Adaptability, AI, and building trust: Joanna Robinson, CMO of THE ICONIC, on thriving in retail marketing

In our first ADMA CMO Spotlight of the year, we chat with Joanna Robinson, CMO of THE ICONIC, about her global career journey, how AI is reshaping marketing, and why staying agile is more critical than ever.

To start off, can you tell us a little about your career to date?

I’m coming up on nearly 30 years in my career, so I certainly feel like I've been around the traps for a long time.

My first job out of university was with Procter and Gamble as a territory rep, which back in the day was how everybody had to start in FMCG. The belief was you had to do some kind of on the ground sales training, no matter where you wanted to end up. So I spent 18-months as a territory rep before stepping up to be an account manager. 

The first half of my career was all FMCG. I spent six years in the Middle East, first with Unilever and then Estée Lauder. I came back to Australia 10 years ago, and I've marketed everything from wine to bubble tea to fashion ever since. I am now Chief Marketing Office at THE ICONIC, a role I started almost two years ago.

One common element of my varied career is that marketing is at the core of everything I do. It’s a skill set that, if you get it right and have the customer at core, is very adaptable across different industries, categories, and cultures. 

What have been a few of your professional highlights along the journey?

My time in the Middle East was truly transformative and rewarding.

In a professional sense, it taught me how to adapt to cultural nuances. How can you take an advertising campaign and roll it out in Lebanon, but also Saudi Arabia? I loved solving the problem of launching into completely new countries. A lot of it was the purest form of brand building from the ground up. 

Personally, I was exposed to so many diverse views. Having my family there as well meant we all developed a really enriching perspective on life that we brought back to Australia. I think every Australian should spend some time overseas, because you really come back with a newfound appreciation for what we have in this beautiful country. 

I also had the opportunity last year to appear as a speaker at the ADMA Global Forum. This was an incredible opportunity and a career highlight for me, especially given the super talented people I shared the stage with that day. 

How important is maintaining and growing your marketing skill set in today’s marketing environment? How do you approach this for you and your team? 

It's super important to ensure that you're evolving your skill set, particularly in marketing. While the four Ps will always be the four Ps, how we show up for our customers needs to adapt.

This is one of those vocations where you're constantly kept on your toes, but you also need to make sure you stay one step in front. That’s where having a growth mindset and leaning into continued learning is so important. As a leader, that's something that I'm always looking to do for my team. 

Investing in the right training, bringing in experts, and learning from each other is super important. We have some amazingly talented people within our team, some of whom are leaders, and some who are not yet leaders, and we need to give them a runway to share their knowledge. As a business, we offer many mentoring opportunities and we bring in experts to cover different areas of interest to our employees. 

I’m also involved in a mentorship program called Mentor Walks where female executives come together and do a walk every month with younger female mentees. It’s incredibly fulfilling.

What is one thing you wish you learned earlier in your career? 

I wish I learned about the importance of networking, building relationships and finding a really good mentor. People underestimate the impact of having an external, objective person to act as a sounding board for some of the challenges you are facing at work. 

Outside of that, I wish I had learned earlier about the importance of throwing yourself into meeting new people… getting off the couch and taking it upon yourself to drive strong relationships outside your normal life frame of reference.

What do you think is going to have the biggest impact on marketing over the next few years? And how are you preparing for that?

We cannot avoid talking about the integration of AI. It's here to stay. The marketers and brands that lean into it will be one step ahead. What I think AI can offer us is really about personalisation at scale. 

At THE ICONIC, we're already doing some really cool stuff in terms of personalisation. We have the advantage of being a completely digital platform so we have access to a lot of data that enables us to personalise at scale. It gives us the ability to forecast customer behavior coming down the line. 

It’s all about helping brands show up in a more personalised way - like AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants. We're doing that within the customer service department already. We’re also starting to play around with AI in regards to content creation and looking at alternative AI model solutions as well. 

With anything like this, you've got to implement from the top down so it can truly be embedded in the culture. Brands need to have an approach of continuous learning and innovation,  empowering people to fail, but fail fast and take the learnings.

What are some of the key regulatory developments that are in progress right now that you think will shape the future of data-driven marketing? 

This space is changing rapidly. For example, you cannot drive AI without being aware of the regulatory environment around it.

There's been major reforms announced to the Privacy Act, marking what is probably the biggest overhaul since its 1988 inception.This will provide clearer and more strict guidelines that we will all have to adhere to. 

In this vein, one of the most significant consequences of data breaches is the potential of increased penalties. There do need to be repercussions for businesses and marketers who don’t take it seriously and ultimately don’t protect their customers. 

What do you think are the biggest challenges for confronting marketers today? 

Marketing, as I said before, is all about being adaptable. Particularly with retail - you’ll never be bored! We could be high-fiving one day and the next we're having an emergency sales meeting because we haven't met our forecast. 

One of the things that's particularly having an impact right now is the really tough macro-economic climate. People are being more thoughtful about how they spend their money, and that's something impacting all marketers. 

We’re also having to navigate complex tech advancements. This is a pivotal time to ensure we're leaning into these changes and utilising them, rather than being paranoid that tech’s about to take our jobs. 

Finally, there’s consumer trust. It is very hard to gain consumer trust and you can lose it overnight if you do the wrong thing. That is always at the forefront for me in terms of marketing budget allocation. I want to ensure that our customers actually trust us as a brand.

What's the best piece of advice you'd give to a university graduate starting their first role in marketing?

My biggest piece of advice to any young person coming out of university is to just say “yes”. I believe the universe sends many things your way, but also there'll be people in life that say, “Have you thought about doing this?” It’s like when I ended up in Dubai - it’s because I said yes to an opportunity to work overseas. Before I moved my whole family there, people would ask me “What if you don't like Dubai?” And I said “We come home!” But nothing ventured, nothing gained. 

It’s also so important to never stop learning. I've just done my AICD (Australian Institute of Company Directors), Board of Directors course, and it took me into all sorts of areas beyond just marketing, such as finance and legal and governance. It was completely out of my wheelhouse and I absolutely loved it.

Why are organisations like ADMA so important for the wider industry?

ADMA is super important because it’s about industry leadership. It’s a unified voice that actively advocates for marketers with government bodies and regulators. It really gives us a platform, a voice and drives us to be better marketers. 

ADMA also offers us valuable education and training and enables us to pursue the continuous learning environment I’ve discussed. This also helps us focus on driving innovation, which helps us to stay competitive in turn. I've stressed how important it is for marketers to be agile and its associations like ADMA that really enable us to do that.

Is there an example of a really well executed data-driven campaign (or partnership) that you admire? What made it stand out for you?

I love the work that Uber does. The “Tonight I'll Be Eating” campaign is a really good example of data-driven advertising because it gives the brand the opportunity to leverage consumer insights, personalisation, real-time adjustments, multi-channel engagement and so much more. 

I also want to give my own company a bit of a plug. The “Got You Looking” campaign was all about leveraging consumer insights to get Australia looking at the brand again. We’ve had some phenomenal results and we’re about to roll out year two. It’s been amazing in boosting purchase intent, online traffic, app downloads, and all the other marketing metrics.

What do you enjoy doing outside of work?

I enjoy sleeping - when I get time to sleep! I really enjoy spending time with my family. One of the nice things about getting older is that you start to really appreciate what's important in life. I love my job. But I love my family more, and I have two beautiful kids, my husband, and my dad who lives down the road from me. I feel so grateful because family time and friend time is what life is about at the end of the day.