22 Feb 2022

When standing still is not an option, we keep the industry moving

Our industry moves fast. Incredibly fast. What’s relevant today, might not be tomorrow–whether we’re talking about skills, technology or regulation. And there’s so much to learn. It’s an incredibly exciting time to be a marketer.

This excitement could be felt during our latest webinar on the Great Marketing Education in January, with industry leaders Trisca Scott-Branagan, Chief Marketing Officer at Australian Business Growth Fund; Stuart Tucker, Chief Customer Officer at hipages Group; and Steven Brennan, Global Chief Marketing Officer at Zip Co.

We dived deep into why marketing leaders need to focus on education this year–and the opportunities they can capitalise on as a result. I wanted to share three things really stood out during the discussion:

1. Becoming a T-shaped marketer

While specialisations are important to being an effective marketer(vertical line), developing broader skills such as strategic problem solving, commercial acumen and a deep understanding of all four strategic capability quadrants (horizontal line) are critical on the road to becoming a CMO.

2.Challenging yourself with a new specialisation

You can become a specialist with a broad skill set by developing multiple specialties over the course of yourcareer. By challenging yourself with learning a new specialisation every 10 years, you have the time to really master an umber of skills–and build a broader understanding that will help you be effective not only now, but long-term.

3.The importance of knowing your team

In the war on talent, you need to get to know your team as individuals. Understanding their career aspirations and goals allows you to give them opportunities to progress internally –from mentorship and training to internal transfers. This gives your team and your brand an all-important competitive advantage.

Equipping marketers with the necessary skills to succeed is at the core of what we do at ADMA. And we know that the best way to develop your capabilities is through practical, hands-on learning from those at the forefront of the industry.

That’s why we have revamped our iconic Digital Marketing Certificate to bring you not only the most relevant and up-to-date content, but also the insights and expertise of the top CMOs and marketing leaders in the country. With guest lectures from CMO50-recognised leaders David Morgan, Susan Coghill, and Stuart Tucker as well as industry experts Trisca Scott-Branagan and Simone Blakers, there’s no better people you could learn from.

Shaping the regulatory conversation

While we continue to promote the importance of lifelong learning, we are also helping shape the conversation around the evolving regulation and privacy landscape–currently undergoing a massive transformation.

We outlined the marketing industry’s position clearly in ADMA’s submission in response to the Attorney-General Department’s Privacy Act Review Discussion Paper. We believe that with the right legislative and regulatory framework in place, responsible marketers have clear boundaries to operate within, allowing them to be effective while protecting consumers’ data privacy.However, for a data privacy regulatory framework to be effective, it needs to be practical.

While we strongly support the need for a review and many of the paper’s recommendations, we also voiced our concern across a number of areas.

We support expanding the definition of personal information to help businesses clarify when the Privacy Act applies. However, we believe it’s unreasonable to expect businesses to anonymise data beyond the possibility of re-identification –in practice this is not possible. Contextual evaluation will be critical to the successful expansion of the definition.

We also support making notices clear, current and understandable. But we caution against expanding consent requirements unnecessarily, as instead of empowering consumers,as would be the intent, it could increase their consent fatigue.