APRIL 2005
CAREERS IN MARKETING

Today’s in-demand marketer: well rounded
and commercially savvy

The battlefield between marketers has now become a battlefield for marketers, according to Greg Smith AFAMI, director consumer and retail sectors with Hudson and one of the featured presenters at the AMI’s first webinar of 2005, ‘Trends in marketing and implications for the role of marketers’.

The webinar, held in March, focused on the career marketplace for marketing professionals through the expertise and experiences of Smith and of Luke Mulkearns, human resource director ANZ region, Cadbury Schweppes. The webinar was conducted through the online technology of Premier Global Services, which sponsors this AMI series. Members are able to participate in webinars from their home or work computer from any location in the world via the Internet and a standard telephone voice line.

Smith said that organisations were generally looking for marketers who were well-rounded and who had a strong commercial view on marketing strategies. “Marketers who are highly numerate and financially savvy are sought after, as are those who have experience developing products from concept right through to execution,” Smith said.

“The ability to sell your ideas, concepts and plans internally, including to the executive, is crucial, and local experience is highly valued. And in return our experience has been that clients are prepared to fork out the dollars required, but salary must match value.”

Smith said that of marketing roles for which Hudson recruited last year, 26% were either product or brand related, 19% were in marketing communications, 17% were marketing manager roles, 5% were senior marketing appointments, 10% were marketing researchers or analysts, and 14% were marketing co-ordinators.

Niche and targeted marketers

Although organisations were looking for well-rounded marketers, marketing practices were becoming increasingly specialised, creating niche and targeted marketers, he said. However, this did enable building of knowledge expertise and career advancement, with broader development opportunities often arising after achieving a required goal, typically every 12 to 18 months.

“The full marketing mix can be achieved over time to support long-term career goals to move either into senior marketing management or above and beyond into commercial and/or general management roles,” Smith said.

Smith also noted trends towards:

An emphasis on customer analytics.
The need to balance creative and analytical skills.
The need to link marketing strategy and campaigns to profit and shareholder return.
HR and marketing disciplines joining forces to leverage and extend employment brands.
Valuing of change management skills.

“It’s not just about getting results, it’s now just as important as to how you get them; that is, demonstrating corporate responsibility,” Smith said.

After discussing the key macro human capital trends that would affect marketing careers and all careers — the ageing workforce, smaller cohorts in younger age groups, the skills shortages, increased mobility, the changes in career structures, paths and progression, and the change in the ways jobs are found — Smith looked at a satisfaction capability model used by Hudson in selecting marketing candidates.

It covered:

Talent sourcing — which includes technical skills and discipline awareness/experience-based knowledge.
Development — which includes capability (behavioural competence) and attributes (facets that infer potential)
Career management — which includes motivational fit and career fit.

Some key marketing skill shortages

“Interestingly, we see some people giving up a bit of motivational fit for longer-term career fit,” Smith said. “The job may not be all they want at the moment, but longer term the organisation provides a good values match for them. Motivational fit and career fit lead to satisfaction, and they are pretty much impossible to train.”

What’s in demand in the marketing employment marketplace? Smith said that there were some key skill shortages. “Marketing analysts and senior analysts are in high demand, as are marketers with broad experience in innovation and new product development,” he said. “As consumer insights and innovation functions are becoming more popular within marketing teams, skilled Australian individuals are in strong demand.

“In specific sectors, we are seeing skilled shortages in the utilities, financial services and IT sectors, where a very small talent pool is resulting in quite fluid movement between each sector. Equally, FMCG is a tight labour market for those with sector experience. Historically, marketers have a well-defined career path in this sector, which is attractive to employers and therefore those in FMCG generally remain in FMCG for the long term.”

For those wanting to move into the executive suite, Smith said organisations were looking for strong, well-rounded candidates “who have spent time, figuratively speaking, sweeping the shop floor and strategising in head office”, consciously preparing for more commercially visible roles.

“Senior marketers who have successfully made the move into senior commercial roles have often experienced a range of industries,” Smith said. “This holistic approach to marketing, especially from a broader, strategic perspective, tends to set them aside from their single-industry peers.

“Importantly you need to be able to demonstrate the ROI of your marketing programs and be comfortable talking the language of the board. Smart marketers who don’t have a finance background are now undertaking professional development programs to enhance their commercial skills.”

Smith concluded with some important characteristics of career success for marketers:

Be aware of and have a written career plan.
Continually build strong networks internally and externally.
Make sure you bring others along with your plans.
Practical experience is powerful in marketing your own skills, and hands-on sales experience is valuable for all marketers.
Develop a broad set of skills to include strategic and analytical strength.
Know and understand the language of the board.
Be hungry to learn and continually develop yourself.

“Do not follow where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail,” Smith quoted as his final words.

Marketing and FMCG

The second speaker, Luke Mulkearns from Cadbury Schweppes, discussed careers for marketers from the point of view of a large fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company that employs a lot of marketers.

He started by asking the question, what would a FMCG marketer like in an FMCG employer? He listed a range of characteristics, but noted five in particular:

Career progression.
New product development opportunities.
Accountability, or above-the-line exposure.
Development opportunities.
Work/life balance.

“Each of those, depending on the time and the moment, are all there for each of the recruitments that we look at,” Mulkearns said.

“For Cadbury Schweppes, our recipe is for getting marketing people and particularly retaining them, because retaining them in our game is very difficult. We have a number of ingredients. Passion is absolutely paramount. We are very strong on values and culture. We are also critically interested in what we call value-based management. That is a discipline of thinking to get people thinking strategically in the most adding-value way. The final three are leadership capabilities, careers development and the basics.”

Mulkearns said Cadbury Schweppes had a “truly exciting” range of brands, although the competition in each of its markets was fierce. “So in our game passion is absolutely critical. You need it to be able to win. You need it to be flexible. You need it to actually make things happen in an organisation with so many competing forces and so many stakeholders.”

Value-based management

In its values, Mulkearns said the company valued openness, honesty, quality and particularly in its marketers, increasing social responsibility. This had come about in part because the Cadbury Schweppes portfolio was often seen as unhealthy when cited in areas such as obesity research. Culturally, the company wants its people to contribute, be accountable, and focus on teams rather than individuals.

Mulkearns said that the focus on value-based management provided the company with a common set of tools and techniques to develop and implement strategies that created or sustained the most value.

“Our marketers have a very strong need to drive this agenda,” Mulkearns said. “They are often at the forefront of thinking on new ideas, on where we actually push the most value-adding items within our business. Having and adopting a value-based management approach is absolutely essential if they are to win within our organisation.”

Mulkearns said the approach did have a financial underpinning, but that it was “very much about people. It’s about getting our leaders, it’s about getting our marketing leaders, to act consistently, getting them to act flexibly, getting them to act in an environment that actually says what are we going to do that increases the most value to our organisation.”

Cadbury-Schweppes marketers were expected to be innovative and to think strategically, but also to be able to lead the organisation in the way it thinks and works following the company’s leadership imperatives: accountable, aggressive, adaptable, forward thinking, motivating, growing people, collaborative, and living our values. “Many of them are what you would expect, but you will see as we move through them that in fact there is a very strong focus on our commercial social responsibility agenda,” Mulkearns said.

The company has a formal philosophy towards career development, based on a four-stage model from the work of Stanton Morris: early career, mid career, peak of career, and leaving a lasting legacy. “What are the footprints that you have left as you have moved through your career?” might well be chief outcome of the company’s career development process.

Coming webinar dates 2005: