With personal stories, lessons and recommendations from a panel of industry leaders, this event provides perspectives, practical ideas and guidance for marketers at all stages of their career. Whether you want to learn more about going freelance and setting up a consultancy, or to understand how to promote yourself and reach the top, ‘Lessons from leaders’ is filled with insights to help you plot your marketing career path and manage talent during one of the most dynamic times in modern economic history. http://goo.gl/7rWytg

1. from leaders
LESSONS

3. Share your takeaways from tonight’s event using
#CIMlessons

4. Context – the changing world
of marketing and marketing
careers

10. So what are we doing
about it?

11. from leaders
LESSONS

12. Anthony Fletcher
CEO
Graze.com
Jim Cregan
Founder & CEO
Jimmy’s Iced Coffee
Johan Jervoe
Group CMO and Client
Strategy Officer
UBS AG
Karim Klaus Emara
CMO
Arup
Kenny Jacobs
CMO
Ryanair
Kevin Roberts
Executive Chairman
Saatchi & Saatchi

13. Mauricio Vergara
CMO
Bacardi North America
Nina Jasinski
CMO
Ogilvy & Mather UK
Raja Rajamannar
CMO
MasterCard Worldwide
Simon Sproule
CMO
Aston Martin Lagonda
Orla Mitchell
VP and CMO
Wrigley
Alex Naylor
Director, Marketing
Communications
Barclaycard

15. TAKING
STEP
THE FIRST

16. Credibility
• It’s essential to take on roles and responsibilities that take you outside
of your comfort zone
• It’s not about faking it – it’s about learning fast on the job and not being
afraid to be out of your depth
• Credibility doesn’t come from titles, it comes from experiences
• The discussions you need to have, with yourself as well as your line
manager, are about the gaps in your skillset
• The marketing career ladder has a lot of rungs, but those who are
prepared to learn rather than simply leap will climb it much faster and
stand a greater chance of reaching the top
Credibility

17. Collaboration
Collaboration
• Key to making a good first impression – irrespective of level
• Listening is critical, especially early on
• But caution, there’s no denying the drive and ambition which sets
marketers apart – instincts which can inspire others
• It’s a question of knowing when to flex those muscles – part of this is
understanding the culture of the organisation
• In an organisation where there is an aggressive agenda to run things
round quickly, you may need to use your elbows when you come
through the door.

18. In a former job, those first few weeks of being a
CMO saw me meeting and speaking individually
with all 600 partners in the company.
It was my way of bringing people together,
helping them to trust me and allow them to feel
part of the marketing process.
Karim Klaus Emara
CMO
Arup

19. I wanted them to tell me what they felt about the
company’s direction, what needed to be done and
what advice they had for me.
It was the first time anyone had spoken to them
with such honesty and it meant when issues
arose further down the line, we could solve them
together more easily because that bond of
ambition had already been forged.
Karim Klaus Emara
CMO
Arup

20. Relationships
Relationships
• Target relationships from day one – invest time in the few, not the
many.
• Figure out who can help bring you up to speed and help with quick
wins in the critical first 100 days.
• Identify key players in the organisation you can partner with to make
change happen and have an impact.

21. I’ve learnt invaluable things from all of them [great
bosses and poor ones].
But perhaps the greatest advice I ever received
was from my grandfather.
‘You’ve got two ears and one mouth so make
sure you double your effort into listening.
Johan Jervoe
Group CMO and Client
Strategy Officer
UBS AG

22. How to
colleagues
cope with

23. Leadership
Leadership
• Tensions often arise not because of personal issues but a lack of
clarity and context – and that falls to leaders
• If you want to get the best out of people, spot problems before they
mushroom
• To do that you have to set a clear vision and ensure everyone has a
defined role in a structured marketing plan
• Tension isn’t avoidable though, especially in a marketing environment
where creativity sometimes necessitates heated debates and
impassioned arguments
• It’s down to leaders to ensure a framework exists to channel these
behaviours positively, rather than seek to eliminate them

24. Nina Jasinski
CMO
Ogilvy & Mather UK
There’s a fine line between being creative and
getting personal – I like the former, but the latter
needs to be nipped in the bud.
You manage people by making the company’s
culture clear from the very outset, not by
restricting their natural behaviour. People need to
be free to express themselves, but the ethos of
the company has to be understood and adhered
to.

25. Proactivity
Proactivity
• Avoid the tensions a linear way of working can create, where activities
happen sequentially in a chain. Bring colleagues together centred
around the customer
• Identify internal dependencies outside marketing, bring them into the
rationale and drivers for your initiative before you’re dependent on
them to help make it happen
• Be clear on ownership and lines of authority. Consult and collaborate,
absolutely, but make sure everyone is clear how and by whom
decisions will be made

26. Balance
Balance
• It’s important for senior marketers to take ownership of the creative
process – consensus decision making can easily lead to chaos (and
tension)
• Collaboration is central to getting the best out of staff and ensuring the
office dynamics inspire rather than deflate – but decisions still need to
be made
• At the same time, having such a single-minded and direct approach
can inevitably lead to creative tensions, so it’s vital to tailor your
approach to the culture of the company you’re working within

27. I learnt a great skill that the Japanese call
nemawashi. Essentially, ahead of big meetings,
it was integral to solicit support informally in
advance.
In such a company, passionately challenging the
boss on his views about an upcoming campaign
might not be appropriate.
Simon Sproule
CMO
Aston Martin Lagonda

28. Positive failure
“Experience,” wrote Oscar Wilde,
“is the name everyone gives to their mistakes”

29. Seek advice
• Make sure you’re asking the right questions and are clear on what
you’re trying to achieve with the task at hand
• Find people who can counter-balance the passion and eagerness you
might have for a project, initiative or campaign
• You need ensure you have access to someone who’s able to look at
your ideas objectively and talk about the practicalities of doing
something or not… someone who can pull you down to earth
Seek advice

30. Fail fast
• Failure can’t be eliminated – it’s a fact of life
• The priority is not [just] to limit the impact of failure, but to ensure that
problems are spotlighted as soon as they occur
• Leaders play a key role here – being encouraging, not screaming and
shouting when things go wrong
• Managers and leaders must handle and deal with mistakes
constructively – not humiliating people, as this will only create a culture
of fear
• Finding ways to capture and share learnings – the good, the bad and
the ugly – will help your team to embrace a healthy level of risk and
innovation
Fail fast

31. Nina Jasinski
CMO
Ogilvy & Mather UK
We must remember that this is a very creative
industry.
We need an environment that encourages the
testing of ideas, learning from them and making
them better, so we need to create an environment
where failure is not to be feared.
And yes, that process needs to be fast. You can’t
let failure fester.

32. Learn
• Just as you don’t want to create a culture that discourages creativity,
you do want to ensure a culture exists that enables honest appraisal.
• Managers and leaders must avoid starting with determining or
allocating blame – this is secondary to understanding the issue and
setting the team up to learn from it
• Take opportunities to talk directly to customers to understand what
happened when things go wrong, for example pitch reviews or client
account reviews
Learn

33. It’s knowing how the whole ecosystem works,
being aware of what other departments are
contributing and not withdrawing into silos.
The way I have driven down my own failure rate
is to always be in a learning mode, not just in the
marketing department, but in other areas too.
Raja Rajamannar
CMO
MasterCard Worldwide

34. Marketing yourself

35. Honesty
• Honesty is the best policy; we all know that – but in today’s era of ultra-
transparency, there’s really no hiding from a touch of CV
embellishment
• Digital is essential to making the most of your talents, but while these
channels have the power to amplify, over-reliance on their influence
can be a mistake when it comes to marketing your own brand
• Don’t allow digital to rule the way you form your relationships – the
ultimate aim has got to be a deep and meaningful human relationship
• Rather than relying on a tweet or a blog a day, start internally – that
way your reputation and credibility will build itself, and there’s nothing
more authentic than that
Honesty

36. Mauricio Vergara
CMO
Bacardi NA
Marketers have an annoying tendency to take credit for a piece
of work that they weren’t solely responsible for.
Prove to me that you took the lead on a certain project, not in the
privacy of my office, but out there on your online profile.
At Bacardi, if we’re adding to our team, we always look at
people’s work before reaching out to them because these are the
people that we think make things happen.

37. There is so much drivel and noise, less is more –
that is how careers are built.
Over-exposure makes for a lack of authenticity.
Kevin Roberts
Executive Chairman
Saatchi & Saatchi

38. Tools of the trade
• We’re talking about marketers – people who best understand
marketing. We just need to apply these principles and tools to our own
brands
• For instance, you should only say something when you have
something worth saying
• As custodians of our organisation’s brand voice, we’d always shy away
from noise for the sake of it – so we should apply the same principles
to our own brand
• As marketers, we often fail to apply the tools of our craft to ‘brand me’.
What’s your brand personality? How does that permeate through your
social voice? How can you stand out – achieve differentiation and
focus in a competitive jobs market?
Tools of the
trade

39. I like to ask interviewees questions that I am
currently grappling with to see how they think, but
also to analyse whether they’ve done their
homework on our current thinking and the
company’s status.
I take people to the Graze warehouse and
change the environment into something informal.
This way you often learn more about them.
Anthony Fletcher
CEO
Graze.com

40. Get the full story
Available at the end of today’s event to
take away
Available online for CIM members from
this week
Join the conversation on LinkedIn and
Twitter using #CIMlessons

41. Where to find more
www.cim.co.uk/exchange
@CIM_Exchange