This is my first ever blog. I wasn’t intending becoming a blogger, however the academy experience has been so valuable its made me overlook my technophobia to share my experience. My key thought today is about how fabulous it is to gain perspective from so many different experienced marketers. I ve had 3 mentoring sessions so far, all of which I ve walked away from feeling enlightened & inspired… here are a few highlights:
Elizabeth McGregor gave me some great advice on developing leadership skills and how important it is as you progress to invest the time to become ‘fluent in other fuctions’ and get a more holistic view of your company. Ensure you are able to have a discussion with the supply chain guys about the supply chain and ensure you know enough about the financials to talk fluently about the P&L.
Beth Broughton taught me that when you want to change/develop a behaviour, its not only about identifying what you are doing now and what you want to do differently (that’s the easy bit). The critical bit is focusing on how. You need understand your learning style and give yourself the tools to act differently. You effectively need to re-train yourself, learn new techniques and practice as you might when you learn a language. I m a process driven person and she taught me how to break my development down into a process, treating it like learning a new vocabulary. After a given situation, I now write down what I could have done differently, what I could have said differently and practice it – retraining myself to do things differently next time. Well I m trying at least!
Phil Rumbol offered some wonderful insight on getting the most out of the agency:client relationship. He believes the 3 key ingredients are clarity, honesty & respect. He encouraged me to spend time up-front with an agency exploring ‘what does brilliant look like?’ in the context of a new brief. Ensure together with the agency, you have a clear common ambition for the project or piece of creative before you start with the creative process. What other brands as a client:agency team do you admire? Review a reel of different ads together as a team to understand how each other thinks & evaluates creative. Agree the benchmark upfront – with a common appreciation of this, it makes evaluating the work much easier later on.
I think that’s more than enough today. Thank-you mentors. Its over-whelming to have such experienced marketers prepared to invest so much time & energy into supporting our personal development. I could write a novel, I ve captures so many words of wisdom! Anyone considering applying or nominating for next years scholarship – do it.
