Post by Julien Marteau ✦ Marketing / Business Leader

Feeling inspired at the marcus evans Group CMO summit with fellow CMOs from Telstra, Allianz, Red Bull, ANZ bank, Virgin Australia, Mars Wrigleys, EY sharing their leadership lessons, challenges and the opportunities faced by Marketers today.   Some key take outs from the Panel discussion:   1.      Marketing Teams can be derogatively referred to as a “colouring-in”, support function. To shift this perception and gain in credibility, Marketing teams should “deeply understand the business, be more commercially minded than ever before and be a revenue driver” (Seb Brandt, CMO of Inghams Group Limited & Elizabeth (Libby) Minogue, CMO Virgin Australia). Well, this is very comforting as it has always been my approach throughout my marketing career: own the P&L, understand the performance and leverage the ROI of Marketing initiatives to accelerate topline revenue generation.   2.      Leadership today is about creating an environment where team members can thrive. I resonate with Natalie Truong (CMO of EY)’s aim to “help the Team find joy in what they do" and “create the next level of rockstars underneath to ensure a solid succession plan”.  As a true advocate for positivity & optimism in the workplace, I could not agree more: it unlocks creativity and commitment in Team members. Enabling and coaching my direct reports to step up and become leaders themselves is what I enjoy the most, I find it really rewarding.   3.      Diversity in teams in key: as the Marketing leader, you need to surround yourself with a diversity of people to open new perspectives, to constantly challenge you to look at different ways of doing things and to compliment skills between the thinkers vs. the doers in your Marketing team. Embracing variety of thinking, point of views and approach makes you grow as a more inclusive and open leader. Personally, this is something I have learnt to develop and continue to embrace on my leadership journey.   #marcusevans #CMOsummit #inspiring #leadership #Marketing #lessons #insights #newfrontier