Marketing skills and company culture

Chapter 3 Marketing skills and company culture

There’s no question that our channels to market have changed over the years. But have our skills kept pace? And are we adequately preparing ourselves for the future? Chart 13 implies we still have work to do, with up to half of respondents saying they could be better across many of the key skill sets. We seem to lack confidence in our digital, data and social media skills, yet we have the most expertise in traditional advertising, despite that channel receiving less budget and focus this year.

IN THIS CHAPTER we will take a closer look at marketing skills, as well as discussing the changing culture of financial services.

Inhouse skills: outstanding or outdated?

We compared the responses of those that said they would spend more on specific channels this year with how they felt their inhouse expertise stacked up. As Chart 14 shows, there appears to be a significant skills gap across most channels, other than traditional advertising and brand. But despite the apparent lack of confidence in their skills (between 40% and 50% said they could be better in content, digital marketing and advertising, and social media), few plan to outsource delivery.

ROUNDTABLE VIEW: Marketing skills

We asked our panel of senior marketers to discuss this potential gap in key marketing skills. Is it a problem? Why does it exist? What can we do as an industry to address it?

Attracting new talent and keeping them

We need to be braver and recruit experience from outside the industry, otherwise the same people and the same ideas keep circulating. We also need to find a way of attracting young, creative people with new ideas, but our industry suffers from a reputation of being staid and boring as we continually battle with regulation and governance. It also comes back to being able to take creative risks. Without that mandate from above, we’ll struggle to attract and keep new talent.

Training and development - the first thing to go

Under-resourced teams are busy trying to get the job done and simply don’t have enough time to prioritise their own learning and development. This then leads to a tendency to ‘do things because that’s the way we’ve always done it’ as marketers lack the head space and knowledge to come up with new ideas.

The future for marketing skills is unclear

We’re caught between where we are now, and where we could be in the future. We know huge change is coming, but what will the marketing teams of the future look like? What will the roles be in the future, and what will be automated? Perhaps the automation of some of the more mundane tasks within financial services marketing will free people up to become more strategic and creative again?

The role of the agencyWorking with agencies has changed considerably. There’s more collaboration, and many clients have agency experts sitting with them in the office. This partnership approach could be essential as we approach a period of rapid technological change. That said, senior marketers need to be careful not to silo their teams in BAU, while agencies are brought in to implement the new, innovative campaigns and initiatives. In-house teams also need to be upskilled and motivated.

Agencies should be focused on helping businesses grow capability, rather than doing it for them.

Bradley Gamage, Publicis Sapient

A changing cultureWith 44% of respondents citing company culture as one of the biggest issues facing financial services businesses, we asked our panel of experts to discuss their key cultural challenges.

ROUNDTABLE VIEW: Cultural challenges

The younger generation have different demands of the workplace

Millennial marketers are demanding different things from the workplace. They’re less driven by money and more likely to be attracted by interesting and creative roles. This makes it increasingly hard to attract and keep the best talent since financial services isn’t known for being ‘sexy’.

In general, millennials want a better work-life balance, and they want to be able to have fun at work. They are also schooled not to be risk takers. They are the generation that could be publicly shamed through social media for a lapse of judgement or making a mistake, which has made them naturally adverse to doing something wrong.

Organisational change through acquisition and consolidation

As businesses in our sector merge with, or take-over, other companies, so the established and healthy culture of an organisation can become diluted or even lost altogether. Constantly having to re-invent can be exhausting and demotivating.

Short-term thinking

As we’ve discussed in previous chapters, the financial services industry is guilty of taking a short-term outlook, demanding immediate and positive results. This is stifling creativity and is also in danger of delaying the adoption of new technology to the detriment of the customer.

Protectionist culture

Layers of governance means senior marketers are finding themselves in too many meetings, dealing with too much bureaucracy. Decision making is being increasingly upwardly delegated as fear of doing something wrong infiltrates from the top down.

We need common sense management. Trust people by giving them guiding principles instead of rule books. Let people make decisions (and mistakes). Empower them.