Marketing News: May 2018 by Molly Soat

AMERICAN MARKETING ASSOCIATION

AMA.ORG

MAY 2018

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table of contents AMERICAN MARKETING ASSOCIATION

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SEEN ON AMA.ORG

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ANSWERS IN ACTION • Snapshot • Core Concepts

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AMA INTELLIGENCE • The Middle Market

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EXECUTIVE INSIGHTS • Michael Krauss • J. Walker Smith

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CAREER ADVANCEMENT • Compensation • On the Record

#OFFICEGOALS

 The Complete Job-seekers Guide (from A to Z)

There’s no perfect formula for getting a new job or promotion, but there are certain skills and qualities that can help marketers land in the “yes” pile and win the interview.

The Art of the Narrative Arc

For years, storytelling has been the backbone of the best marketing campaigns. Now, as a surfeit of content drives engagement down and makes it difficult to be different, storytelling defines the marketer.

44  Luck of the Drawer

Fifteen years after hitting send on an e-mail doodle lampooning General Mills office life, Marketoonist Tom Fishbourne skewers the marketing world from atop his perch as marketing’s comic prince.

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MAY 2018

VOL. 52 | NO. 5

LETTER FROM THE CEO

AMERICAN MARKETING ASSOCIATION

Mary Garrett Chairperson of the AMA Board 2017-2018 Russ Klein, AMA Chief Executive Officer rklein@ama.org EDITORIAL STAFF

Phone (800) AMA-1150 • Fax (312) 542-9001 E-mail editor@ama.org Molly Soat, Editor in Chief msoat@ama.org Michelle Markelz, Managing Editor mmarkelz@ama.org Zach Brooke, Staff Writer zbrooke@ama.org Hal Conick, Staff Writer hconick@ama.org Sarah Steimer, Staff Writer ssteimer@ama.org Bill Murphy, Designer wmurphy@ama.org ADVERTISING STAFF

Fax (312) 922-3763 • E-mail ads@ama.org Sally Schmitz, Production Manager sschmitz@ama.org (312) 542-9038 Michael Gay, Account Executive mgay@yourmembership.com (727) 329-4421 Nicola Tate, Account Executive ntate@yourmembership.com (727) 329-4437 Jordan Berthiaume, Media Sales Representative jberthiaume@YourMembership.com (727) 497-6565 x3409 Marketing News (ISSN 0025-3790) is published monthly except June/ July and November/December (pending) by the American Marketing Association, 130 E. Randolph St., 22nd Floor, Chicago, IL 60601. Circulation: (800) AMA-1150, (312) 542-9000 Tel: (800) AMA-1150, (312) 542-9000 POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: Marketing News, 130 E. Randolph St., 22nd Floor, Chicago, 60601-6320, USA. Periodical Postage paid at Chicago, Ill., and additional mailing offices. Canada Post Agreement Number 40030960. Opinions expressed are not necessarily endorsed by the AMA, its officers or staff. Marketing News welcomes expressions of all professional viewpoints on marketing and its related areas. These may be as letters to the editor, columns or articles. Letters should be brief and may be condensed by the editors. Please request a copy of the “Writers’ Guidelines” before submitting an article. Upon submission to the AMA, photographs and manuscripts will not be returned unless accompanied by a self-addressed, adequately stamped envelope. Annual subscription rates: Marketing News is a benefit of membership for professional members of the American Marketing Association. Annual professional membership dues in the AMA are $220. Annual subscription rates: $35 members, $145 nonmembers and $190 libraries, corporations and institutions. International rates vary by country. Nonmembers: Order online at amaorders.com, call 1-800-633-4931 or e-mail amasubs@ebsco.com. Single copies $10 individual, $10 institutions; foreign add $5 per copy for air, printed matter. Payment must be in U.S. funds or the equivalent. Canadian residents add 13% GST (GST Registration #127478527). Advertisers and advertising agencies assume liability for all content (including text, representations and illustrations) of advertisements published, and also assume responsibility for any claims arising therefrom made against the publisher. The right is reserved to reject any advertisement. Copyright © 2018 by the American Marketing Association. All rights reserved. Without written permission from the AMA, any copying or reprinting (except by authors reprinting their own works) is prohibited. Requests for permission to reprint—such as copying for general distribution, advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works or resale—should be submitted in writing by mail or sent via e-mail to permissions@ama.org. Printed in the U.S.A.

Shadow of a Leader

o many people have asked me for career and leadership advice over the years. The fact is, there is a mundanity to successful careers. The key to life can be found by simply committing to being other-people-focused— maintaining an inner voice that can tell you to simply shut up, listen and commit to understanding someone now and then. In improvisation, one of the cardinal rules is not to deny what the other person on stage has given you. You always have on your mind to take what others have said and expand upon it. At the AMA, we call it the “yes, and” behavior. If you miss it, the magic never happens, and countless ideas die a quick death. My leadership style is about making others comfortable with me. My first instinct is to ask myself how I can put others at ease. Nothing is more unbecoming than a leader who inspires fear of honesty or provocative ideas. Focus your comments on the work-product, not the people who created it. Through that constructive behavior you’ll make people feel safe. It is said that towering leaders cast a long shadow. The shadow I’d like to cast is, if an idea makes good sense to you, then you can get a fair and earnest shake from me. In exchange for a safe and inspiring environment, I expect a team with the managerial courage, talent, positivity and commitment to be forthright with me and with one another. We all have a responsibility to assume positive intent. No hallway muttering, passiveaggressive pocket vetoes, or slow noes. Beware of devil’s advocates who can only cite what’s wrong with an idea. They are impediments that prevent others from progress. Don’t be that type of leader. In the short run

RUSS KLEIN CEO

you’ll get people to listen to you. In the long run, after everyone notices that all you do is play the role of the critic and nothing gets done, your impersonation of a leader will come to an end. Half of my leadership is leading myself. Control is not leadership, self-control is. Benjamin Franklin asserted, “Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.” How true is that? I’m sure of this: Control yourself, and you will have taken the biggest step toward leadership. Once you’ve established a brutally honest self-awareness of how you make others feel, you have cleared the way to become an inspirational leader. In today’s world, finesse is always preferred over force. Inspiration is also other-peoplefocused. It’s not enough to paint a picture of an appealing future; you haven’t inspired others until you help them see the starring role they play in achieving it. And finally, the last ingredient

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in leadership is inspiring others to have faith in themselves, to believe that their inner strength and determination is always superior to the circumstances around them. If you can instill this in others, your career will take care of itself. That’s the power of casting a big, long leadership shadow. Years ago, senior business leaders met with the principals from management consultancy L’Institut Idée to experience the firm’s proprietary business methodology called the structural mapping process. This group of distinguished thought leaders used their process to map the successful leader in the 21st century. The process yielded insight into three distinct motivational types that are key to the success of a modern leader. The first is the intuitive anthropologist, whose pronounced powers of intuition and social skill provide the ability to clearly see what needs to be done. These leaders are motivated to understand others. The second is the child-like genius, who has an innate ability to know what is required and how to do

it. This person appears to have a naïve but remarkable ability to see the path to follow and is motivated by unbridled possibility. The third is the nurturer, who is caring and compassionate, genuinely concerned about others and thus inspires trust. This person is motivated by taking care of others. The findings confirm that leadership is not to be confused with a title. The map does not only apply to heads of organizations or senior executives—it applies to all levels of leadership, from corporate or political leaders to leaders of families or communities. An individual at any level of an organization or in any part of society can use this map effectively in asserting leadership. Daniel Goleman, author of Mind-blowing Leadership, further buttresses the L’Institut findings in an introduction he wrote for the book Inspiration Leadership: A Primer. Inspirational leaders, he writes, can articulate a shared mission in a way that motivates and offers a sense of common purpose beyond people’s day-to-day tasks. Their effectiveness

is documented by research. “Emotional intelligence remains a key ingredient in the development of corporate leaders,” Goleman writes. “Leaders who have developed … emotional intelligence competencies such as emotional self-awareness, empathy, positive outlook, and teamwork are more likely to be equipped with the capacity to think creatively about the best ways to engage people. This is because they will have had discussions with their teams, listened to them, and responded to their input. Such a leader would have a better gut sense of what to invoke in terms of a powerful shared goal. And it is precisely such human connections that light the spark of inspiration.” Few pathways are so clearly documented and defined as the path to successful leadership. Are you a 21st century leader? What shadow do you cast?

CONTRIBUTORS

ANDY CRESTODINA

JERRY W. THOMAS

Crestodina is the co-founder and CMO of Orbit Media. He’s an international keynote speaker and the author of Content Chemistry: The Illustrated Guide to Content Marketing.

Thomas is president and CEO of Decision Analyst, a top 20 research company in North America, which he founded in 1978.

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5 Ways Marketers Can Enable Sales With Content

ver the past decade there has been much said about marketing and sales being misaligned. In the past this disconnect was attributed to psychological differences between the two departments, organizational structure and performance measurements. But the misalignment is over content and its intended use. Salespeople want unambiguous information to help them close sales. They need the information to help customers make a purchase decision. Marketing is focused on generating awareness, but that top-of-funnel content won’t generate revenue. Here are five ways marketers can tailor content to enable sales:

Speak in Specifics

Vague words mask the advantage of your product or service, which provides value to the customer.

Frequently, a firm’s advantages are described with words like “best of breed,” “seamless,”“leadership,” “easy to use” and “most complete.” These descriptions are meaningless. They require more sales skill to be leveraged as advantages that are compelling to a customer. Words such as “help” and “allow” act as fillers. They sound good but provide no description of what the product does or how it is better than the competitive alternatives. If I say, “I helped/allowed the San Francisco 49ers to win every football game that Joe Montana ever won,” can you tell if I was on the field playing, on the sidelines coaching or in the stands cheering?

Focus on Function

Your competitive advantage is what your product or service does better than competitors. Customers want to know what they can accomplish because of your

product. If your product is faster, prospects want to know how much faster it is. Words like “very” may not be compelling enough to lead to a purchase. The prospect needs to be able to compare your product’s claims to the claims of competitors. However, the advantage for most products and services is not absolute. Most advantages only exist under specific conditions and situations. The key to identifying your advantage is to find the condition or situation where the advantage is significant enough to be compelling. This means that advantages usually cannot be communicated with product information alone; they must include customer use information as well. The value proposition should answer the question, “What is the value of your competitive advantage to the customer?” The question is not about the value of your product, but the value of your differential.

Don’t Make Empty Claims

Evidence complements a salesperson’s ability to provide credibility to your competitive

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advantage and customer value. Without quality evidence, more sales time and skill are required to close a sale. Without evidence, a message— however compelling—may not be believable enough to motivate buyers. This can mean fewer sales and longer sales cycles. Different customers will balance risk and reward differently. Many customers will opt for a lower level of value if they are certain that they will actually get it. Thus, having a more compelling message won’t always win. The effort to transfer credibility can make the sales cycle longer because customers need more demonstrations before they become convinced.

No Uncertain Terms Shopping and buying have

increasingly become a journey that customers take alone until they are ready to purchase. Comparison shopping often takes place before customers ever interact with a salesperson, and brands that have not made clear how they compare to competitors will be passed over. Prospects need to be able to compare your product claims to the claims of the competitors. Include quantifiable measurements and specifications that are familiar and meaningful.

Don’t Mix Messages

Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking and Irma S. Rombauer’s Joy of Cooking each require a different level of cooking skill. The former is appropriately complex for experienced cooks,

and the latter is more accessible to beginners. Correspondingly, the complexity of the selling messages we provide to our sales channels have to be aligned with the time and skill available in that channel. Having one set of messages for all of the direct and indirect channels will result in lost sales. Alignment of marketing and sales starts with giving salespeople the content they need to generate revenue. Use these five points to consistently provide the information your colleagues need. Without a diagnostic process, quality improvements are not scalable and may not last longer than your next change of marketing or sales management. —BUD HYLER

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5 Ways to Find Insights in Your Sales Data

ost companies have massive databases of historical sales data, but few firms invest the money and staff to mine the intelligence hidden in those databases. Here are five ways to examine your data to reveal market insights.

Sales by SKU

The most basic level of analysis is examining sales data by product and stock-keeping unit (SKU). SKUs capture the size and variation of each product by the state it is sold in—or even more granular geographic areas— across time. A firm may want to track the sales trend of each SKU over several years for each geographic area. As marketing directors study changes across time, the core question is always, why? Why are sales trending up in California, but down in New York? Answering those questions should be the ultimate goal of all sales analyses. Knowing the cause of these trends allows marketers to project into the future.

Sales by Channel of Distribution

The next level of analysis is distribution channel. Large individual retailers should be analyzed separately, and retailers should be grouped by type (i.e., supermarkets, convenience stores, warehouse club stores, distributors, vending machines, online). Sales of all products might be aggregated to study the distribution of total product sales by different channels. The changes from year to year, or quarter to quarter, can be quite revealing. For example, several years ago analysis of food manufacturer sales by channel revealed the growing influence of Walmart as a distribution channel for groceries. At the time, Walmart was not in the purview of many food manufacturers. Those that pinpointed the growing importance of Walmart were able to focus attention on that brand and take advantage of its growth. Looking at sales in total by channel is a great starting point, but marketing directors can also examine sales by SKUs, brands or product categories and further define those results by channel of distribution and examine trends over time.

Per Capita Sales

Sales data take on new meaning and reveal new understanding when examined on a relative basis, such as per capita sales. Marketers might divide the annual sales of one of their brands in a state by the total population of that state. They could repeat this for each state to find the annual sales per person by state. This type of analysis led a greeting card company to discover that its per capita sales declined as a function

of distance from corporate headquarters. States close to corporate headquarters had higher per capita sales, while states farther away had lower per capita sales. The per capita differences by state reflected the historical development of the company, as well as the greater attention the closer states received from the firm’s highlevel executives. The analysis provided evidence that per capita sales levels in distant states could be increased with greater managerial attention. Per capita sales analyses can be based on total population, male population, female population, adult population, child population, income or any other population group. The analyses can be run by any kind of geographic area. The results can lead to improved sales efforts or better ad targeting.

Per Comparable Economic Data

Another way to analyze sales data on a relative basis is to compare sales to various economic data. For example, marketing directors might compare annual sales to GDP by state, total electricity consumption by state, total gasoline consumption by state or other economic variables. These analyses help answer how well a product, service or brand is performing by state (or other geographic area) in relation to other measures of economic potential. Analysis may show, for example, that the superstar salesperson in Southern California who is being considered for promotion to national sales manager is actually selling less in relation to economic potential than salespeople in other areas. Analyzing sales in relation to economic variables can also be valuable in helping set sales targets and quotas by geographic areas.

Category Development Index

A widely used measure of product category development is the category development index (CDI). The CDI can be calculated for any geographic entity. Let’s suppose marketing executives are interested in the CDI by state. If they have total annual sales for a product category by state, they can calculate a per capita category sales number for each state. Next, they would calculate an average for per capita sales for the U.S. Then they would divide each state’s per capita sales by the national average per capita sales, and multiply by 100. What is created is an index number where 100 is the average index score. Any state with a CDI above 100 is an above-average market, while those with CDIs below 100 are below-average markets. The CDI provides a reliable measure of market potential, or market development, by state for the product category. —JERRY W. THOMAS

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SNAPSHOT

Why AR May Be the Future of Experiential Marketing When Aaqib Usman saw the results of a Snapchat AR campaign made with Snapchat’s new Lens Studio, he was blown away. Here’s why Lens Studio could be the future of experiential marketing. BY HAL CONICK | STAFF WRITER

 hconick@ama.org Goal In December 2017, Aaqib Usman did a full 3-D scan of his body and uploaded it to Lens Studio, a tool by Snap Inc.

that allows people to design their own augmented reality lenses for Snapchat. Until then, Snapchat lenses—think faceswapping or a bunny nose on a human

face—were designed exclusively by Snap and its paid sponsors. The December release of Lens Studio was an exciting moment for Usman, founder of Midwest Immersive. He wanted to play with the new tool immediately. “I have myself dancing to Drake’s ‘Hotline Bling,’” Usman says of the AR lens he created using his avatar. “I made it on Christmas, and I think I’ve seen about 4,000 views on it so far.” Aside from the fun of superimposing a digital, shoulder-shimmying version of himself into an AR lens, Usman was eager to test Lens Studio. Usman believes AR—a seemingly simple but utterly complex technology—has immense potential in marketing. “When people are using augmented reality, [it feels] like a natural extension of an existing platform,” Usman says. “It feels like it should have been done a long time ago, but people are not realizing the amount of calculation and math and technology that goes into powering that little experience. Your phone has to essentially calculate the depth of every object in your world and be able to space things accordingly. When people are using it, they don’t realize that they’re using AR; that’s kind of a good thing. It’s seamless.” Other marketers and advertisers are also excited by the novelty of AR, as spending on the technology jumped from $600 million in 2014 to $12.8 billion in 2017, according to Socintel360. The excitement for AR technology skyrocketed after Pokemon Go, AR’s most popular application yet, was downloaded 650 million times and earned $1.2 billion of revenue. Thomas Husson, vice president and principal analyst of marketing and strategy at Forrester Research, calls AR “a new emotional lexicon of the digital and mobile era.” “Brands [need] to understand these emotional shortcuts and how the younger generation engages with brands on messaging apps,” Husson says. Usman wanted to test how Generation Z would react to Snap’s AR lenses by designing a lens for an experiential marketing campaign. He found an ideal subject in Kim Products, a Chicago

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streetwear brand run by 17-year-old Kimisha Moxley. Midwest Immersive set out in branding Moxley’s winter collection launch party, creating an AR lens to accompany the experience of the party. Action Moxley’s youth and that of her potential customers made her launch party—titled “Saturday Night Heartbreak”—the perfect field test for Snapchat AR marketing, Usman thought. “She’s locally famous in the Chicago teen scene,” Usman says, adding that Moxley’s parties attract a few hundred attendees in the exact age range of Snapchat’s heaviest users. Of Snapchat’s 187 million daily active users, more than 70% are 34 years and younger; 45% are between the ages of 18 and 24. To create the lens, Usman used Snap’s world lens base, which is different from Snapchat’s better-known template masks. Template masks encourage users to take selfies by changing their face: Users aim their phone’s camera at themselves and become a cartoon dog or pixie or open their mouths and vomit a rainbow. The world lens encourages users to point their cameras at the world and discover what pops up in augmented reality. “We didn’t want people to just take selfies, we wanted people to actually show other people what they were missing out on,” Usman says. “That brings the event to life.” Moxley and Midwest Immersive collaborated to design a Snapchat lens in step with the party’s 2000s R&B theme. They placed posters with the lens’ Snapcode (Snapchat’s version of a QR code) around the party for attendees to scan. As attendees arrived, they scanned the Snapcode and saw pieces of early 2000s nostalgia pop up on their phone’s screen, as if the nostalgia pieces were part of the real world. If they aimed their camera one way, they’d see a spinning compact disc or piece of vinyl floating above a model strutting down the runway. If they aimed their camera another way, they’d see a boombox, flip phone or the event’s logo amid people dancing. If they recorded a video using the lens, they’d hear an instrumental version of Missy Elliott’s

answers in action

“We didn’t want people to just take selfies, we wanted people to actually show other people what they were missing out on. That brings the event to life.” 2002 hit “Work It” playing over the video. “It’s fun for me to see how people who were born in 2001 are representing that entire decade,” Usman says with a laugh. Results What’s unusual about Lens Studio is its breadth of data; Snap’s new tool gives creators analytics for their lenses. Usman was excited, as Snapchat analytics have historically been opaque, if nonexistent. The Kim Products campaign was an opportunity to measure an ROI baseline for AR marketing in Snapchat. Moxley’s party lasted for three hours,

COMPANY

Midwest Immersive and Kim Products (client) HEADQUARTERS

Chicago CAMPAIGN TIMELINE

“Saturday Night Heartbreak,” the Kim Products party, was held on Feb. 10, 2018. RESULTS

The Kim Products lens’ Snapcode was scanned 299 times, the lens was shared 262 times and snaps made with the lens were viewed 24,391 times during the party.

with each user getting 24 hours of access to the Snapchat lens. Usman says the lens’ Snapcode was scanned 299 times, the lens was shared 262 times and snaps made in the lens were viewed 24,391 times during the party. Attendees posted snaps from the event to their own stories, so thousands of Snapchat users from Chicago and beyond saw Usman’s AR items floating alongside Moxley’s new collection. “How does a 300-person event reach 24,000 people?” Usman says. “It’s experiential marketing, magnified.” Usman doesn’t know yet how these results will compare with similar campaigns. He’s curious to find out what the metrics will be for other Snapchatbased AR lens campaigns. One of the hardest things to do is to measure ROI in experiential marketing, he says, but the metrics from Lens Studio could change that. “If it’s used in the right way, the potential to measure your success is immense,” Usman says. “The potential for creativity is also fantastic because of the amount of stuff you can do.” Whether the ROI of AR marketing will justify its use remains to be seen. Forrester’s Husson says AR is still a budding technology and will likely reach critical mass through social and gaming before reaching its tipping point. As AR grows, he believes more marketers will use it in campaigns. Until then, marketers should get their AR practice shots in, just as Usman did, because Husson says there will be a learning curve. “AR is a disruptive technology,” Husson says. “It may take longer to scale than many believe, but I think it will open a lot of new opportunities for marketers.” m

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CORE CONCEPTS

“You have to be a savvy consumer,” she says. “You need to ask yourself, ‘Am I going because I want to network and meet people or because I want to learn more about a particular topic?’” Once you figure out what you want from an event, Clark says a natural follow-up would be to contact former attendees—not organizers—to get their feedback on the value of the conference.

8 Steps to Maximize Your Next Conference Make a plan to use your time and money wisely at conferences BY ZACH BROOKE | STAFF WRITER

 zbrooke@ama.org

onferences are billed as great fun for good reason. You get to leave the office behind for a few days with peers and mentors in a distant locale. But what’s often overlooked by attendees, especially those sent by their employers, is that conferences are meant to produce tangible results. This can be anxietyinducing, but with some personal event planning, you can conquer your next conference.

Select the Right Events Dorie Clark is a sought-after conference presenter as the author of business books Reinventing You and Entrepreneurial You. Clark estimates she’s paid to speak at more than 30 events every year. She’s selective

about the ones she pays to attend. “The most important criterion is getting to connect with very interesting, high-quality people that I wouldn’t otherwise get to meet,” she says. “The conferences I go to are Renaissance Weekend, which is an ideas conference, and TED.” The conference circuit is a giant money-sucking industry. Even truly stellar opportunities might be too frequent for one person or organization to attend them all, no matter how ambitious. Clark recommends young professionals attend as many conferences as they can afford (or their employers can pay for), gradually becoming more selective as they establish themselves in their fields.

Set Goals A great conference experience doesn’t just happen, Clark says. It takes planning and execution. To get what you want out of your investment, clarify exactly what you’re looking for, and map out how to achieve it. Be careful not to commit to an arbitrary number in lieu of measurable progress. “Setting a concrete goal can be very effective for some people,” says career coach Beryl Greenberg, “as long as it is realistic, a bit of a stretch and a means to an end and not the end itself. You can say ‘I’m going to get five business cards,’ but [you may] not do anything with them, or they’re cards from people you’re not really interested in. You met your goal, but it’s not leading you anywhere. Numeric goals need to lead you to a bigger goal,” she says.

Arrive Early Many conferences arrange sponsored pregame sessions where companies hawk software or other business solutions. Knowing this, it might be tempting to fly in late and start the experience the morning of day two. Don’t. “Conference organizers know that first impressions count and usually program the best content at the very start of an event,” says Bill Duggan, group executive vice president of the Association of National Advertisers and manager of more than 30 annual conferences. “Get to the conference early and don’t miss the start.”

Network Most people don’t consider

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CORE CONCEPTS

themselves networkers, says Sandy JonesKaminski, author of I’m at a Networking Event. Now What??? “We’ve all been on the receiving end of people that you can tell are just dying to get their elevator pitch out … these people that give networking a bad name, that are not being human by being curious,” she says. Getting to know other attendees shouldn’t be difficult. Most are just as interested in networking as you are, and there is an understanding that these connections are transactional. Given that, resist the urge to launch into an elevator pitch in favor of listening and understanding. Jones-Kaminski suggests breaking the ice by imagining you’re at a wedding where total strangers know that they have at least one question they can ask each other: Are you with the bride or the groom? Find that question for the conference or the panel you’re at, and go from there. To connect with speakers, JonesKaminski recommends combing social media to put together a dossier of interesting thoughts a person has shared before the event so that you’ll have something to talk about should you get a chance to meet them. “If you want to meet Guy Kawasaki, what are you going to say to him when you walk up there? ‘Aww man, that was great. I love your stuff.’ You have to be better prepared,” she says. Finally, part of expanding your network means leaving your co-workers to fend for themselves. “Divide and conquer,” Duggan says. “There is little reason to sit with colleagues during the general sessions or have meals together at the event. You can do that back at your office. Try to mix and sit with new people.”

Make the Most of Mealtime No matter how focused you are on sessions, biology will prevail. Planning around hunger goes a long way toward preventing anxiety and maximizing efficiency. “Understand in advance the

meals that are being served—for example a full breakfast or just coffee. That way you can plan your day and avoid being distracted by hunger,” says Duggan. Clark urges people to organize. Before arriving at the conference, scope a popular nearby restaurant and secure a reservation for multiple people. Then, discreetly invite promising contacts to share a meal with you during breaks. “Most people are not this organized, and they have no idea what they are doing during the free period. For some of them, it may be a source of anxiety. For you to be the magnanimous host, who invites them to do something and makes it easy for them, is something that many people will respond to very positively. It puts you in the catbird seat because you are starting the relationship by giving.”

Take Notes Duggan recommends writing down at least one key takeaway from every session you attend after it’s over. Before that, use social media to publish key stats and facts to imprint them on your memory and easily refer to them later.

Practice Self-care Many aspects of a multiday networking event staged in hotel corridors can be stressful. Travelers spend a few days alone and isolated from their loved ones and personal lives. Conference and hotel food is often expensive, unappetizing or unhealthy. Time zone changes also throw people off their routines. It’s not uncommon to spend days without setting foot outside. All of this can lead to stress and burnout, particularly if attendees are overworking themselves on the venue floor. It’s a better strategy to think about how to manage any negative thoughts rather than to dismiss the possibility any unwelcome emotions will arise while attending a conference. “A lot of people who are going to their first conferences … map out the whole day, and they’re going to be spending every second doing five things,” says

answers in action

Gordon Schmidt, an associate professor of organizational leadership at Indiana University – Purdue University Fort Wayne. “That’s not a good way to absorb.” Schmidt recommends fighting fatigue by taking breaks throughout the day. A social lunch or a break in programming slotted to check work-related matters can prevent multitasking meltdown. A jaunt through the host city can spark newfound energy and motivation and help you have fun, he says. Finally, proper amounts of sleep are vital to meaningful work product. “We tell people to work really long hours, but the research on that is negative. If you work too many hours your production suffers, and it leads to a lot of negative health outcomes, mental and psychological,” Schmidt says.

Recap What You’ve Learned The rush of a conference can fade quickly as it hurtles toward its conclusion. It’s important to incorporate lessons from the conference into everyday actions lest the event fade from memory entirely. The best way to show the event was a good use of your time and organizational resources is to brief others on session highlights. “Write a short report about the conference,” Duggan says. “Share it with your boss and colleagues. It could include the key takeaways about the conference and other key facts—theme of the event, number of attendees. This is likely just a few pages, but when you memorialize your experience in writing, you are more likely to remember the conference and take action going forward.” If your trip isn’t work-sponsored, consider sharing your insights on a LinkedIn post. Writing about your experience will crystalize the insights gleaned during the event, nudge you toward implementing them in your day-to-day professional life, foster additional contacts through social media and position you as a thought leader, which is where you want to be should you have any aspirations of assuming the speaker’s podium. m

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ama intelligence

THE MIDDLE MARKET

The Best Cities for Middle Market Firms A strong middle market presence keeps cities agile and nimble BY SARAH STEIMER | STAFF WRITER

ď&#x20AC;¸ ssteimer@ama.org

ankees and cowboys may have more in common than they think. Some of the top locations in the U.S. for middle market companies include New York City and Texas metro areas. A report from American Express and Dun & Bradstreet explored the reciprocal relationship between middle market companies and the metropolitan areas in which they operate. Metro areas provide the infrastructure and talent that attract

companies, along with the perceived culture and quality of life that attract employees. Middle market firms provide foundations for metro area economies. The report found New York City has the most middle market firms of any metro area in the U.S. Dallas and Houston rank as two of the top five U.S. cities for the highest number of middle market firms, total number of middle market employees and total revenue

A strong middle market presence has helped recovery efforts in some metro areas, such as Houston after the 2017 hurricane season or Detroit after economic hardship.

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THE MIDDLE MARKET

generated by middle market companies. San Antonio and Dallas rank Nos. 1 and 2 for economic clout, determined by the growth rate from 2009 to 2017, which is measured in terms of the number of firms, employment and revenues in the middle market. Plus, Houston, Dallas and New York City have the highest concentration of startup companies scaling to become middle market companies. Some of the other high-ranking metro areas, as determined by five categories— middle market dominance, economic clout, employment vitality and number of minority- and women-owned businesses—include Baltimore, Detroit and Denver. Startups that grow to be middle market firms in less than 10 years are particularly vital for dynamic regional economies, the report found. New York City, Dallas and Houston top the list of cities with the highest density of young middle market firms (less than 10 years old). Dallas and Houston have the lowest density of legacy companies (30 years or older). On the other end of the spectrum, Chicago has the highest density of legacy middle market companies. “Because of the jobs that startups create and the innovations they bring to market, startups that become middle market firms in less than 10 years play a vital role in the dynamism of a local economy,” the report states. Middle market companies employ more than one in four U.S. workers. Hosting these companies can be a boon for metro areas, especially cities aiming for economic rebirth. “Middle market firms are substantial enough—averaging 293 employees and generating $51.6 million in revenues annually—to have the human and capital resources needed to withstand adversity as well as take advantage of opportunities,” says Geri Stengel, research adviser to American Express. “These firms are also agile and nimble, growing more than small and large companies between 2011 and 2017.” The report suggests a strong middle

market presence has helped recovery efforts in some metro areas, such as Houston after the 2017 hurricane season or Baltimore and Detroit after economic hardship. Ed Davis, group director of international client services at B-to-B marketing communications agency Fifth Ring, says Houston’s resilience in the face of major industry changes in the city is a testament to the strong middle market presence there. For example, changes to NASA’s space shuttle program around 2011 left some engineers jobless. “Interestingly, there were plenty of them that weren’t out of jobs for long because the oil and gas community said, ‘Come help us solve significant challenges on earth,’” Davis says. “[Houston] has an ability to adapt really quickly.” Davis says Houston and its middle market companies have become proactive against challenges before they present themselves. For example, focusing solely on the oil and gas industry could be detrimental, leaving the city vulnerable to disaster or economic troughs, so emphasis has been placed on attracting firms from a variety of industries, such as health care and technology. While it’s not a surprise that New York has a strong middle market presence, smaller metro areas have a very important characteristic not typically shared by their larger counterparts: affordability. The cost of living in some of the top-ranked cities for middle market strength is lower than the national average, as determined by PayScale. For example, the cost of living in Detroit is 3% lower than the national average, Orlando is 5% lower, St. Louis costs 6% less than the average and San Antonio costs 14% less. The data suggest that middle market companies hold a powerful place in their region’s economy. Their strength helps to keep local economies flexible in times of industry upheaval and speed the process of recovery. m

Middle market firms are substantial enough—averaging 293 employees and generating $51.6 million in revenues annually—to have the human and capital resources needed to withstand adversity as well as take advantage of opportunities.

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executive insights

AT C-LEVEL

Is Timing Everything? Daniel Pink’s When can help marketers make better decisions and leave less to chance

BY MICHAEL KRAUSS

 michael.krauss@mkt-strat.com

aniel Pink, the best-selling author of To Sell is Human and Drive, has a new thought-provoker, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing. When is a must-read for marketers, especially if you are keen to optimize your career prospects, improve your leadership skills, understand consumer behavior or plan a successful campaign. As Pink says in his book, “All of us confront a never-ending stream of ‘when’ decisions. When to change jobs? When to schedule a class? When to get serious about a person or a project? Yet we make those decisions haphazardly—based on intuition, hunches and guesswork.” Reading When will make you a more effective decision maker, both in your work and your personal life. Pink discusses when to get married, when to get divorced, when to look for another job, when to ask for a raise—he even explains the origins of the midlife crisis and how to get out of a slump. Pink is a former lawyer and political speech writer. Instead of practicing law—a profession that would have been a true waste of time for him—Pink has become a keen analyst of knowledge and aggregator of insightful content that can better our lives. His books and writing style always entertain and enlighten me. Pink opens When with the story of Captain William Thomas Turner, the seasoned captain of the ill-fated passenger ship Lusitania, which was sunk by a German U-boat less than 100 miles off the coast of Ireland on May 7, 1915, precipitating U.S. entry into World War I. On that fateful day, the Lusitania slowed its pace in the early morning due to fog.

“By noon, though, the fog had lifted, and Turner could spy the shoreline in the distance. The skies were clear. The seas were calm,” Pink writes. Turner knew there might be U-boats lurking, yet he made a fatal error in decision making: Even though he had the speed to outrun U-boats, he failed to increase his speed to the maximum. He elected to use a complex navigational technique that placed him at risk for an extended period by requiring the ship to maintain a linear course. Zigzagging in U-boat-infested waters would have been the better decision. Many historians speculate the 1,200 people who perished that day were the victims of Britain’s desire to encourage the U.S. to enter the war on its side. “Seen through the lens of 21st century behavioral and biological science, the explanation for one of the most consequential disasters in maritime history may be less sinister,” Pink writes. “Maybe Captain Turner just made some bad decisions. And maybe those decisions were bad because he made them in the afternoon.” Pink describes a body of academic research that shows how our moods and ability to reason follow defined patterns. For some of us, perhaps including Captain Turner, “emotional balance rises in the morning, dips in the afternoon and then rises again in the evening,” Pink writes. He cites studies which suggest, “sophisticated economic agents acting in real and highly incentivized settings are influenced by diurnal rhythms in the performance of their professional duties.” Some of us may be “larks,” who peak in the morning, or “owls” like Thomas Edison, who was most effective in the evening, and

All of us confront a neverending stream of “when” decisions. When to change jobs? When to schedule a class? When to get serious about a person or a project? Yet we make those decisions haphazardly— based on intuition, hunches and guesswork.

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executive insights

AT C-LEVEL

a portion of us may be “third birds,” who are at peak performance sometime in the middle. When is full of nuggets of insight we might use to advance our careers. I like the story Pink tells about what to do when you are in a career slump. He describes some advice that billionaire investor Warren Buffett provided about regaining one’s traction in life: “Legend has it that one day Buffett was talking with his private pilot, who was frustrated that he hadn’t achieved all that he’d hoped. Buffett prescribed a three-step remedy: • First, write down the top 25 goals for the rest of your life. • Second, look at the list and circle your top five goals, those that are unquestionably your highest priority. • Third, immediately start planning how to

achieve those top five goals. And the other twenty? Get rid of them.” Reading When is fun and fulfilling. Pink will coach you on how to tell a story. He’ll tell you why it might be better to be a point behind at halftime versus a point ahead. He will show you how to recover from an inevitable bad start, on a project or in a career. Most important, as Pink says at the close of his book, you will learn, “I used to believe that timing was everything. Now I believe everything is timing.” Read When and you’ll have more control over the outcomes of your business and personal life. m MICHAEL KRAUSS is president of Market Strategy Group based in Chicago.

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executive insights

TECHNOLOGY

A Case for Convenience For all the hand-wringing people do about the evils of digital devices and technologies, we can’t forget the convenience they afford us

BY J. WALKER SMITH

 jwalker.smith@kantarfutures.com

nplugging is the new craze, but few people are actually leaving technology behind. Nor deep down does anybody really want to. Technology delivers what people want most: convenience. The century-long arc of the modern consumer marketplace has been an

uninterrupted trajectory toward ever greater convenience. Retail is easier than ever to transact. Products are easier to use. Experiences are easier to enjoy. Almost everything difficult has fallen by the wayside, and whatever remains will be supplanted soon enough as well. There is almost no benefit so

worthwhile that consumers are willing to put up with greater inconvenience to get it. Even if a value proposition works that way initially, the first thing that competitors do is swoop in to offer the same benefit at greater convenience. Convenience is the ultimate trump card. This is not to suggest that price or value are unimportant. It is only to note that consumers are willing to pay a premium for convenience but not the converse; consumers will not accept inconvenience simply to pay a little less. Inconvenience is a price to be paid, one not easily recouped by a few pennies saved. Technology is the driver of convenience. Most modern technology is digital, but since the turn of the 19th century, consumer technologies—in the broadest definition—have been mostly mechanical, electronic or chemical. Household appliances, for example,

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TECHNOLOGY

are mechanical. Processed foods are essentially chemical. Both are among the many technological advances that have been central to the progression of convenience. Greater convenience diminishes tedium, saves time, eases fatigue, reduces physical labor, simplifies complexity, creates accessibility, frees up headspace, improves experience, offers something innovative and novel and opens up new possibilities for creativity and enjoyment. In short, greater convenience removes waste, inefficiencies and nuisances. Convenience frees up time and attention for other things that are almost always more fulfilling. Only the sepia haze of nostalgia makes the less convenient past look leisurely. Not that life was backbreaking way back when, but it was more demanding of scarce time and attention. Technology has delivered efficiencies and productivity improvements that have made life more convenient. The growing backlash against digital technologies is ironic in a way few critics appreciate. The time available to critique digital technology is actually time made available by technology—maybe not always digital technology, but this outcry is part of a broader shift in sentiment about the net benefits of technology and its proper place in society and in people’s lives. New technologies are typically met with an initial burst of enthusiasm soon followed by an eruption of discontent and apprehension that paint new technologies as modern-day Frankensteins. Yet the monster never runs amok. The reason is that the early failures and problems animating critics are remedied as people learn how to live with new technologies. It’s this necessary—and normal—process of adjustment and accommodation through trial and error that is somehow always overlooked by critics. People are willing to totter through this process because they don’t want to give up the greater convenience they now enjoy. (As an aside in this vein, a good rule of thumb about forecasting is to

never extrapolate failures as the future. Problems never persist because what’s wrong always gets fixed. The better way to anticipate the future is to focus on the fixes. The future will follow fixes, not failures.) Much of the criticism about digital technology nowadays is meant to sound an alarm about things that need fixing, not to advocate forsaking new technologies entirely. But there are plenty of hypothetical digital doomsday scenarios in the headlines that are dominating the agenda for business and politics. The singular moment when AI enslaves humanity is one. A generation debilitated by its addiction to smartphones and social media is another. The squandering of talent and resources on trivial apps, the loss of community and empathy and the attrition of literacy and lucidity that diminishes the capacity for contemplative, rational thinking are three more. When the telephone was introduced, critics assailed it for isolating people from face-to-face interaction, for intruding on people’s privacy, for putting women at risk of inappropriate contact by strange men, for mixing social classes, for providing a way for men and women to indulge in indiscretions, for encouraging women to waste time on idle chitchat and gossip, for being a source of constant interruption and for pestering people with intrusive sales calls and advertisements. Similar criticisms were leveled against bicycles, automobiles, TV and many other technologies as they first came on the scene. Substitute the word “digital” for “telephone” (or “bicycles,” “automobiles” or “TV”) and it’s the same “Groundhog Day” debate all over again. In retrospect, we see that all of the parlous hullabaloo about the telephone was overblown and shortsighted, and this is a lesson to remember when it comes to digital. What kept the telephone moving forward despite criticisms and concerns was the convenience it brought to everyday life. It became easier to reach people and to stay informed, to organize functions and sustain

relationships, to give and receive help, to find entertainment and learn about new things. Whatever the problems, people wanted the convenience that the telephone brought to their lives. For consumers, the solution was not to leave the telephone behind. It was to fix the problems. The same principle applies today when it comes to digital technologies. There’s too much talk of unplugging among the chattering class when what consumers really want are fixes so that they can enjoy greater convenience problem-free. People are unplugging to live better with digital tools, not to live without them. Today’s digital lifestyles are relatively new, only possible since the mid-2000s. Think of TV in the 1960s—that’s the equivalent of where things stand today with digital technologies. People have yet to learn how to strike a balance and live with digital technologies, so it’s no surprise that there remain many things to fix. But convenience rules, hence, things will get fixed. The problems at hand have to stay on the agenda because that’s the only way they’ll get addressed, but these problems do not involve the stark choices that have come to define much of the discussion about digital technologies. Too little is said of the benefits that digital technologies have delivered to people. The focus is only on problems and challenges, and such an unbalanced view inevitably leads to the miscalculation that consumers are better off without technology. Convenience is the criterion for assessing new technologies. Whatever other benefits they deliver, greater convenience must be part of the basic value proposition. It is this boost in convenience that will ensure problems are fixed and that technologies are embedded in ways that lead to better lifestyles. m J. WALKER SMITH is chief knowledge officer for brand and marketing at Kantar Consulting and co-author of four books, including Rocking the Ages. Follow him on Twitter at @jwalkersmith.

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The Complete Job-Seekers Guide (from A to Z) There’s no perfect formula for getting a new job or promotion, but there are certain skills and qualities that can help marketers land in the “yes” pile and win the interview By Sarah STEIMER

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• Focused • Expert • Certified • Creative • Excellent ACTION-ORIENTED Hiring managers want to see candidates who will take chances, even if some of those efforts result in failure. Ideal candidates bring fresh and well-researched ideas to the table. Ellen Slauson, executive vice president of account management at marketing agency Upshot, says being action-oriented, or decisive, is one of the most overlooked qualities a marketing job candidate can have. Job candidates should prove their ability to gather intel, decipher the information and find the pearl.

›› ACTION Scan your application materials for buzzwords, and remove them. Have a trusted peer or mentor review the updates to ensure you chose appropriately descriptive words—you won’t get hired by misusing a thesaurus.

›› ACTION Should an interviewer pose a hypothetical problem, respond by asking follow-up questions and provide a firm conclusion. Your decisiveness will show confidence and an ability to act without wavering.

COLLABORATION This means being able to collaborate within your team, with other teams in your organization and with outside clients. It’s all about breaking down silos. “Collaboration is key in this industry,” Slauson says. “We don’t really believe that creative is just creative’s job. Partnership is absolutely critical.” Some of the best marketing has come via collaborations; think Nike and Yeezy, GoPro and Red Bull, Uber and Spotify. There’s no reason you can’t find your own marketing magic this way. BUZZWORDS Don’t use them! “There are buzzwords that are so overhyped,” Slauson says. “Big Data, strategic, results-driven—all that stuff on the résumé makes you feel like it’s an empty bag.” The 10 most overused marketing buzzwords on CVs and profiles, according to LinkedIn, are: • Specialized • Leadership • Passionate • Strategic • Experienced

›› ACTION Highlight your collaborative skills in job interviews, particularly if they involve reaching outside of your immediate team. Provide examples.

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1. Self-awareness and self-regulation: Understand the needs and wishes that drive you and affect your behavior. Keep your negative emotions from spreading to colleagues—90% of top performers are skilled at managing their emotions in high-pressure situations. 2. Reading others and recognizing the impact of your behavior: Be aware of how your words and actions influence colleagues. 3. Learn from your mistakes: Acknowledge your mistakes, reflect critically and learn from them. This is an excellent way to respond to the ever-popular interview question: What is your greatest weakness?

DESIRE TO LEARN Education shouldn’t end once you land a job. Professionals need to constantly evaluate their skills against industry standards. A willingness to continue learning illustrates your ability to be autonomous. If you see a shifting trend in the industry, educate yourself without being prompted—you may even be able to seek reimbursement from your current or future employer. ›› ACTION Show your current or prospective employer your desire to learn by taking courses, attending industry events, gaining new certifications or reaching out to thought leaders for insights. If you don’t have time for an after-work class, listen to an industry podcast on the way to work (may we recommend “Answers in Action”?) or grab lunch with a mentor. FUSION

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE Although you may not see this trait listed on job postings, Slauson says emotional intelligence tells an employer a lot about how you solve problems. Candidates can illustrate their emotional intelligence, or EQ, by describing a time they handled conflict in the workplace. Harvard Business Review quoted Adele B. Lynn, author of The EQ Interview, as saying EQ accounts for anywhere from 24% to 69% of performance success. ›› ACTION Harvard Business Review recommends focusing on three measures of EQ when interviewing:

Marketing doesn’t operate in a vacuum. Companies hire marketers expecting them to have a wide range of skills and be able to fluidly work with other teams. Research from Pure360, Technology for Marketing and the Institute of Direct and Digital Marketing found companies with fewer than 50 employees have an average of three people on their marketing team, companies with 50 to 249 employees average eight people on their marketing team and those with 500 to 999 employees average 14 marketers. If you work for a smaller company, you could be one of a few divvying up the work of many. “I want marketers to understand the full breadth of what marketing can do and how it intersects with every other business function,” says University of Cincinnati professor Ric Sweeney. “Marketing is the center of the business universe—it integrates with and is essential to every other aspect of business. [Marketing] is not an isolated function. [You] need to build [your] understanding and skills in finance, accounting, analytics, operations management, international business, entrepreneurship and every other area impacted by the marketing function.” ›› ACTION Talk to co-workers outside of your immediate team. Learn how marketing is impacted by the financial team, IT team and the executive team. When building a campaign or creating new marketing materials, understand the financial implications, the resources you will need from other departments and how you will explain the value of your work to those stakeholders. Thinking beyond creative and the four P’s of marketing will make everyone else’s job easier and the work well-rounded.

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being embellished skills or capabilities. A quarter of survey respondents said they’ve caught applicants who claim to be employed by companies they never worked for.

GET SPECIFIC LinkedIn’s 2017 U.S. Emerging Jobs Report found general or extremely saturated skills such as “strategy” and “marketing” are being replaced by more specific skills within those professions, such as “integrated marketing.” Pure360’s report also shows a trend toward more specific roles: 33% of respondents said they expected their teams to become more specialized in 2017, compared to just 3% who are moving toward generalist roles.

›› ACTION Tell the truth. Explain gaps in work history, be clear about your qualifications and clarify exactly what your experience has been. If you’re asked about specific skills you lack, be clear about any related abilities you have and describe your learning style.

›› ACTION “Marketing” may cover all your areas of expertise, but organizations expect all employees to be advocates of the brand. Get more specific and break out the exact types of marketing you have experience with: copywriting, analytics, direct marketing and/or artificial intelligence.

IMMEDIATE CONTRIBUTIONS “Employers seek new hires who can contribute immediately,” Domeyer says. “Candidates who can communicate specific ways they can help the organization succeed often make the best impression.”

HONESTY Job candidates must be honest about their experience and qualifications. This is especially true in the era of social media: 35% of hiring managers surveyed in a 2015 CareerBuilder survey said they had sent friend requests to or followed job candidates, giving employers the opportunity to confirm candidates’ pasts and personal details. The survey also found that 56% of hiring managers have caught job candidates lying on their résumés, with the most common untruths

›› ACTION Visit the website and social media platforms of companies you’re interviewing with. Search for news articles about the firm and reach out to members of its network. After you’ve done some research, pull together anecdotes of when you solved problems or faced challenges relevant to the firm. “Whether it be through a specific campaign or creative projects, marketing executives are keen on data points,” Domeyer says. “Cite how you helped grow revenue, increase customer conversion rates, improve usability or boost staff productivity. Contributions and accomplishments that can be attributed to your work can set you apart.”

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of industry best practices and trends remains essential,” Domeyer says. “Marketing professionals should always showcase their most current skills, especially when applying for digital roles. Employers want to hire talent who are keeping up with new tools and technologies and who show a continued desire to learn.”

JOY Companies do not want to hire someone with a negative attitude. Researchers Michelle Gielan and Shawn Achor found that 75% of job success can be predicted from a person’s overall work optimism, positive engagement and support provision. They also found that optimists are five times less likely to burn out, compared with pessimists, and three times as likely to be highly engaged in their jobs. If that’s not reason enough to be optimistic, know that positive employees have also been found to make more money over the course of their careers. ›› ACTION Gielan wrote in Harvard Business Review that optimism can make job candidates appear more likeable and capable. “When a hiring manager asks about a recent challenge and how you solved it, the way you frame your response is telling for future performance,” Gielan writes. “Optimists focus more on the energizing aspects of work and the areas in which they have control. If an interviewee gives an empowered response with a focus on the solutions instead of merely discussing the problem, that person is worth a second interview.”

KNOWLEDGE OF INDUSTRY A broad understanding of the marketing industry will always be a competency that hiring managers seek in prospective employees. “While the marketing industry continues to evolve, knowledge

›› ACTION Follow industry thought leaders, set up alerts for relevant industry news and sign up for industry e-newsletters (the AMA has a few).

LEADERSHIP Fifty-three percent of advertising and marketing executives surveyed by The Creative Group said that strong motivational skills are the most important factor they consider when promoting professionals to supervisory positions. “Being an effective manager means more than delegating tasks and making sure projects are completed on time,” Domeyer says. “Leaders also must inspire their teams.” ›› ACTION Domeyer points to a few qualities held by marketers in leadership roles: • Vision: A keen understanding of where the business is moving in the future. • Focus: Effective managers know when to sacrifice short-term wins to pursue big-picture objectives. • Creativity: A willingness to flip established business practices upside down and foster a culture of intelligent risktaking. • Flexibility: Change in the industry and the workplace is constant, and leaders need to pivot accordingly. • Resilience: The best leaders can bounce back and turn setbacks into gains.

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networking, and InterviewSuccessFomula.com found about 80% of available jobs are never advertised. Checking in with your network can also garner insights about an organization before you interview, Domeyer says, helping you come armed with insider knowledge. You also showcase your network to prospective employers. Consider how your personal or social network could benefit the team, department or organization. This is less about namedropping and more about tapping into the resources you’ve accrued. MATCH Personalization is the driving theme of marketing today, so prospective marketing candidates should match their application to the job rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach. If you’ve never stepped foot on a fairway, you would be confused if a coupon arrived at your house for golf clubs. Similarly, hiring managers will quickly throw out a generic résumé indicative of spray-and-pray applying. Customization shows the hiring manager that you want a specific position, not just any job. ›› ACTION Update your résumé, cover letter and portfolio each time you apply for a job. If you’re applying for a managerial position, pull examples of your leadership to the top of your skills list, or start your cover letter with an anecdote about your management abilities. Some career coaches suggest removing any experience older than 10 years, but you should also keep any role that would be relevant to the position for which you’re applying. In general, you can delete your oldest and least-relevant jobs. Your cover letter should describe your qualifications and your interest in the specific position. Rambling on about yourself without mention of the job will play like a self-absorbed date. Your application should mirror the skills or qualities the job post emphasizes. It can also be beneficial to find the LinkedIn profile of whomever held the job previously and see where your skills overlap.

›› ACTION LinkedIn allows you to see if you have any direct or mutual connections at an organization. Tap these people for a recommendation or company insights. Don’t just network in the digital world. Find industry organizations in your region and attend events to make face-to-face introductions. Always carry a small stack of business cards, which should include contact information that won’t expire with your current job.

OMNI-CHANNEL “Marketers need an understanding of a wider range of channels than ever before,” says Celtic Chicago’s CEO Marlene Byrne. “Digital and social are moving at the speed of light, and keeping pace with how these new conversations affect the overall landscape is critical.”

NETWORK Never underestimate the power of knowing the right person. A LinkedIn survey found 85% of all jobs are filled by way of

›› ACTION Developing a strong personal brand can demonstrate that you’re an omni-channel-minded marketer. Your brand includes your visual identity (logo, website, business card, résumé, promotional materials) and your verbal identity (bio, elevator speech, résumé content, social networking profiles). “A good way to nail down your personal brand is to create a one-page brief on yourself,” Domeyer recommends. “This exercise forces you to craft a targeted message based on your skills, qualifications, passion projects, accomplishments and career aspirations. [...] Once you’ve defined your brand, you want to apply it consistently across all channels, including your résumé, social media profiles, portfolio or website and elevator pitch. Consider the look, feel and content.”

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PORTFOLIO Slauson says everyone, not just creatives or designers, should have a portfolio to show their work. A portfolio describes your specific accomplishments, and gives you more time to discuss your soft skills and other qualifications. A portfolio provides proof of value to the hiring manager and further differentiates you from the other candidates. ›› ACTION Slauson recommends building a portfolio like you would a case study: Show the problem, ideation, solution and results.

• How will you measure the success of the person in this position? Every marketer knows that ROI matters, and your role in the company is no different. Find out how the organization tracks its employees’ progress and what milestones you’ll be expected to hit. • What differentiated the employees who were good in this position from the ones who were really great? Depending on their answer, you may be able to provide an anecdote that relates to this person’s qualities, or note it as one of your personal goals. • What is the typical career path for someone in this role? Hiring managers like candidates who are driven (hence the common question, “Where do you see yourself in five years?”). It’ll also give you an idea of whether there’s room to grow within the organization or if it can serve as a launch pad for your goals. • What are the next steps in the interview process? Avoid waiting by the phone or checking your e-mail nonstop. Find out when you can expect to hear back from the company or if there are additional steps before the final decision.

RESILIENCE QUESTIONS Job interviews always end with the opportunity for the applicant to ask questions. This is a chance for you to find out if the organization and position are the right fit for your career and aspirations. ›› ACTION There are many great questions to ask depending on the responsibilities of the role, the culture of the company and how much information is already public. Here are some of our favorites: • What are the biggest challenges facing the company/ department right now? Not only can you learn what hurdles you’ll encounter if you land the job, but the answer to this question may determine if this job is more trouble than it’s worth.

LinkedIn showed future-proofing skills to be critical in its report on job trends. The survey found almost 30% of professionals believe their skills will be redundant in the next one to two years, if they aren’t already, with another 38% saying they believe their skills will be outdated within the next four to five years. “This feeling is largely driven by lack of access to adequate training to stay abreast of new—largely digital—skills that are necessary to be successful in today’s fast-paced jobs landscape,” the report says. ›› ACTION Continuously expand your skill set, especially computer-related skills. Competence in social media, Microsoft Office software and digital marketing is in demand for a number of jobs.

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SOFT SKILLS Soft skills aren’t typically taught in school, so they require personal development. A study from HR software provider iCIMS identified the top soft skills that recruiters look for as problem-solving (62%), adaptability (49%), time management (48%), organization (39%) and oral communication (38%). LinkedIn found similar results, with hiring managers identifying top skills as adaptability, culture fit, collaboration, leadership, growth potential and prioritization. ›› ACTION Show up on time, dress appropriately, make eye contact and keep your phone put away during the interview.

UNDERSTANDING DATA “Step Up Your Digital Game,” a report by The Creative Group, surveyed almost 600 creative and marketing professions with hiring authority, finding data analytics to be a top area of need. “There’s strong demand for professionals who can improve customer experiences and create measurable ROI, like UX designers, digital strategists and e-commerce marketing managers,” Domeyer wrote in the report. Out of 22 skills identified by Pure360, data analysis and reporting was reported the third-most important skill in B-to-C marketing and sixth-most important in B-to-B and nonprofit marketing. ›› ACTION You can find free resources online to hone your analytics skills: Google’s Analytics Academy, Quora, Moz blog and Online Behavior are good places to start.

TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE It’s critical that candidates have knowledge of relevant software and technology, but don’t waste space on your résumé listing every app and platform you’re fluent in. “We assume that any marketing candidate has a basic understanding of business software,” Byrne says. “The real estate on your résumé is precious. Use it for your unique qualities and skills that set you apart.” ›› ACTION Instead of highlighting your knowledge of specific technology, mention it as a tool used in projects that showcase your other abilities.

VISION Domeyer identified vision as one of the top qualities that managers look for. “A sharp understanding of where the business is going is essential to success,” she says. ›› ACTION Research the companies and industries you apply to and provide the interviewer with your thoughts on where you see the industry and company heading and the role you would play in that future. If applying for a promotion, make it clear how your efforts align with your inside knowledge of the company’s goals.

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WRITING SKILLS Perhaps one of the most basic marketing skills is the ability to write. “Strong writing skills and the ability to craft a compelling narrative are essential to success in business,” Sweeney says. Marketers need to be articulate when explaining data and able to tell a story that convinces and compels action. ›› ACTION “I recommend marketers consider taking a creative writing class so they can hone their skills in crafting well-written, compelling messages for a variety of audiences,” Sweeney says.

YOU Despite the effectiveness of automation and algorithms, you’re not going to get a job by being a robot. Be yourself, the hiring manager doesn’t want an entirely different person performing the job than the one who showed up to the interview. Make your needs clear. Domeyer says job postings are showing a greater emphasis on corporate culture and what the organization can offer the employee. “In today’s candidateshort market, hiring managers need to be asking, ‘What can we do for you?’ versus, ‘What can you do for me?’” she says. “In job postings and during interviews, they should emphasize perks such as remote working options, tuition reimbursement programs and career advancement opportunities, and provide a complete picture of life at their organization.” ›› ACTION Be professional and be yourself. While showcasing what makes you the ideal candidate, ask about what you need from the position.

X-FACTOR Every so often there’s a résumé story that goes viral, like the guy who dressed as a Postmates delivery man to deliver his résumé inside a box of donuts. Slauson says she once received a rubber ear from a job candidate to symbolize that person was a great listener, and another time the office received a cake with someone’s résumé printed on top. She wasn’t particularly impressed with either. “Somebody who I did hire came in and gave a PowerPoint presentation about themselves, built like the brand pyramid,” Slauson says. “They had a brand positioning statement and turned themselves into a brand. Not only did it tell me something else about the person, but showed me they understand marketing and how to build a brand. It was interesting, yet relevant to marketing.” ›› ACTION Don’t do a stunt for the novelty of it. Stand out in a creative way that showcases your marketing know-how.

ZIG (OR ZAG) Demonstrate your ability to respond to challenges with pragmatism. This creative flexibility is at the crux of marketing. “At the end of the day, we’re here to solve problems, and many professionals, while good at doing, often lack the ability to assess a situation and develop a plan for solving that problem,” Sweeney says. “It is the forward-thinking approach to solving problems that gives a marketer the edge in this competitive environment.” ›› ACTION Provide examples of how you’ve solved problems, especially in a way that was counter to what your competitors were doing. m MAY 2018 | MARKETING NEWS

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LUCK OF THE

DRAWER FIFTEEN YEARS AFTER HITTING SEND ON AN E-MAIL DOODLE LAMPOONING GENERAL MILLS OFFICE LIFE, MARKETOONIST TOM FISHBOURNE SKEWERS THE MARKETING WORLD FROM ATOP HIS PERCH AS MARKETINGâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S COMIC PRINCE

BY ZACH BROOKE

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TOM FISHBOURNE’S HANDS ARE IN DEMAND. AS THE CREATOR OF MARKETOONS, FISHBOURNE’S WORK IS A VISUAL SHORTHAND TO THE MANY FOIBLES ENCOUNTERED IN MARKETING AND ACROSS THE BUSINESS WORLD. CREATIVE FRUSTRATION, ILL-FATED MARKETING STRATEGY AND EXISTENTIAL DESPAIR OVER THE MEANING OF IT ALL COMBINE TO PROVIDE FERTILE SOURCE MATERIAL FOR FISHBOURNE’S STRIPS. A gentle but incisive man, the head-banging logic displayed in many of his sketches reflects the frustrating experiences common to executing marketing strategies. Yet, Fishbourne’s own professional life is one of unbridled success. It’s taken him from offices in the Czech Republic to the halls of Harvard University to the prestigious brand management war rooms of General Mills and Nestlé to the San Francisco Bay Area, where

he runs a boutique agency alongside his wife, cranking out client commissions and corporate caricatures. A career-spanning retrospective of his funniest and most prescient panels was recently released under the title Your Ad Ignored Here. Marketing News caught up with Fishbourne to talk about the lessons he’s learned over the course of a decade and a half of drawing.

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Q A

AS A KID, WHAT DID YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GREW UP?

I always thought that I wanted to be a cartoonist. That was my dream. I used to sit on the floor on Sunday mornings with the comics section and dream about my heroes, Gary Larson and Berkeley Breathed and Bill Watterson. I wanted to do what they did. Then I got a little older, and it seemed farcical and less likely. I shifted gears. I did a bit of writing for a variety of magazines after undergrad. But my career has definitely been circuitous and when I look back, all those different experiences seem to have a role in getting me to where I am. But at the time, I certainly had no idea.

Q A

IT SOUNDS LIKE YOU WERE DRAWN TO CARTOONING AT AN EARLY AGE?

Yes, very early. I’d take Silly Putty and I’d transfer cartoons over and change the dialogue to make fun of my brothers. That was my first introduction. Then I was drawing all the time.

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TALK ABOUT YOUR FIRST GIG IN BRAND MANAGEMENT AT GENERAL MILLS AND WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO MAKE YOUR FIRST POSTCOLLEGE CARTOON.

camaraderie of a class who are all going through [similar] experiences at the same time was a huge learning curve. I’ve often heard brand management programs described as getting a Ph.D. in marketing. It was [like that] for me. They invested a lot in training. At the same time we were learning by doing. I found myself in this world of inside jokes where we were all e-mailing each other and talking about our experiences. It reminded me of business school. When I had a cartoon strip in business school, a lot of it was designed to capture some of these inside jokes that we shared as students. I found a similar dynamic at General Mills. My first cartoons were parodying the things that brand managers would recognize. One was about the other side of the focus-group mirror. You’d have the people responding to questions on one side, and they’d look at the shiny glass mirror. On the other side—that world back there where everyone’s snacking on M&M’s and cracking jokes and trying to distill focus-group feedback into some insights—is actually a pretty funny world.

Q A

WHEN DID MARKETING SHOW UP ON YOUR PROFESSIONAL RADAR?

I moved to the Czech Republic in 1995 and met a couple of guys who were starting the first English magazine there. Because I had a bit of a writing background and a bit of a design background, and because everyone did a little bit of everything, I worked with them, helping get this magazine off the ground. I started doing advertising, sales, then designing the ads. Marketing first lit up for me as I was making these sales calls on businesses throughout the Czech Republic, trying to convince them to run ads in our magazine.

I loved arriving at General Mills and realizing that there’s this whole [marketing] community. We started as a class of sorts. There were 35 or so associate marketing managers. I’d only worked in startups before then. To be in a large company was new, but to have this

THERE WERE OTHER PLACES YOU WORKED BEFORE STRIKING OUT ON YOUR OWN— NESTLÉ, HOTELTONIGHT AND METHOD PRODUCTS. WERE YOUR EXPERIENCES THE SAME? ARE MOST MARKETING DEPARTMENTS SIMILAR?

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No, they’re all very different. General Mills thought of marketing as general management. You ran a brand and had control over a profit and loss as if it were a small business. Other marketing roles can be very marketing communications-focused. I liked the general management experience. When I shifted to Nestlé, it was soon after the acquisition of Dreyer’s Ice Cream, which had more entrepreneurialism and more autonomy. Method was a dramatic leap toward feeling like I was part of a startup [again]. It had only started a few years before I joined, and there were only 25 people in the whole company, and suddenly everything was possible.

Q A

WHAT ABOUT YOUR WORK IS UNIVERSAL OR RINGS TRUE FOR MOST MARKETERS?

Whenever I’m making fun of something, I’m usually making fun of myself and often some challenge that I’ve been grappling with as a marketer. One of the tools that I find useful— and something every marketer should do—is to step away from my desk and try to see what I do from the point of view of the audience I’m trying to reach. Most of my cartoons try to shift the context. We can have discussions around a conference table that sound very normal when you’re in them, but if you were to put a consumer [in

that position] for a moment, they would seem outlandish. A lot of my cartoons try to shift that perspective, and I think that marketers need to do that more often—step out of the ivory tower and put yourself in the position of the audience. I learned that shift in perspective at General Mills. Former Chief Marketing Officer Mark Addicks used to encourage us to leave the office to hang around grocery stores and watch people shop for our products. They would often arrange situations where we could sit in on conference center calls and hear consumers calling in with questions. I carried that through to Method, where I had the chance to take the brand to Europe. We had a small office, and we put the phone number of our office on the bottles [of cleaning product] themselves. Every time somebody called with a customer support query, the phone rang in our offices, and all of us were expected to talk to consumers every single day. I found that incredibly enlightening as a marketer. Now, it’s something that I try to bring through in the cartoons because if we have that perspective, we’re more likely to think about what we do in the context of what brings value to the audience that we’re serving.

A LOT OF YOUR WORK REFLECTS ROADBLOCKS THAT MARKETERS CAN ENCOUNTER DURING THE CREATIVE PROCESS. WE THINK OF MARKETERS AS CREATIVE, BUT IS THAT THE CASE IN YOUR VIEW?

Yes, I think it is, although often marketers— particularly brand managers—are working with outside creative agencies and must balance the tension of the idea with the need to deliver business results. That creates some friction, which I find exciting as a marketer: to try to retain the creativity and uniqueness of an idea, even as you try to bring it to life. The path of least resistance is often to water down an idea and make it less exciting by removing the risk from it or making it easier to implement or run on a production line. The exciting challenge for marketers is to face each of those challenges and rather than compromise in a way that makes the idea safer, find creative solutions that ultimately make the ideas more exciting.

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HOW DO YOU PROTECT CREATIVITY AND BRING MORE OF IT INTO THE CORPORATE WORLD?

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Marketers can shift into project manager mode, where they’re ticking the box and just trying to get it through the system. That often results in less-than-exceptional products, services and marketing campaigns. But if you take it personally and believe ultimately that our job is to create marketing that is remarkable and doesn’t compromise, then I think it’s possible. I took away a great experience from working with Method, where we had very little budget and were competing against bigger companies, and therefore had to punch above our weight. We released things that were beautifully designed and had a compelling story because we couldn’t rely just on marketing budgets to get the word out. Sometimes marketers can get complacent and use marketing budgets as a crutch.

WHAT DID YOUR BOSSES THINK OF YOUR CARTOONING? DID YOU EVER UPSET THEM OR ANY COLLEAGUES?

A lot of my colleagues were convinced I would be fired for the cartoons. I used to send them out during the workday at General Mills. You’d see people’s heads pop above the cubicles like prairie dogs if a cartoon was particularly provocative. I thought at the time that if this environment was the type that wasn’t comfortable with me speaking my truth, then it probably wasn’t a great place for me to work. I got a call from the assistant to the chief marketing officer, and a lot of my colleagues thought that was the end. When I showed up, the CMO wanted to tell me how much he liked the cartoons and was excited that I was doing it, and he encouraged me to do more. Sometimes, particularly in large corporate environments, the message we inherit is that you have to keep your head down and play it safe. What I learned from that interaction is that it was actually best to stick my neck out. I was rewarded for it by being assigned more creative positions because I made a name for myself within the company. At times, there’s been tension. One manager

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if Snapchat could be a strategy—as opposed to a tactic that may or may not be of value to their brand. The strategy has to come first, but sometimes as marketers we get so excited about the shiny new thing we forget that.

YOU’VE MENTIONED YOUR CARTOONING IDOLS. WHO ARE SOME PEOPLE YOU LOOK UP TO IN MARKETING?

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I had at Nestlé told me directly that if he ever ended up in a cartoon I would be fired. He was the minority. In that case, I waited until I moved on to a different company, and then I had all this pent-up material that I was able to use.

WE’RE OFTEN TOLD TO STEP OUT OF OUR COMFORT ZONE, BUT WHEN IT COMES TIME TO DO IT, THERE CAN BE A LOT OF PUSHBACK FROM COLLEAGUES OR MANAGEMENT FOR UPSETTING THE APPLE CART.

Right. When I arrived as an intern at General Mills, I kept my head down. I was so concerned that I didn’t have the analytical chops. At the end of the summer, they offered me a full-time job, but as they gave me a performance review, they put creativity as a development area. I said, “Actually, I’m creative.” And the guy giving me the performance review said, “A lot of people think you’re creative.” I realized that it was fair feedback because I had hidden that side of myself from the company. It was a lesson to be comfortable being who I was.

Q A

WHAT DO YOU FIND FUNNY ABOUT MARKETING?

One thing is shiny-object syndrome. Marketers get so excited about whatever’s coming next that we get whiplash. Somebody might describe their Snapchat strategy—as

There’s an entrepreneur in the western part of Wales whom I study very closely named David Hieatt. He has started several companies. He’s a marketer at heart and worked in advertising, but he is also an entrepreneur. He thinks about ways that brands can operate differently. He’s currently creating a denim brand called Hiut Denim in this small part of Wales that used to have manufacturing for some of the larger jean brands. When things got outsourced to Asia, all the factories closed. His mission is to try to get the town making jeans again. He’s pioneering this global micro-brand in the middle of western Wales that’s getting an incredible amount of attention despite its size. I love what that represents and what he does personally because it shows just how much we can accomplish as marketers if we have the power of a good idea and can create remarkable executions.

Q A

HOW FREQUENTLY DO YOU DRAW OR PUBLISH A CARTOON?

Since starting this marketing cartoon 15 years ago, I’ve held to a weekly cadence. Now that I do this full-time with a small studio the output’s a lot higher. We produce an average of 20 cartoons every week for different campaigns for different brands. I used to be able to wait for the “Eureka!” moments in the shower or on a run, and now I have to be much more structured about where the creativity comes from.

YOU MUST’VE DRAWN THOUSANDS OF CARTOONS AT THIS POINT. HOW DID YOU SELECT THE ONES FOR YOUR BOOK?

That was a fun process to map them out. I wanted to organize the book chronologically because the past 15 years have spanned an interesting period in the history

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of marketing. So many things came online in the past 15 years to shape how we think about marketing. I wanted to tell the key aspects of that story. I looked at the ones that still made me laugh after all these years, and I found that some of the cartoons were too narrowly focused on food marketing, for instance, from my time at General Mills. I tried to include the ones that best captured marketing in a grand sense.

Q A

DO YOU HAVE A PERSONAL FAVORITE?

There was a cartoon that I drew the week that I decided to start my own business and leave a paid salary behind. That was one that’s not explicitly about marketing, but it’s one that I often hear the most feedback about, particularly from people who are thinking about making a leap themselves. I drew myself on a bicycle/flying machine with these crazy

wings, and you see across the course of the cartoon, the character is going from frame to frame and saying, “What if I fail? What if it’s a crazy idea? What if I haven’t tested it enough?” At the very end, you see him launch off the cliff and he says, “What if—Oh, where did the runway go?” That was exactly how I felt when I launched the business. Feeling like I was jumping off a cliff and had to build my wings on the way down.

Q A

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE STRANGEST PLACES YOUR CARTOONS HAVE TURNED UP?

I started to get a lot of notices from people I didn’t know soon after the Edward Snowden/ WikiLeaks release asking me if I knew that my cartoons were in a top-secret NSA presentation. I followed the link and it turned out that, sure enough, some NSA presentation had used a couple of my cartoons to help make a few points.

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More than 430 attendees colored a giant version of Fishbourne’s “Garden of Creativity” cartoon, which once held the world record for the most contributions to a color-by-numbers project.

I’VE ALSO HEARD YOUR CARTOONS HELPED SET A GUINNESS WORLD RECORD. WHAT’S THE STORY THERE?

I created a cartoon called “The Garden of Creativity” that imagined what could happen to ideas when bringing them to life. A figure at the center is planting an apple tree, representing the new idea, surrounded by a crowd of people, but everybody else in the frame has clipping tools, hatchets and lawnmowers. It shows the challenge of trying to bring an idea to life. That it’s easier to critique an idea than to create one. Marketing Week contacted me, and I created a large version of that cartoon that attendees at a conference colored in the largest color-by-number event in the world. Over the course of two days, hundreds of people filled it in.

DO YOU MISS BEING A MARKETER NOW THAT YOU’RE A CARTOONIST, OR DO YOU STILL CONSIDER YOURSELF A MARKETER?

I still consider myself a marketer. I don’t work in classic brand management any longer, but through Marketoons, this small studio that I’ve built with my wife, we work with a huge variety of brands on interesting marketing challenges. Now I get to think about how cartoons can tell stories for those brands. It’s absolutely marketing.

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT BRANDS THAT TRY TO BE FUNNY, WHETHER IT’S ONLINE, LIKE THE WENDY’S SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNT, OR CLASSIC SUPER BOWL COMMERCIALS?

Humor is a great tool to leverage, but brands often struggle with it. Unfortunately, when something doesn’t work, it becomes a lesson not to do humor at all, rather than learn from the experience. One of those lessons has to do with where the butt of the joke is. In the case of my cartoons, and this applies to a lot of brands, I try to find humor in pain points, rather than making fun of either the audience

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or being too snarky about competition. I find it easier to find a shared laugh. It humanizes the brand by showing that they’re in on the joke. If you’re not careful, the number of cooks in the kitchen can easily dilute the humor and kill the joke. The reason many Super Bowl campaigns, for instance, are not that funny is that there are so many people around the table critiquing that you end up playing it safe.

Q A

WHAT ARE THE LARGEST MARKETING CHANGES YOU’VE ENCOUNTERED?

One I try to capture in the title of my book, Your Ad Ignored Here. When I was originally trained in marketing at General Mills, a lot of the underlying assumption involved thinking about the consumers we were trying to reach as a captive audience, assuming that if you just had the right media spend, and the right message, that your audience would be captive. Much of that heralded to an earlier time when there were only a few discreet ways to get our marketing message out into the world. That’s absolutely shifted. It’s never been easier to get in front of audiences, but it’s also never been easier for them to tune out. So many decisions made when I started out were a tremendous leap of faith. Now we have instantaneous data to measure their effectiveness. We’re still grappling with the right way to use that data. It’s good to be data-driven, but sometimes we can become data-blinded, and we discount the importance of our own intuition.

Q A

IS IT EASIER TO BE A MARKETER NOW THAN WHEN YOU STARTED?

In some ways, yes. We have more tools than ever before that have leveled the playing field. You can be a challenger brand with a compelling story and make a significant impact. But in some ways, marketing has become more challenging in that we can’t be on autopilot anymore. It puts marketers in the position of continuously needing to be aware of the changes that are happening around them, not just assuming that what worked a couple of years ago will work today.

Q A

IS IT EASIER TO BE A CONSUMER NOW?

I’ve been inspired by some direct-toconsumer brands that have bypassed the traditional retail model over the last few years.

IF YOU’RE NOT CAREFUL, THE NUMBER OF COOKS IN THE KITCHEN CAN EASILY DILUTE THE HUMOR AND KILL THE JOKE. THE REASON MANY SUPER BOWL CAMPAIGNS, FOR INSTANCE, ARE NOT THAT FUNNY IS THAT THERE ARE SO MANY PEOPLE AROUND THE TABLE CRITIQUING THAT YOU END UP PLAYING IT SAFE. That creates incredible opportunity. We’re now in a world where you don’t have to settle for the lowest common denominator. I dealt with this when we were coming up with new flavors for Häagen-Dazs Ice Cream. Some of the flavors that we found most exciting we couldn’t justify launching to every state in the U.S. because it was considered too niche. Going directly to consumers frees up some of that friction.

Q A

DO YOU HAVE ANY ADVICE FOR PEOPLE WHO WANT TO BECOME BETTER MARKETERS?

Experiment as much as possible. There’s always value in experience outside of your day job. I learned so much from starting this cartoon. It made me a more competitive candidate whenever I shifted to a different business because I could talk about this different point of view. If you’re working in an organization like General Mills or Nestlé, you learn a tremendous amount, but you become one of many brand managers. Find some things that distinguish you from the rest of the pool.

HOW ABOUT MARKETERS WHO, LIKE YOU, ARE LOOKING TO DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT? ANY ADVICE FOR THEM?

You don’t need to quit your day job right away. The founder of Method told me that he never wanted to see me leave Method to join another company. He wanted to see me leave Method to start another company. I found it useful to do something on the side while I had a day job that I loved that allowed me to ramp up the new thing to a point that it was large enough for me to actually leave. Had I left my job and immediately tried to make a business out of it, I would’ve quit out of frustration. m

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THE ART OF THE

NARRATIVE ARC For years, storytelling has been the backbone of the best marketing campaigns. Now, as a surfeit of content drives engagement down and makes it difficult to be different, storytelling defines the marketer. BY HAL CONICK

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“Y

ou seem strategic,” a manager told Rissa Reddan during a job interview, “but can you really execute an idea?”

Reddan, who worked as a marketing leader at PwC, listened to the question and realized she could answer with a story, something she had never done during a job interview. “May I show you a picture?” she asked the manager. “Sure,” he said. Reddan reached into her bag and pulled out a photograph of herself. In the picture she is radiating an adrenalized smile, standing alongside a horse and a police officer. The trio stand just off a dirt road in Winter Park, Colorado, cars fanned out in a panicked formation behind them, another man in the background looking toward the ground. “My husband and I were walking back from a music festival out in Winter Park, and this horse was running down Highway 40,” Reddan says she told the manager. “All the cars are stopped and everybody is looking at one another like, ‘What’s happening? What should we be doing?’ I’m standing there watching, and the horse comes around the corner. I step into the middle of the street and grab onto the bridle.” Reddan pauses her story, takes a breath and laughs. “I think that’s what it’s called; I don’t know anything about horses.” The horse was bigger up close than Reddan imagined, but as she grabbed it, the horse slowed its gallop before faltering to a stop. “I was terrified,” she says. “I just felt like something needed to happen.” As police officers and the horse’s owner arrived, Reddan’s husband snapped a photo of Reddan holding onto the horse as proof of the improbable moment. In the photo, her hand rests under the horse’s black mane, her body craned forward in a pose of astonishment. “Anybody could have stepped in to grab that horse,” Reddan says she told the manager. “But I was the one who did it. So I would say, yes, I am somebody who can take an idea and put it into practice or be the one to take some action.” Weeks later, the manager offered Reddan a job. She worked as CMO of financial adviser Performance Trust Capital Partners for the next two and a half years.

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Stories have long defined marketing. The story has been one of marketing’s best tools for building desire, interest and bonds with customers. Apple’s “1984” commercial is a classic example of the power of storytelling in marketing. The minute-long ad told the story of how Macintosh computers would free consumers from tyranny—something Apple Art Director Brent Thomas told The New York Times was “strictly a marketing position.” It was one hell of a marketing position: Apple aired the ad once during the 1984 Super Bowl and sold $3.5 million worth of computers the morning after and $155 million over the next 100 days, per David Lewis’ The Brain Sell: When Science Meets Shopping. Just as stories have defined marketing, stories now define the careers of marketers, the people attempting to build desire and create bonds with consumers, managers and employers in a world awash with content. The surfeit of content—tweets, videos, résumés, portfolios, blog posts, white papers, market research and inspirational speeches—has worn away the audience’s willingness to engage. A 2018 report by BuzzSumo finds that from 2015 to 2017, social sharing fell by 50%, even as the amount of content increased. However, a well-told story can stand outside the flood of content, engaging listeners and carrying a marketer’s message to the public. Think of the marketing stories that have stood time’s test: People still discuss Apple founder Steve Jobs’ keynote addresses, in which he mythologized newly created products—such as the now ubiquitous iPhone and iPad—as he introduced them. Nike’s Michael Jordan “Failure” commercial, a story told in 30 seconds and 44 words, is readily recited by anyone with hoop dreams: “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over, and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” Smart marketers have noticed the power of storytelling, but few marketers have become good storytellers, according to Storynomics: StoryDriven Marketing in the Post-Advertising World, a 2018 book written by Robert McKee, creative writing instructor of the “Story Seminar,” and Thomas Gerace, CEO of Skyword. “Story, like art and music, is a word you think you understand until you try to define it,” McKee and Gerace write. Marketers and advertisers—even Super Bowl spenders—are often complacent with their limited definition of storytelling.

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Most advertising campaigns lean on bragging and promising (McKee’s term for hard selling) coupled with a conflict-free, chronological narrative. Most corporate websites feature a carefully written history that reads as though the company were founded by improbably lucky businesspeople. Most speakers at marketing conferences tell stories of successful campaigns in data points rather than plot points. When the campaign bottoms out, the website gets no hits or the speaker puts the audience to sleep, McKee says, the storyteller blames the story. “But what they don’t realize is that they didn’t tell a story, they told a narrative,” he says. “If they had told a true story, they would have seen the effect of it. It’s inevitable. There’s no avoiding it. But it requires a huge transition in thinking.” Case in point: Research from Jennifer Aaker, a marketing professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, found that 63% of people will recall a story, but only 5% will recall a single statistic. Put this stat in context (if you haven’t already forgotten it) by thinking back to your favorite stories: Were any of them read from a PowerPoint slide? “Today’s CMOs must be change agents,” Gerace says. Marketers spend hundreds of billions of dollars on ad distribution, but many are losing faith in advertising’s ability to grab the attention of everdistracted consumers. Stories, he says, will grab the attention lost by ads. “Today’s successful marketers will be folks that shift from ad-centric to storycentric marketing.” This huge change in thinking—from bragging to storytelling—is summed up by McKee and Gerace in three words: Conflict changes life.

onflict on the side of a dirt road in Colorado may not have changed Reddan’s life, but it certainly gave her a good story to tell. Before she learned how to tell a story, she would have answered a question like “Can you really execute an idea?” with a platitude like “I’m a go-getter.” Now, Reddan keeps the runaway-horse photo tucked into her folio, looking for her next chance to retell the tale. Reddan pulled out the photo during a recent truncated job interview with PayNet— an interviewer told Reddan he had a flight to catch—and immediately told her story. Later in the interview process the same man told Reddan he was telling the company great things about her. “I think you’d be a terrific add to the team,” Reddan says he told her. That company also offered Reddan a job as senior vice president; she started in April.

“When I have reached for a story versus saying ‘Let me tell you about the 57 facts on my résumé,’ the story has resonated more,” Reddan says. Reddan’s anecdote is bolstered by research from New York University psychology professor Jerome Brume, who found that facts wrapped in stories are 22 times more memorable than facts alone. Marketers who clothe facts in story will benefit, McKee says, as the story format allows marketers to contextualize the facts. “If you don’t tell them the story that you want them to hear, they will ‘storify’ it their own way, which may not be persuasive for you,” McKee says.

Why Stories Matter and How They Work Scott Whitehair didn’t plan to make a business of storytelling—it was 2013, and Whitehair loved stories so much that he ran events where his friends and neighbors could spin yarns in front of an intimate crowd—but one day, Whitehair’s phone rang. “We found you through your website,” a nonprofit executive said to Whitehair. “You did?” Whitehair replied, slightly confused. He had been telling stories publicly and coaching others in Chicago’s tightknit storytelling community, but he wasn’t sure how a business could find him—his website was a tangled mess. “Yeah,” the exec said. “Do you coach sales teams?” “Of course, yes,” Whitehair said, even though he had never coached a sales team. Whitehair still shakes his head in disbelief when retelling the story of his first call from a business. “I worked with people who want to tell stories to their family and socially and on stage,” Whitehair says, “But [after that call], it clicked for me that this stuff is useful anywhere people communicate.” Whitehair researched the business he’d be coaching, scribbled down everything he knew about storytelling and coached his first group of employees on the art of the story. Five years later, Whitehair is a full-time storytelling coach, a fantasy job for an English major and storytelling hobbyist. He has coached at corporations (Johnson & Johnson, BlueCross BlueShield and PwC), nonprofits (Chicago Cares, Rady Children’s Hospital - San Diego, Boston Children’s Hospital) and universities (Northwestern University, DePaul University, University of Chicago Booth School of Business). Whitehair

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Short Story, spends a lot of time working with businesses, but he doesn’t spend any time wondering why a business would want employees to learn storytelling. “It bypasses the skeptical mind,” Whitehair says. “If I tried to tell you about all my values, how I was raised ... it would take 10 or 15 minutes. Or, I could tell you a story about finding a wallet full of cash in front of my apartment and how I took all day to track this guy down. He had a very common name, but I found him through Facebook and gave his wallet back. At the end of that story, you know about my values.” Sharing values through storytelling succeeds, Whitehair says, because people want to work with people, not ideas. This ability to relate to others can be critical to a career, according to research from Lauren Rivera, associate professor of management and organizations at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. Rivera conducted two years of interviews with hiring professionals at 120 large companies and found that the most common way interviewees were judged for a job was by their similarity to the interviewer. One professional told Rivera that potential employees must be able to pass the “stranded in the airport test,” which asks, “Would I want to be stuck in an airport in a snowstorm with them? And if I’m on a business trip for two days and I have to have dinner with them, is this the kind of person I enjoy hanging with?” Rivera called another common interview test “looking glass merit;” interviewers defined merit by their personal sense of worth and goodness, using themselves as the standard bearers, judging interviewees thusly. “Because these firms leave a lot of discretion to evaluators—‘I want you to pick somebody that’s driven!’—but they don’t tell you what drive looks like, people end up defining it in their own image,” Rivera told Kellogg Insight. Interviewees can’t know the merits or personality of a person they’ve never met, but they can use stories to relate to interviewers as human beings instead of potential employees. Esther Choy— the woman who coached Reddan on storytelling, president and chief story facilitator at the Leadership Story Lab and author of Let the Story Do the Work: The Art of Storytelling for Business Success—says most people banter with and talk past one another, but very few people communicate well. When they learn how to tell stories, they’re learning how to captivate and communicate, all while sharing memorable truths about themselves. The standard reaction from new storytellers, Choy says, is, “Wow, people finally understand what I’m saying.”

BIG CONFLICT

ong stories will have more points of tension and conflict, but even a 30-second ad must feature a point of conflict and a protagonist who is changed by that conflict. Think of Nike’s “Failure” commercial where Michael Jordan says he missed multiple game-winning shots but succeeded because of his failure. It’s short, features a beloved character failing but choosing to endure and shows that he’s succeeded despite— or, perhaps, because of— his failure.

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IRS

(intriguing, riveting and satisfying)

hoy has an acronym for remembering how to tell a good story. IRS: intriguing, riveting and satisfying.

INTRIGUING:

“The first thing that comes out of your mouth has to be intriguing or else it’s really hard for people to stay motivated to keep listening and paying attention,” Choy says.

RIVETING:

“The main part of the presentation must be riveting, then you’ve earned the right to tell your story,” she says.

SATISFYING:

“People often leave others to make their own conclusions,” Choy says. “This is fine if you’re writing a novel, but you can’t do that if you’re telling stories. After a meeting, many people have no idea why they were in the meeting and don’t know what they’re supposed to do about everything they heard because there was no satisfying ending.”

o the human brain, a good story is like riding a rollercoaster, says Carl Marci, chief neuroscientist at Nielsen Holdings PLC. A good story has moments of tension and release built throughout the beginning, middle and end, just as a good rollercoaster clacks upward before dropping down, speeding along and clacking back up again for the next drop—every good story has the tension of the climb and the emotional release of the drop. The brain reacts to a poorly told story or a set of data points as if it were an uninspired firework display: “You get a little pop of attention early, but then engagement falls off,” Marci says. Getting the listener’s brain to pay attention is tough, he says, whether working on a campaign or speaking at a conference. Distractions are everywhere: A social media marketer must compete with 330 million Twitter users, just as a conference speaker must compete with the glow of smartphone screens. “We’re pretty taxed when it comes to attention,” he says. And attention is just step one of engagement. Step two, Marci says, is conflict. This is an ingredient that changes a story from good to great by going beyond tension and release to give the listener themes, stories and relatable characters. When listeners can relate to a character, they feel empathy. Put that empathetic character into a surprising, thematic dilemma—wanting peace while at war, longing for love while experiencing hatred, wishing for freedom while held in captivity—and you’ve gone a long way toward activating the emotional and memory circuitry in the listener’s brain, which Marci says is essential for the third and most difficult step: creating an emotional response that forms new memories. This step—the payoff—is why you’ll remember every detail of your favorite childhood story but forget every detail of the PowerPoint presentation you heard yesterday. It’s likely a big reason why Reddan received a glowing recommendation from the manager she spoke with for 15 minutes. “We can’t act on something in the future unless it stays with us,” Marci says. “The key is that big emotional payoff at the end.” The emotional payoff chemically bonds us to a brand, a character or an interviewee. As a great story develops, the brain releases oxytocin, a hormone responsible for empathy and narrative transportation, according to research from Paul Zak, director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University. When the brain synthesizes oxytocin, Zak writes “people

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are more trustworthy, generous, charitable and compassionate.” Oxytocin is why great stories often leave us feeling exhilarated, ready to change our own lives, but it’s also why narratives without conflict are instantly forgotten. “How many times have you left a movie saying, ‘I want to do something differently in my life’?” Whitehair says. “I’ve been there. But if you’d gone into the theater and they just flashed bullet points at you, would you leave and say, ‘I should do the thing the bullet points said’?” If this all sounds difficult, that’s because it is, McKee says. But that’s good news. All marketers can improve the way they tell stories. The human brain may want to take the easy way by bragging and promising, McKee says, but that doesn’t take listeners on a twisting, looping rollercoaster ride. It leaves them watching the hiss, fizzle and whimper of an underwhelming firework display.

The Pattern of Well-told Stories When Allen Gannett was a child, he spent hours finding the pattern of the artificial intelligence in computer games, working until the games were effortlessly beatable and exceedingly boring. “I’ve always been a tinkerer,” he says, pausing his story to ask a waitress to bring a straw for his iced coffee (“Gotta protect those teeth,” says Gannett, who has tinkered his way out of extrinsic stains). As a teenager, Gannett badly wanted to appear on a game show. He methodically applied to dozens of auditions and was quickly called for an audition on “Wheel of Fortune,” a show he had never watched. Gannett binged on episodes, trying to figure out what contestants had in common. “I realized that there’s a certain way they enunciate that works really well on TV and they’re all really silly, but they’re actually not good at solving puzzles,” Gannett says. “I practiced, I drank a lot of espresso, killed the audition and got on ‘Wheel of Fortune.’” Gannett lost, but he kept searching for patterns and applying to gameshows, appearing on “Movers & Changers,” an MTV take on “Shark Tank” that has since been deleted entirely from MTV’s website. Gannett didn’t win “Movers & Changers” either, but at 19 years old, he formed a hypothesis: There’s a pattern to everything, including stories. Now, Gannett is 27 and runs TrackMaven, a marketing analytics firm with clients such as GE, Honda and Saks Fifth Avenue. He’s also written a

book, The Creative Curve: How the Intersection of the Familiar and the Unknown Leads to Breakout Success. The title of Gannett’s book offers a peek into what he believes to be the pattern of the story and all creative endeavors: The familiar and the unknown intersect and become something new. Stories have narrative arcs and character archetypes that have existed for centuries, but life is always offering new twists, situations and technologies that can be combined with the classic arcs and archetypes. The existing patterns of stories allow people who may not consider themselves creative—businesspeople, numbers people, methodical tinkerers—to be storytellers, too, so long as they’re willing to try something new. Gannett leans forward; he’s a super-liberal, he says, but he employs a practice from Steve Bannon, former chairman of Breitbart News and former White House chief strategist for President Donald Trump, that perfectly underlines the importance of story patterns. When Bannon ran Breitbart, a far-right news and opinion website, he said he used narrative arcs for each news story. “Paul Ryan is the globalist, and Donald Trump is the savior, Hillary Clinton is going to prison,” Gannett says. “They follow these arcs and they’re telling lots of stories. Content is coming out on these longer narrative arcs people can follow along and come back to.” Breitbart went from attracting 3% of news readers in 2014 to 9% of news readers in 2016, according to Five Thirty-Eight. “They bring you back in,” Gannett says. “Otherwise, why should we come back to your website, your channel or your brand if it’s just one random piece of content?” Despite the rapidity of modern media, Gannett says people still want content they can follow episodically—think of the popularity of serialized podcasts such as “S-Town,” which was downloaded 10 million times in four days. Gannett wants to give people something both familiar and unfamiliar as they follow him online. If TrackMaven releases something familiar like a white paper, a few people may read it, but if Gannett does something unfamiliar, like a silly video on LinkedIn that tells the white paper as a story, he believes the information will resonate with the audience. “It brings people into my story and my company’s story,” Gannett says. “There are consistent characters in my story, there are tropes, there are inside jokes. People get latched into that.”

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story has eight stages, according to McKee and Gerace’s Storynomics: 1. Find the target audience. Who should the story emotionally affect? GE targeted potential employees with its “What’s the Matter With Owen” campaign, which followed a young software developer who explains to confused friends and family that he has been hired by GE to write code that matters to the real world. The campaign increased job applications by 800%, per the company. 2. The protagonist needs a core value, a prime principle. 3. An inciting incident occurs. An unforeseen event must upset the protagonist’s balance. What happens when their core value is tested? Think Tom Hanks being marooned on an island in “Cast Away,” or turning from a child to an adult in “Big,” or needing to find Private Ryan in “Saving Private Ryan.”

4. The protagonist longs for an object of desire to restore balance. What does the character want? Kurt

Vonnegut once wrote that you must “Make your characters want something right away even if it’s only a glass of water.”

5. The protagonist makes a tactical choice she hopes will push her toward the object of desire. This

may be clumsy, like Tommy killing Billy Batts in “Goodfellas,” or it may be inspiring, like Rocky beating up a side of beef in “Rocky.” 6. The tactical choice fails. A gap opens between what the protagonist thought would happen and reality. (Damn, you mean you shouldn’t rage-kill a made mobster?) 7. The protagonist makes a crisis choice. Does she use insight gleaned from the first choice to make a more informed, more difficult tactical choice? “Goodfellas” protagonist Henry Hill knows his time in the mob is over. Does he risk death or go into a witness protection program? 8. Closure, the payoff. The character’s insightful choice brings the story to an end. Cinderella marries the prince. The audience leaves hepped up on oxytocin. Marketers who are unaccustomed to telling stories may look at these stages—a character who fails?—and get nervous. McKee and Gerace say marketers have “negaphobia,” a fear of showing their conflicts and failures, but McKee says that marketers need to get over negaphobia and start thinking in conflict. Remember: their definition of story is “conflict changes life;” no conflict, no story. “Marketers must be willing to recognize the negative side of life and dramatize it,” McKee says.

“Things go wrong. There are negatives all along the way; they’re essential in story. If [marketers] can’t [realize] that, they’ll never tell stories. It starts with a recognition of that positive-negative dynamic, the conflict of life that’s underneath the surface.” In marketing, failure and conflict should look different than Hollywood’s dramatic deaths and life-shattering events. Nationwide CMO Matt Jauchius produced a story-based Super Bowl ad in 2015 that featured narration from a little boy who dies in the span of the 40-second spot. The ad was designed to save lives by warning of the danger of child accidents, Jauchius told AdAge, but it left consumers feeling sad and cold—a multimilliondollar insurance payout can’t make up for the loss of a child. Within months, Jauchius left the company. Instead of using severe conflict, marketers can use conflict and failure as obstacles in the way of success. One of Choy’s clients won business after a moment of vulnerability. They asked a potential client, “Do you struggle with this?” After a nod from the listener, Choy’s client followed with, “Well, we do too.” Reddan melded conflict into a video testimonial campaign by asking clients “What was your hesitation in working with us?” followed by “What got you over that hurdle?” The result was an unvarnished look at the biggest hurdle any company faces: winning over a client. “You weren’t getting a polished talking head,” Reddan says. “You were getting a real client account of what they value.” Gannett understands why conflict makes marketers nervous. “It’s really risky,” he says. “Some stories don’t work even if you plan really well.” However, Gannett says marketers who continue to use outdated content strategies will stunt their professional growth and hurt their companies. Marketers who send a higher volume of the same content through e-mail and social media will get the same response rate and burn out their followers in the process, all without developing a knack for storytelling. Marketers who long for a job at a prestigious company or to be the CMO of the next big startup while only speaking in facts, boasts and promises will fail the “stranded in the airport test” and get used to hearing the phrase “just not the right fit.” “It’s easy to be right down the middle and not take risks,” Gannett says. “There are a lot of people who have loss aversion and a lot of corporate environments that don’t reward failure.” By focusing on stories, marketers are accepting failure of the old

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“Any story that shows a mistake you’ve made also shows that you’re still standing there. You have overcome it. The act of telling that story is a strength. It’s you saying, ‘I’ve learned from it, and I’ve moved past it.’”

way, but they’re giving themselves the freedom to do something different. Change is scary; using a big-budget ad campaign or important interview to tell a story can make a marketer feel vulnerable, but Whitehair says this vulnerability can be a strength. “Who is the stronger leader: the person who says, ‘I’ve never done anything wrong. I’m amazing at what I do. I have all the answers,’ or the person who says, ‘I’m human, and here’s where I made a mistake. Here’s where I need to get better’? I think there’s great strength in the latter. “Any story that shows a mistake you’ve made also shows that you’re still standing there. You have overcome it,” Whitehair says. “The act of telling that story is a strength. It’s you saying, ‘I’ve learned from it, and I’ve moved past it.’” m

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career advancement

COMPENSATION

How Much Do Marketers Make? A recent surge in salaries suggests it’s a great time to be in marketing BY ANDY CRESTODINA

 andy@orbitmedia.com

arketers work for companies, but they also work for themselves. As we upgrade our skills, we create more value, we move up and our responsibilities grow. Hopefully, our titles and salaries grow, too. A year and a half ago, Orbit Media

created a marketing salary guide for seven different marketing positions. With the 2016 data as the benchmark, we repeated the process and were surprised at the changes: It’s a good time to be in marketing. The chart below shows what marketers made at the end of 2017.

The Marketing Salary Guide These marketing job salaries aren’t starting salaries. They are median total compensation numbers based on several data sources that comprise reports from 67,736 individuals with these marketing job titles.

MARKETING SALARY GUIDE

Compensation increased for each of the positions over the last 18 months. They all exceeded the 3% baseline set by the U.S. Salary Increase Survey. That’s good, but the average across all of the positions went up 19%. That’s amazing.

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COMPENSATION

career advancement

MARKETING SALARY CHANGES 2016-2017

Compensations Rise 19% Compensation increased for each of the positions over the last 18 months. They all exceeded the 3% baseline set by the U.S. Salary Increase Survey. That’s good, but the average across all of the positions went up 19%. That’s amazing. This increase suggests strong competition for top marketing talent. Companies are placing high value on team members who can drive demand. Mid-level positions saw the strongest growth, and compensation for one position overtook another: Content strategists now make more than marketing managers. Content strategy is a key skill that cuts across digital marketing disciplines. It’s no surprise that these people are in demand.

COMMON MARKETING CAREER PATH

The Marketer’s Career Path A career in any field is rarely a straight line, but there is a progression in job titles from junior to senior. The job titles in the diagram at right are listed in order of seniority. Marketing Is a Growing Field According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, marketing employment should increase 10% from 2016 to 2026. That’s right in line with the national average of all fields, but judging from the jump in pay, demand for marketing experts exceeds the supply. ANDY CRESTODINA is the co-founder and CMO of Orbit Media. He’s an international keynote speaker and the author of Content Chemistry: The Illustrated Guide to Content Marketing.

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career advancement

ON THE RECORD

Best Practices for Writing, Sharing and Posting on LinkedIn LinkedIn is much more than a résumé builder or place to endorse your friends. Build your authority with these tips.

BY SARAH STEIMER | STAFF WRITER

 ssteimer@ama.org

hip Cutter, managing editor at LinkedIn, offered some advice on how to post on the social website—and he’s begging us: Limit the posts filled with tips and tricks on productivity.

you do, the more your words and ideas are likely to be discovered. That doesn’t mean you need to share something multiple times per day or even once a day, but we recommend posting a few times per week. This can take many forms: perhaps a short-form update with your thoughts on breaking news, a quick video about a project you’re working on or an article with your take on a trend in your industry.

How often do you recommend users post on LinkedIn?

We recommend posting and sharing consistently—the more

Should the content that users post relate directly to their career or can it be a wide swath of topics that interest them?

The content you post doesn’t need to be directly related to your career. Professionals come to LinkedIn to have conversations

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career advancement

ON THE RECORD

with others on the topics they care about in the working world. This can mean sharing your thoughts on trending news in your industry, posting pictures of your teambuilding activity, recording a video with your tips on work-life balance or asking for advice about a project you’re working on. It can be a wide variety of topics under a professional umbrella.

Is there a recommended mix of content? Should there be a smattering of original articles, news posts and reposts from others?

What you post and the format you use depends on the topic and who you’re trying to reach. When you’re looking to go deep on a topic, an article will likely be your best bet. But if you want to show a demo of a product you’re working on or give a behind-the-scenes peek at a conference you’re attending, you may want to post a video or shortform post. When sharing content from others, make sure to add your perspective to start a conversation— ask questions, mention people you want to hear from and use hashtags so others quickly know what you’re talking about and can discover your post. Short-form posts and videos can be just as engaging as articles, so switch it up and see what works for you.

What topics do you recommend users write about? Should original articles be evergreen, or do you suggest timely subjects (i.e., if there’s an

Focus your articles on relevant conversations happening in your professional world that you can speak to and share unique insights on. Evergreen topics also work well if you’re trying to build your thought leadership platform on a certain topic or industry, but try to mix in posts on conversations happening now. upheaval in the user’s industry, should they comment on it)?

Our top conversations on LinkedIn are usually in response to timely topics and trending news. Professionals have had massive debates on the evolution of work, the future of retail and immigration reform, for example. Focus your articles on relevant conversations happening in your professional world that you can speak to and share unique insights on. Evergreen topics also work well if you’re trying to build your thought leadership platform on a certain topic or industry, but try to mix in posts on conversations happening now.

What are some of the biggest mistakes people make when writing original articles on LinkedIn?

It’s tough anywhere to cut through the noise. Bland articles that feel written by committee rarely gain traction. (Please, no more stories on the seven ways to be more productive before 7 a.m.!) Another mistake: failing to properly entice people to your

article with a compelling headline. Headlines matter a great deal in determining whether someone will read and share your piece. Be clear and specific. A bit of drama without tricking your reader is always good. We also recommend including images and videos in your articles to keep your readers engaged. Use hashtags to help your article be found and mention people who you want to see it.

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Any other tips for utilizing LinkedIn posts or articles?

Whether you’re publishing an article, short-form post or video, being authentic and sharing what you know is most important. Don’t be afraid to show your personality—if you’re enthusiastic and outgoing, let that shine through in your posts. Reaching the right community of professionals matters more than the number of views your posts receive. Focus on the conversations happening on your posts and take the time to respond to comments; this can be a great way to connect with new people and could lead to new opportunities. m

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advertisers’index

ADVERTISERS’ INDEX Quick source for contacting the suppliers in the May 2018 issue of Marketing News. 2018 AMA Advanced Research Techniques Forum .................................................. p. 19 URL: h ttp://ama.marketing/ARTFORUM2018

AMA Professional Certified Marketer® Content Marketing Program . ....... inside back cover URL: http://ama.marketing/PCM-CM

2018 AMA Marketing + Public Policy Conference ....................................... p. 15 ttp://ama.marketing/MPP2018 URL: h

AMA White Papers ................................................. p. 23 Email: anelmes@ama.org URL: http://www.ama.org/whitepaper

2018 AMA Nonprofit Marketing Conference . ............................................................... p. 7 ttp://ama.marketing/nonprofit18 URL: h 2018 AMA Summer Academic Conference . .............................................................. p. 13 ttp://ama.marketing/summer18 URL: h

AMA’s Marketing Resource Directory ................. p. 57 URL: http://marketingresourcedirectory.ama.org Georgetown University School of Continuing Studies ................................. back cover URL: http://scs.georgetown.edu/dreamjob Marketing News ...................................................... p. 59 Email: sales@ama.org / URL: http://www.ama.org/mediakit

2018 AMA Training Series ...................................... p. 17 URL: http://ama.marketing/ts

Salesforce Connections . ................ inside front cover URL: http://www.salesforce.com/connections

Advanced School of Marketing Research . .................................................................. p. 21 URL: http://ama.marketing/ASMR18

University of Georgia . ............................................. p. 5 Ph: 706-542-3537 URL: http://www.marketresearchcourses.org

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#OfficeGoals A peek inside the marketers’ offices that make us drool

McCANN WORLDGROUP, a global ad agency, wanted a modern space to express the strength and longevity of the McCann brand and capture the glamor of the advertising industry. The 26,000 square-foot space in New York features collaborative areas, a board room and an enclosed brainstorming space. The latter is reconfigurable for visiting clients or new business pitches. When not hosting guests, it is a library and creative space. Print ads celebrating the firm’s centurylong history adorn the walls. The space is brand-centric, so art walls in the reception area showcase the brand’s timeline. A media wall plays commercials to engage new clients. m

PHOTOS: ERIC LAIGNEL

Interiors by TPG Architecture

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