it does make actually the process of being a marketer in a public company noticeably different than one that's either private equity back from a traditional pe, house, family, office and or still privately owned. I think that's really interesting.

But I think the other really interesting you've just expressed really well is we're told all the time as marketers that we have to change our language to speak to the board.

And again, I've been resistant in the past about that because people, when it gets polarized or dumbed down, you hear things like, don't go and talk to one about brand because the, the leaders don't want to hear brand, they want to hear reputation. And that's just kind of dumbed down, euphemism, garbage.

What I'm hearing is that if the marketers take the time to understand your commercial priorities, they then need to work out how what they're doing supports you personally in doing so. Actually, they're kind of inculcating some of what they're doing.

Their job isn't to teach you how to do what they do, it's to help you understand why what they're doing is relevant. Is that, is that kind of right? It's not even just what they're doing is relevant, but it's their job to show me how what they're doing will act as an accelerator for future growth.

Okay.

Right, okay. And I think it's like speaking a slightly different language.

But if they, if the marketers come to me and they're speaking in kind of marketing, complex marketing language, I kind of almost tune out a little bit because it's not one of the top three issues that I've got on my brain today because I'm thinking about X or Y or Z. Right.

But if they can come to me and put marketing speak in the context of my top issues. All of a sudden they have a bigger share of my mind and a bigger share of my time.

Because I think leadership teams, we were discussing this earlier, especially in the post Covid zoom world era, are more pressed for time. Right.

And so I think one of the things that I like is when they come and we're having a conversation and it's already in the language that my brain is tuned into for how I run the company. And that to me is really important just because then they can bridge into the marketing priorities. Right. And it's not that you ever want to dumb it down, but it's almost like a translation into something that I'm speaking.

What you don't want is that long string of three letter acronyms that don't really mean anything and even the marketers get confused about. Right, exactly.

Yeah. Which brings us on neatly to the concept of how we move marketing upstream. It's something you've done successfully.

I wonder whether you can talk to me about maybe some practical steps that marketers can take to help them get them and their teams and their activities taken a little bit upstream in their companies.

So it's something where we're definitely still on a journey. Right. So I think we're doing it much better than we did before.

But the practical steps, I would say, for marketing, especially in a professional services firm, are genuinely understand how and where your firm makes money. So in all of our different sectors, we make different levels of margin, we serve different types of clients, they have different types of needs.

So step one is like genuinely understand the P and L of your organization. How do we make money? How do we spend money? What do we look like?

The second is spend a lot of time with the business development team to say, okay, this is the client strategies that you have. These are the areas that we're targeting. These are the growth vectors. Bring in your expertise.

You'll see loads of stuff as marketers that the business never sees. Right.

From different conferences or different agencies. And so bring your expertise into that and don't be a taker of that. Be a thought partner, right? To say, listen, we heard you.

These are your growth vectors. This is how the market is seeing that.

This is where we think we can be an accelerant and get involved in those conversations early and upstream and then stay in there. So don't just leave.

Once the business development side is done and you've gone off and done the work, stay in touch with the project teams as well or with the delivery teams to say, okay, how was this delivered? What worked well, what didn't? Like speak to clients. Right.

So don't just speak in the business, as a marketing team, you should also be speaking to our clients because what they'll say to the marketing team is often different than what they'll say to the partners with respect to how we served them or how we showed up or is what we were doing there consistent with our brand?

Like there's a lot of different things that I think you guys can unpack that maybe we don't unpack in the same way as a, as a, as line partner because we, again, we think differently. And so I think your connection in there is really important.

I would hope that marketers are speaking to customers.

I would hope in many businesses now I think I'm wondering whether maybe professional services is slightly different, but in product businesses that I've seen marketing still a bit divorced from strategy.

And it's still a bit divorced from, I mean, even, even where they're using account based marketing, there'll be a, there'll be a set of, a set of accounts where marketing is involved because they're doing that work. But they may not be upstream enough. They may still be thinking too short term.

I mean, I think for me the implication of taking marketing upstream is you're asking them to think a lot longer term as well about strategy and direction and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, absolutely.

How do you equip your teams? Because that's not, it's not easy to find a marketer.

I don't believe in the current market below a certain age just because of the way marketing's developed over the last 15 years. That's got a broad enough, a broad enough view of the world of marketing and the way the business works.

I think there's three just practical things that you can do both as a marketer or a business leader.

The first is they may not have the particular skill set now, but if you have highly motivated, intellectually curious individuals that are leading those functions, they are able to learn. Right.

So the first part is just raise the level of literacy on both sides. So, you know, strategy team, leadership team, who are setting the strategy. This is what marketing does. Marketing team. This is how we set a strategy. Right. And kind of raise the level of literacy on both sides, involve them in the conversation and have them have a seat at the table. Right.

And even if it's rocky the first couple of times, like have them have a seat at the table so that they can at least See how it is formed. And then third is just create that feedback loop to say, okay, this worked really well this time, this didn't this.

And then you bring them into that conversation. So I think yes, you're correct. Like not all marketers will have that ability to set strategy. Now.

Not all leadership teams are particularly good at setting strategy. Now.

That's very true. Yeah, it's very true.

I mean, I think my, my observation on marketing people particularly, it's not a slurp because I am one, it's that these, these days, particularly in business to business, people come straight into a functional role and they tend to grow in those functions. Whereas in the past before there was so much stuff going on in house, people would come into a very generalist and broad role and specialize later.

And I think now the specialism happens a lot earlier.

And my concern for, if you like, I'm gonna sound like a grandfather here, but the youngsters coming through is have they got broad enough experience when they get into that role where they're a kind of head off person? Have they got enough of broad enough experience to be able to serve leadership properly? But I think you answer that.

Well, actually that you, that actually you, that's the role of leadership, right? To understand where the gaps are and then fill them.

I think if you're a leader that's come up through a specialized path and you feel like you don't have that, then you have absolutely every right to talk to the members on your team who are doing the paths that you didn't come up as. And I think a sign of a really good and secure leader is someone to say I'm an expert at this and I have no idea about this.

So you person who's 10, 20 years my junior, can you just give me the 101 on this?

And I think a leader of a marketing function that is secure in themselves and ready to serve the business would be having that conversation very willingly.

Let's talk about leadership because earlier on you mentioned a lot of people in leadership will have come through a finance background. And one of the wishes of many people who are following a marketing career is that marketing might lead to see the leadership too.

And it's not unheard of.

I was at a conference yesterday, very, very successful CEO, been through multiple transactions in pe who started out as a marketer, but it's not common.

I wonder whether you have a view you might be able to share with us about the lack of marketing representation in leadership positions or why it might be that marketers might not be coming through into senior leadership roles. More historically, if you look particularly at publicly traded companies like the Path to Power was P and L role, possibly kind of CFO to then CEO.

Right.

I think marketing, it reflects the fact that marketing hasn't historically had a seat at senior leadership tables and has been viewed as more of a discretionary cost. Coming back to earlier discussions.

So I think the more that we tie marketing to kind of future revenue generation or kind of acceleration of growth vectors, then they get that seat at the table, they're involved in the strategy setting, they're seen as a genuine business leader and then you have a credible shot at those top roles. I think most of the major firms now also have chief marketing officers. Right. I'm trying to think of one that doesn't.

And so it now is an official seat at almost every top table. But there are a number of seats at that top table that doesn't ultimately lead to the top job.

And I think the more marketing can bring itself into the discussions around the future strategy shape of the business and be seen to be driving those, then the more credible you are at running the top job.

And I'm also now seeing a link between the ROI and or quantification framework you're talking about and the relevance of that to marketers too. Because obviously the top job, the EO job or the managing partner job, a lot of that is going to be numbers, finance, math driven.

That's just the nature of the job. So the more marketers can be versed in those numbers and the economics of a business, the better.

I think just as a marketer, even if you're not naturally a quantity person, being able to name off the top of your head, you know, last quarter, last year, sales, revenue, key top clients, sales from key clients. Like you should be fluent in the metrics of the business that the leadership team are measured on. Right?

Because then you're appear in that conversation.

Whereas if I'm having that conversation and you don't know who our top clients are or the differential in the margins that we have by different sectors, then I feel like I'm having a conversation with somebody who's in just kind of support and not actually a peer that's driving and leading the business. So I think you've got the seat at the table, own that seat at the table to drive the business. That requires a level of business fluency.

Get out. Understand the metrics that your senior execs will be carrying in their heads and make sure you're carrying it in Your head as well.

Yeah, that's a really good tip. Because a number of corridor conversations that I have with other senior partners on the leadership team about those metrics is very high. Right.

And so it is the numbers that everybody is carrying in their heads and your leadership teams will be carrying their in their heads all the time.

And if you can have those micro interactions where you have all of that information as well, and you can have those more frequently, then you're seen more as a strategic partner in the business.

Well, you are also. Because those are the levers. Right.

Because the numbers that you're holding in your head and your understanding of them will give you the levers that you can use to affect the performance of the business. Exactly. Yeah. Wow, Lisa, thank you very much. That's a really, really good, really good set of observations, I think for anyone in marketing.

I massively believe in the function. I think there's a huge amount of value in getting this right for professional services and I was delighted to be on. So thanks for having me. Boom.

There you go. Huge thanks to Lisa for coming to see us and for sharing her wisdom. Let's take a very quick review.

I've got three key takeaways I think.

For you today from the episode. Number one is marketing as a translator. Remember, marketing isn't just about campaigns or content.

It's the bridge between leadership's financial goals and long term strategy.

Now, if you're not working your marketing team hard to be a translator across business functions, you're probably leaving serious opportunity and value on the table. Secondly, resilience, it's not negotiable.

Whether it's resistance from traditional structures or navigating market volatility, strong marketing teams are built to endure. Because resilience, it's not just about surviving.

It's about finding a way of really succeeding in the face of change and pushing the boundaries of what marketing can do for your business. And finally, but by no means least tailor how you measure value in your business.

Not all ROI is created equal and you will know if you listen to this podcast. I talk a lot about my disbelief of ROI as a realistic or relevant measure, but I think Lisa might have changed my mind on that.

Today, public companies often focus on short term gains and private organizations sometimes have a luxury of taking a much longer term view. So you need to tell your metrics to match the expectations that your board has. That's the secret weapon for staying relevant and effective.

Now, here is your homework. Today, take a moment to reflect on your own company.

Now ask yourself Is marketing truly at the table where strategic decisions are being made, or are you still stuck in the promotions and campaigns lane?

Now, if it's the latter, have a think about what's holding you back and your team back from repositioning marketing as the driver of strategic conversations of growth. Think about it, talk amongst your team, and let that be the spark that redefines your approach.

As always, thanks you very much for tuning in to unicorny. I've talked a lot at the end of this one, so I'm not going to say any more. We'll see you next week.