Ben Slocombe is a commercially and creatively focused marketer, mentor and has built an extensive and successful career in CPG, particularly in beverages and specifically in alcoholic beverages. Most recently as a Director for Beer and Cider at Coca-Cola Europacific Partners Australia. He shares what attracted him to marketing, What attracted you to marketing, why too many marketers have short tenures, what makes a great marketing team and more.
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It just broke every rule book, every paradigm of what advertising’s about. On paper, that should never have worked and yet it’s brilliant. I love it.
Transcription:
Darren:
Hi, I’m Darren Woolley, founder and CEO of TrendyP3 Marketing Management Consultancy, and welcome to Managing Marketing, a weekly podcast where we discuss the issues and opportunities facing marketing, media, and advertising with industry thought leaders and practitioners.
Today, I’m sitting down with Ben Slocombe, a commercially and creatively focused marketer, mentor, and someone who’s built a successful career in consumer package goods, particularly in beverages, and more specifically, in alcoholic beverages. Most recently as the Director for Beer and Cider at Coca-Cola Euro Pacific Partners, Australia. Welcome, Ben.
Ben:
Thanks, Darren. Great to be here. Thanks for the invite.
Darren:
Well, it’s interesting looking at your career because you started off in mixes, you could say, at Schweppes Company or it was Cadbury Schweppes in those days?
Ben:
I did. I actually finished a BB majored in marketing, and my first role was with Coca-Cola Amatil, which was in sales. So, which I’d highly recommend for anyone who is coming through that part of their career, because I think ultimately, in marketing, regardless of your role, you’ve got to influence humans. You’re dealing with humans and you get great technique in that with something like a sales role at Coke.
I then, yeah, did join Cadbury Schweppes and worked on some famous Australian brands in beverages, a bit of Schweppes mixes and a bit of Cottee’s, Cottee’s Cordial. Everyone remembers the jingle; my dad picks the fruit that goes to Cottee’s.
Chocolate toppings, jellies, all those sorts of wonderful things back in probably categories that weren’t so impacted by better-for-you trends and all those other things that have probably retarded their growth over the past couple of decades.
So, saw Cottee’s at its height and got some great marketing experience to start my career there.
Darren:
And Ben, what attracted you to marketing because you’re sitting there at secondary school, you’re sort of the career advisors are saying you can do X, Y, and Z. You obviously, chose to do a course with a business focus and a marketing component?
Ben:
Yeah, it’s a good question. It was actually, I probably would say I fell into marketing in the respect that I think if you asked me in my final year at school, I probably wanted to do law and I’d got close to that mark, but didn’t get the mark I needed to do law.
And so, it’s the power of deduction. So, you go, “Oh, I’m quite interested in business then, so why don’t I use that as a fallback?”
And so, I probably arrived at uni on day one of a business degree going, “I think I’m going to do business, but I’m not quite sure what facet of business.” And it was probably, again, the power of mentors and tutors early on can have an impact in your career in the workplace as much as on the university campus.
So, I distinctly remember two fascinating lecturers that I had in marketing and they were ultimately great storytellers. And they were great at espousing the fundamentals of marketing, but they were able to apply their real-world experiences coming up through.
So, I had one talking about when I was a marketing director, I launched Bankcard in Australia years ago. And just a fascination of my goodness, this guy must be famous and he’s worked on campaigns where he makes TV ads and how cool is that?
And then there was some other great tutorials that I had around the power of advertising, how consumers work, how the psychological consumer behavior, the psychology behind it all unfolds. And I just became fascinated very early on.
So, I knew that was the path for me and probably that the finance modules at university early on also steered me towards marketing rather than the finance game, which I’m very thankful for, so.
Darren:
Well, it’s interesting, isn’t it? Because when you think about business, most people think about accounting, finance, maybe doing an economics degree. And then at the other extreme, you’ve got the Bachelor of Arts and you do something down there that you’ll end up in business.
But marketing really, in many ways sits between the two, doesn’t it? Because it’s ground in commercial realities, in that the role of marketing is really to drive business growth. But it’s also got that sort of the intangible part of the sort of psychology of consumers.
Ben:
Yeah, and you think about how marketing’s evolved and I’m probably talking about how my career has evolved over the past couple of decades, as much as the marketing discipline has evolved in Australia.
So, if I think about starting off in my career, I sort of sometimes shutter because I think it was close to a hundred percent gut feel intuition. So, it was who had the best idea around the table, who could influence the sales director and ultimately, get the managing director to agree? And then how do we roll it out through customers and through the sales force, and it was a little bit finger in the air, not a lot of science behind it.
And now, you compare it to performance marketing or some of the fascinating ROI models that are now out there, which are quantitatively backed, which quite analytical, quite directional from that perspective.
Darren:
Well, because in the last decade especially, the amount of data that’s available, that wasn’t there before, marketing was largely based on market research, which was hiring some company to go out and either door stop or phone up or color the people in the shopping mall and ask them a whole lot of questions. And that was your insights into the marketplace at best.
Ben:
Yeah, and there was nothing wrong with that, because that was probably all we had at the time. And I learn a lot about consumers sitting behind the glass after work, eating the Thai food or the pizzas with the marketing team.
And there is a time and place for that, but it it’s just evolved and it’s just changed and you’re right, Darren, the data and the manipulation of that data and the predictability of how consumers are going to behave based on the dataset in a business has changed the game.
And that’s reality. Now, interestingly, how you manage your data and the data strategy behind that is a real headache for every business I think out there. And anyone who tells you they’ve got it all sorted out, I think you just sort of question them.
Darren:
We haven’t found anyone yet that’s got it all sorted, but there’s certainly some that have moved quite a substantial way down the path because one of the problems is that there can be so much data and filtering through the wheat for the chaff is a real issue because you’re just overcome by thousands of data points, which is one of the problems.
Ben:
Yeah, and it’s a maturity curve that every business is going through. I’d say most are at level one, level two, which is my goodness, hasn’t the world changed? What data do we have? Is it usable? Is it useful? Who owns it within the business through to how do we automate, how do we then use predictability, and then how do we grow customer base or grow sales or demonstrate ROI, or help navigate the business complexity?
So, it’s going to be an ongoing journey and it’s certainly changed because 20 years ago when I was a brand manager, data was kind of like last month’s sales and now, it’s the engine room of a business in a lot of respects.
Darren:
And one of the other issues is that a lot of the data today is behavioral data. People talk about it, but it’s actually what consumers are doing largely online. And the part that’s missing from that is the piece of data that makes sense of why they’re doing it.
It’s really interesting that when you talk to, for instance, a performance marketer, they can tell you how many people clicked on something and how many people went through from a lead to a purchase.
But when you ask them why did they do that? They’re then back in that world of having an opinion or hypothesizing what are the underlying drivers. And still, the only way we can do that is actually ask consumers, isn’t it?
Ben:
Yeah, that’s right. So, you got the usage, but not the attitude, and you still need to understand consumer behavior from that. And predictability will only get you so far.
But I think as businesses do go on that maturity curve, I think you can’t lose sight of the intuition that still … I mean, I think most businesses have problems that they’re aware of. If you were to sit down with the exec team or the senior management and say, “What are the issues that keep you awake at night?”
And then I also think that most of those people that sit around that table would have hypothesis or on their way to solutions to help solve. And that’s before even turning on the Excel spreadsheet or anything in that regard. So, I still think that humans solve problems.
Darren:
Yeah, absolutely.
Ben:
And that we can’t lose sight of that in businesses.
Darren:
We are great sense-making machines. If something doesn’t make sense, the thing that human beings do really well and you’ve used opinion and hypothesis, but these are all words of just the way that we look at things and try and make sense of it, and we’ll throw out, “Well, here’s my opinion. Here’s a hypothesis of what could be working.” And it’s really important because it’s actually part of the creative process.
And I think that’s one of the things that business has been crying out for, is that need to build in creativity and because that’s where innovation and new ideas come from.
Ben:
Yeah, spot on. And I also think in a more complex environment with the pace which is faster, with pressure on results, with probably less resource in most corporations these days, let’s be honest, they’re fairly well-leaned. They’re not dripping with additional humans, sort of walking around wondering where can I help?
So, we’re in that environment and it’s high-pressure stuff. And I do think starting with the hypothesis of what the problem is to be solved is 70% there. You don’t have time to clean sheet a lot of these things.
So, use your experience, use your intuition, but make sure it’s fact-based and analytical when you’re applying the solution. So, I think that’s probably the model that I’ve adopted in the last few years.
Darren:
Yeah, and there’s a quote around that, which is everyone has an opinion, but if you don’t have data to back it up, then don’t bother talking because my opinion’s worth more than yours. And it sort of falls into that because you said earlier, everyone’s around the table, it was who had the strongest opinion or who …
Well, now it’s all about, you can have the opinion, but if you can’t back it up with some tangible evidence, then you’re a bit lost.
So, Coca-Cola sales, then you went to Schweppes, and then you made a leap to Lion.
Ben:
Yeah, and it was one of those weird things. I was happy at Schweppes and you get the phone call from the recruiter and you’re in your early 20s and “Ben, do you like beer? Would you like to go and work for a major brewery? And it’s down the road.”
And I’m thinking who in their right mind could say no? So, obviously, went through the process and started there. And I described as I grew up in my 20s at Lion and left in my 40s. So, probably-
Darren:
Yeah, you were there a long time. You were like what, 16 years.
Ben:
Yeah, had wonderful 15 odd years. So ,had a wonderful journey with Lion, and my marketing grew up and I grew up in my personal life alongside Lion. So, the best of some of the marketing years I’ve had.
And I think Lion, I wouldn’t want to comment on it today because I’m just not close enough to the business, but back then-
Darren:
At the time.
Ben:
Yeah, at the time, that was best-in-breed, blue chip brand management pedigree that invested in people, had a great culture, had great budgets, high profile brands, and you got to shine.
And it was a great culture that underpinned it and everyone got on well and everyone worked bloody hard, but you did the best for the business, and the business rewarded those that performed and those that behaved in the right way.
And that model still stacks up in my mind. That is a wonderful, sustainable model for any business to adopt. Now, it’s quite hard to create that from scratch, but it was certainly an existence at Lion whilst I was there.
And the other wonderful thing about Lion was in an era where a lot of the off shoring has occurred in marketing departments, it was the four Ps 100% in control. I used to joke, turn up to a barbecue and go, “If I want to change that bottle cap from blue to black, I can do that next Friday.”
And you’ve got control over the four Ps and that again comes with responsibility, but it’s empowering. And you also had great agency partners there as well.
Darren:
Well, because we live in an era when people talk about marketing roles being relatively short tenure. Everyone argues is it two years or three years? And they’re usually talking about CMO marketing director level.
But what is it about an organization that you can … because when you look at your career at Lion, you had in that 15 years, quite a number of really diverse jobs within marketing.
Ben:
Yeah, I think Darren, that’s the answer to why I stayed 15 years. So, I probably had six or seven different roles and a lot of it was career progression, which is wonderful and it’s nice to get that acknowledgement. But other times it was just fresh projects that were thrown away or business challenges or growth areas.
I certainly would say that over the course of the 15 years, there were a number of times where I was like driving home on a Friday night going, “Right, that’s it. I’m leaving. I’m going to find a new job. I need to go and do something different.” And every time I’d almost embark down that path, serendipity would kick in and I’d be thrown a new challenge in front of me at Lion. And so, I just went with the flow and swam with the tide and enjoyed all of the great experiences that I got there.
But I think I’ve always thought that there’s a sense of grass is always greener for particularly younger marketers. And I think it’s great for anyone to see a two, three-year minimum cycle on a brand. Year one’s really understanding where’s the brand at, diagnosis of performance, understanding consumer typologies, and the needs states and what business model is the brand operating in.
Year two, you get to create your own plans, but you’ve got to execute as well. So, it’s a two, three-year and people sort of lose sight of that and they jump a bit too quick and zigzag around. And I don’t know, like I think if you were to say if the marketer, Ben, the marketer 20 years ago, what would you say to him? I’d probably say to myself I think try and find a line and try and grow with the organization, which is a lot better than zigzagging around.
But you’ve got to get diverse experiences and you’ve got to get some fresh things thrown at you, hopefully, in role. And if you’re not, then you would consider leaving. But in my mind with the dynamic landscape we’re in, every role’s got fresh things being thrown at it because it’s such a complex environment that we’re navigating.
Darren:
Do you think it’s also because you had some pretty iconic beer brands to work on; James Squire, Tooheys, what else did you have? There was quite a few in that portfolio, weren’t there?
Ben:
Yeah, superb portfolio, great international brands. Yeah, whether it’s the XXXX, is Tooheys, Hahns, Heinekens, Corona there for a while, and then just the Little Creatures. And so, again, a great breadth of brands and budgets from hardly anything through to significant, huge budgets in the day.
So, yeah, it was an opportunity that I looked back on with high fondness and a lot of great friendships, and even to exist to this day in the agencies that I got to work with through there and yeah, very cohesive environment.
Darren:
Now, you mentioned agencies a couple of times, and I’m really interested in understanding from your perspective that relationship, because one of the things that we find in categories, whether it’s automotive or financial services, and even in financial services, banks versus insurance, versus Super, or alcoholic beverages, the beer category versus the wine category.
Marketers will often say, “Well, we’re looking for an agency and they’ve got to have experience in our category but they can’t be working for any competitors.” That’s the next line. It’s sort of counterintuitive. I often say to them, that’s like you want the experienced junior. You can’t get both. You can’t get someone with deep experience in your category, and why would you want that?
Ben:
I mean, I always had a view that I’d prefer to work with a select, a close number of agencies but bring them into the tent. So, they were sitting around the boardroom with us, trying to solve business challenges as much as writing the next copy or launching next year’s MPD launch, that sort of thing. They were trying to tackle business issues.
Now, easier said than done, and you don’t always get a brief. Sometimes it’s like we do need a piece of outdoor for Christmas and it needs to say X, Y, Z. And that goes with the territory. But I was of the belief that if we bring them into the tent, they’re a true strategic partner and you want to share where the business is at and what the issues are, and what competitors are up to and the category dynamics.
So, I understand that that also brings that oh, you want some depth of category experience, but if you work with someone and you open book it, and you are genuinely trying to get to know each other and collaborate on these issues, it doesn’t matter. Their transferable skills are in strategic thinking, creative development, in deployment.
And they’re transferable, whether it’s a car, whether it’s a carton of beer, whether it’s a banana, they can do it. So, it comes down to who do you want to work with, where’s the chemistry, and then bring them into the tent, and put value into that relationship. Because on a Tuesday night, in cold wet wintery conditions, you want them thinking about your business, not someone else’s when they’ve got the choice of discretionary effort.
So, that’s how I sort of would view the relationships I’ve had with agencies over the years as a bit of philosophical perspective.
Darren:
And that idea of bringing them into the tent, because obviously, that comes with a huge amount of trust, is the first thing. And I think you hit the nail on the head, you mentioned chemistry. I think chemistry is far more important than having an agency that knows the category or has experience in the category.
Because the other thing, people talk about certain categories get quite boring and there’s criticism of Australian beer. That for the last 10 years, it’s been sort of the same thing over and over again. Because when you learn the category, you don’t just learn how it operates, you also learn what’s acceptable and what isn’t. So, it’s very easy to fall into a rut. And I think that applies to any category.
Ben:
Yeah, it’s an interesting one, the commentary around Australian advertising in beer, has it weighed or not? I think that a couple things I would say about that is it’s quite difficult with regulations and I experience that at Blackmores, as much as in the alcohol industry.
There is a high degree of responsibility that needs to come with communication and messaging, firstly. And then secondly, I think-
Darren:
Well, yes, the regulations say you can’t infer sexual success.
Ben:
Sexual success or change a mood.
Darren:
And everyone needs to look like they’re over 21, not just 18.
Ben:
Yeah, over 25.
Darren:
Over 25, yeah. So, yeah, there are some rules but I mean, that’s like trimming the edges, isn’t it? I mean, I’ll give you an example; everyone in automotive says the best view of a car is the front three quarter shot. So, every car is shot that way.
And it’s like so why do all cars look the same? Because they’re all shot from the front three quarters. The same rules, these rules that pop up.
Ben:
Yeah. Oh, fresh thinking is incredibly important and sometimes, the CEO or the MD used to ring up and say, “Oh, we’ve had a change of personnel and they’re sort of tail between the legs.” It’s a bit of an ugly phone call and you’re like, “That’s fine.” Like get some fresh dynamic thinking on the account, great. Like away we go.
I think the other thing is, and this is probably a bit contentious for me to say this, but if you think about what are your favorite ads, for me, the Cadbury Gorilla ad.
Darren:
Oh yeah.
Ben:
It just broke every rule book, every paradigm of what advertising’s about. On paper, that should never have worked and yet it’s brilliant. I love it. The Sony colored balls down the San Francisco streets; they’re some of my favorite pieces of advertising.
I can’t tell you a great piece of digital advertising that springs to mind, and I’m not saying this is right or wrong — we’ve gone from relatively large impactful, high reach TVCs of which you used to do one or two every so often through to, we now do a hundred pieces of bite-sized content in seven second snips made for the mobile phone, and-
Darren:
The canvas has got much shorter, smaller, hasn’t it?
Ben:
And the power of the thumb, scrolling down the screen means that it’s pretty hard to stop someone scrolling that thumb down. And I can’t think of a piece of pure digital content that stopped me in the tracks and has been as impactful as Cadbury Gorilla or Sony color balls.
Now, I’m sounding like a dinosaur when I talk about this, but it’s part of the paradigm of what we are living and grappling with.
Darren:
The other way of seeing that challenge is that it is a challenge and marketing needs to think more broader in the way that we actually use these media. I think it’s become very easy to use social media or digital media as the default, but there’s some significant limitations.
And also, if you are not willing to make it jump out, if you’re not willing to push the boundaries, then it does quickly become more of that digital wallpaper that everyone’s falling into, which then puts it back on marketing and the agencies to really push those boundaries.
Because certainly, agencies will complain about not getting opportunities to really push those boundaries, and when they do, everyone celebrates. But the hardest thing … I guess, the bottom line for me is do you think marketers have become more conservative?
Ben:
I don’t know how to answer that, Darren. What I would say is certainly, the conditions are more murky. And you think about what we’ve gone through in the last two or three years, just the challenges in the world; is this a point in time or is this our environment forever? It’s probably forever.
So, it’s dynamic, it’s complex, it’s unclear, it’s uncertain. I alluded to the pressures on resource, whether that’s marketing budgets, whether it’s teams themselves, whether it’s the need for quarterly results earnings and that pressure doesn’t go away. Like that is our reality.
So, what do you need to do? So, you need end-to-end business thinking. So, you need to be able to have that seat at the table where marketing is demonstrating its worth. And the only way that comes about is if marketing is talking in financial metrics.
Darren:
And delivering measurable and accountable results.
Ben:
Yeah. The best conversations I’ve had presenting to boards or to CEOs over my career has been when I’ve had that fact-based financial metrics on the slide saying that if we invest a dollar in outdoor, we will get $2.35 of this campaign. If we invest a dollar in TV, we’ll get $3.
Darren:
Which is still a challenge though, isn’t it?
Ben:
Yeah, I know that’s getting back to that black and white and removing intuition, which I was talking about, but that’s the reality. So, but you’ve got to be able to navigate those business issues, not just the brand issues or not just the creative issues, or not just the social media issues.
Darren:
Of course, yeah.
Ben:
If you’re not doing that, you’re losing your voice.
Darren:
So, Ben, is that the reason … because you did a postgrad in business management, didn’t you?
Ben:
Yeah.
Darren:
Is that what drove that? That realization of really needing those more formal tools to have those conversations or …?
Ben:
Yeah, I just think as you grow up through your marketing career, you go through the gears of entry level into brand management, into marketing, into whatever it is brand … depending on the structure. But you get to a certain point where if you’re not having those end-to-end conversations, then you’re losing half your voice at the table.
So, I think you’ve got to have a perspective on the broader business management side of things to be a successful marketer and to have long-term tenure in your career and it’s the curiosity and it’s never stopped learning, and it’s pushing yourself and being able to talk to the CEO or the CFO in their language or board in their language. And I can guarantee their language cost per clicks or they’re not taps anymore, they’re not point of sale budgets.
They’re in return on investment and they’re in long-term strategic direction of the business and that’s what they want have the conversation around. So, I think the more you can go, you got to be the … it’s a really difficult role in marketing. You’ve got to be the really great education. You’ve got to be reading daily. You’ve got to be exploring through other people through learnings. You’ve got to be self-reviewing where your own works at performance. And so, it’s pretty full on.
Darren:
Yeah, and one of the traps — because when we talked a minute ago about agencies having to have experience, the other danger for marketers is being pigeonholed as well, isn’t it?
Is that part of the thinking behind going from Lion to Blackmores, you mentioned Blackmores. It’s like totally in many ways, a totally different category going from alcoholic beverages to wellness.
Ben:
Yeah, it was. But I also had a point to prove to myself that transferable skills exist, and you can easily get pigeonholed. And that was the concern with 15 years at Lion for me.
But I think about that journey and I just think there’s so many great things that you can bring to a new business, whether it’s fresh thinking, whether it’s new frameworks, whether it’s prior implementation models, innovation learnings, customer dealings.
I mean, the great thing that I learned at Blackmores was that you can quite quickly pick up category knowledge. Marketing is marketing is marketing. But then the overlay of the international global markets in the Blackmores business was quite fascinating because it was a business going from an Australian origin with half of its earnings in Australia, trying to transform itself into a predominantly Asian-based business and on that journey.
So, that was a fascinating dynamic of legacy business into future-oriented business and the machinations that go with that. And so-
Darren:
Look, and I think marketers generally are well-equipped. Once you’ve got the marketing process and Ritson talks about just do the degree, learn the process, and apply it to the business. Once you’ve got that, the same curiosity that I find drives marketers, and that’s one of the commonalities, is just how does this work and how can I make it work better? Is one of the big drivers of really good marketers.
Ben:
Yeah, and being able to draw on your experiences, the good and the bad. I mean, we’ve all had some ripping successes, but let’s be honest. Not many of us want to talk about the failures, but we’ve all got plenty of those in the back pocket as well and-
Darren:
That’s the conversation you have over a beer.
Ben:
Yes, but we shouldn’t shy away from it because, yeah, that’s cool. But what did you learn and what would you do differently? And I think the authentic leaders talk about that with their teams.
And I also think if you think about your marketing investment deployment, you need to be spending 70 or 80% where you know it’s going to work. You need to be spending 10 or 20 where you’ve got a gut feel or you think it’s evolving, and then you’ve got five or 10 to experiment. And for that to feed back into the 70, and that model absolutely-
Darren:
Yeah, the 10, 20, 70, yeah.
Ben:
It really does work. And that’s been quite enlightening for me.
Darren:
It’s a challenge though and it’s a challenge that we’ve particularly picked up since the global recession of 2007 because a lot of marketers then, you are faced with 30, 40% cut in budget and yet, still deliver in a world where the financial market was just crumbling.
And you would’ve thought that that came back, but it didn’t. It was really interesting to watch. Since 2008, it feels like marketers are constantly playing catch up, with trying to get the resources they need and playing in a world where the number of options available to you are multiplying exponentially.
Ben:
Yep. There’s a good thing that comes out of that though, Darren, and that’s a word called “focus.”
Darren:
Yep.
Ben:
And I think the word focus is underrated and undervalued by most marketers. So, at a point in time, normally once a year, we go into planning mode when we’re in marketing. And we look at the market, we look at the competitive landscape, we look at what the consumer dynamics are, what the customers are saying, and you devise next year’s — normally three-year strategy, one year plans.
And there’s a lot of clever people in marketing and what do they try to do? They like to cram as many strategies and plans into that sort of document. We’re going to do all of this over the next 12 months and then you sit back and evaluate it and you look at it and go, “How are we going to execute all of this?”
Darren:
Yeah, you physically don’t have the resources to do it.
Ben:
You don’t have the resource. So, the question is, is it strategy, idea, execution? So, can you tick all three boxes? Because often when a brand’s going south, one of those areas has gone awry and you need to tick all three boxes for a brand to be growing.
And in my experience, it normally comes back to focus. And trying to do too much, you’re not executing on the plan or you’re sitting on the fence strategically about where to take the brand, or you’re trying to stretch your resources too thin.
Darren:
Yeah, because I say all the time, a great strategy doesn’t just tell you what to do, it tells you what not to do. And yeah, so in a world where we hear people are tactical all the time, it’s short-term, short-term, short-term; you still need a strong strategic framework, so you can make decisions around even those tactical opportunities, and I think that’s part of what’s missing.
It’s interesting because this conversation’s taking us into that area of, so what are the skills that marketers need today and particularly in the next say two to three years has to be, it’s not about knowing the channels, it’s not being the latest on TikTok or whatever else is out there, is it? It’s really more about being able to manage that at that level, isn’t it?
Ben:
Yeah, I think you need to know enough to be dangerous and you need to lean on your agency experts. So, that’s probably a point.
I think, secondly, I sort of would encourage a up and coming marketer to try and get as much diverse experience and don’t be afraid to spend a couple of years going into a sideways role if that gives you a fresh challenge or new experience. This whole notion that you have a linear career over the next 10 years and you get promoted every two or three years is finished.
Darren:
Crazy, yeah.
Ben:
It’s crazy. So, let’s debunk that, but then let’s also try and build capability along the journey and you get that by going up and sideways and across and moving around different teams. So, that’s the capability of the future.
And I’m a advocate of the idea of a generalist marketer rather than a specialist, because I think, again, to get back to the boardroom table to tackle those issues, you need whole of business thinking.
And as much as I would love to be a specialist in TikTok and how to engage and get a hundred thousand views in the next 38 seconds, it’s not going to be able to help me with the CFO or the CEO when they’re talking about future business growth. You need to broaden your thinking and you need to float up and be more strategic. So, any of those opportunities speak to the generalist nature for me in how to assemble a marketing career.
I think also, one of the powers that I saw when I was coming through, particularly at Lion, I was lucky to have some great leaders and mentors, and even often, people who work in and around agencies, I often would lean on them and say, “Hey, look, we’ve got a team offsite next week, would you just like to come and chat about what are you seeing in brand X, Y, Z, or what are you seeing in this channel dynamic or …?”
And they’re highly experienced people that you can learn so much from. So, utilizing the power of your networks around you, the village, and then investing in the talent within your team because I was a beneficiary of that when I was coming through the ranks and I understand the power of coaching and is really important for talent retention as much as people having the great journey marketing that I had.
Darren:
Fantastic. Look, Ben we’ve run out of time.
Ben:
Okay.
Darren:
This has been a terrific conversation and I almost tempted to ask you to come back and we could continue it at some stage. So, it’s an open invitation.
Ben:
I’d happy to. I have to double my price next time, Darren.
Darren:
Damn, I’m sorry, the budget doesn’t extend that far.
But look, before you go, I’ve got a question for you; and that is so when Ben Slocombe is sitting down at the end of a hard week, what is it that you enjoy as a tipple?
