Three themes for the future of marketing

As I write this arti­cle for the last time in my cur­rent role (I am the out­go­ing chief exec­u­tive of The Mar­ket­ing Soci­ety), we’re enter­ing yet anoth­er week in lock­down.

While no one would deny it’s been both chal­leng­ing and sur­re­al for us all both per­son­al­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly, through the dark times we are see­ing the shin­ing lights of new oppor­tu­ni­ties and hope through­out our glob­al com­mu­ni­ty and beyond.

Like many, we have been focus­ing on a ‘new kind of nor­mal’ with par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on the well­be­ing of our teams, which is ever-more cru­cial right now. And through that lens we are recog­nis­ing the human­i­ty in every­thing we do.

Through piv­ot­ing and refram­ing we’ve found new ways of work­ing that have led us to become more con­nect­ed as a glob­al com­mu­ni­ty than ever before. We are shar­ing and learn­ing from our friends and col­leagues all over the world and it’s been an uplift­ing and pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence.

Nev­er have we had to be so agile. Many of us tran­si­tioned from an office-based busi­ness to work­ing from home overnight. I am a self-con­fessed dig­i­tal Lud­dite, but yet now feel strange­ly empow­ered by embrac­ing new tech­nol­o­gy and accept­ing a lit­tle per­son may join vir­tu­al meet­ings.  And it’s OK.

So, to mark Earth Day in April we decid­ed to host our first tru­ly glob­al con­ver­sa­tion fea­tur­ing mar­ket­ing lead­ers from sev­en of our hubs in Hong Kong, Sin­ga­pore, India, Dubai, New York, Scot­land and Lon­don.  As I spoke to our par­tic­i­pants one thing became abun­dant­ly clear, they were all incred­i­bly opti­mistic about the future of our indus­try and each oth­er.

There were so many fas­ci­nat­ing insights so I thought I would share three themes that emerged.

Inno­va­tion

There’s always been a ques­tion in our indus­try about the rel­e­vance of mar­ket­ing in the C‑suite so it’s time to think less like a mar­keter and more like an own­er. Now is the time to encour­age brand loy­al­ty so we need to inno­vate at pace and lis­ten to our cus­tomers.  To make things hap­pen we need to seize every oppor­tu­ni­ty – be brave, be bold, be unafraid to take risks and try even the cra­zi­est of ideas.

Pur­pose

Pur­pose has been a buzz­word in our indus­try for some time, but now its role couldn’t be more impor­tant. Now, more than ever, mar­ket­ing is being put on the spot, we need to focus on what best serves our cus­tomers, not what’s the eas­i­est thing to do or the most lucra­tive. Cus­tomers will not for­get how brands treat­ed them and made them feel in these dif­fi­cult times – we have to show kind­ness and do the right thing.

Look for­ward

We all need some­thing to strive for and the most impor­tant role for us as lead­ers is to give our teams the dream. We’ve already learned so much from this cri­sis – it’s time to use our learn­ings to our advan­tage, to rethink and rein­vent, and we will come out stronger.

I am a big believ­er that when we all act togeth­er, we can vast­ly improve the well­be­ing of each oth­er and of our plan­et. Towards the end of last year, we decid­ed our theme for 2020 would be ‘Braver Togeth­er’. Who knew then that this would be so rel­e­vant just a few short months lat­er.

It’s time to visu­alise our world after COVID-19. What do you want your sto­ry to be? I know what I want mine to be and I plan to make it hap­pen, and togeth­er, have a big­ger impact.