NAB’s Suzana Ristevski on her team’s key learnings and takeaways from their ADMA partnership

Suzana Ristevski joined NAB in 2017 as general manager and promoted to CMO the following year. 

The Association for Data-Driven Marketing & Advertising (ADMA) provides digital and data-driven courses developed by industry experts for professionals to upskill and diversify their knowledge.

In a series with ADMA, Mediaweek spoke with Suzana Ristevski, the NAB’s chief marketing officer, about their partnership with ADMA and her team’s key learnings and takeaways.

Suzana Ristevski joined NAB in 2017 as general manager, business bank marketing and customer strategy and was promoted to chief marketing officer the following year. She is responsible for leading an effective and efficient marketing team, implementing a new marketing technology stack, and brand and customer experience in marketing communications.

“It’s a fairly generalist type of role and includes all components, data analysts, branding, comms people, marketing, strategy people, and technology. So pretty extensive across the skill sets required to run this marketing organisation,” she said.

The importance of engaging NAB digital marketers in regulatory issues and data responsibility

Ristevski explained that engaging NAB’s digital marketers in regulatory issues and data responsibility was essential to comply with the law.

“I don’t think any marketer is going to be able to do their job properly if they are not across the legislation and requirements, particularly in financial services marketing,” she said.

“There are fines from ACCC if you’re not compliant, penalties delivered by ASIC, and it’s not a good customer experience if we get it wrong. And it’s incredibly important to be across the requirements.”
 
“It’s essential for marketers to be involved in regulatory issues and privacy responsibilities on an ongoing basis. We do run a lot of regular training to make sure that everyone is equipped,” she added.

The NAB and ADMA partnership and key learnings from the workshops 

ADMA has been a critical part of how the NAB has approached improving capabilities at NAB, Ristevski said. 

“I think first and foremost if you think about what it takes to be a great or effective marketer, there are two components,” she said.

“The first component is understanding the industry that you operate in, and we certainly have programmes in place to understand financial services. The second part is to understand how to be a great marketer, and this is where ADMA fits in.”

Ristevski explained: “For us, we think about how do you create clarity, how do you build capability, how do you drive motivated individuals, and how do you unlock motivation. This is where ADMA fits in.”

“ADMA comes into building marketing capability. We love that there’s a capabilities assessment every single individual can run through. That capabilities assessment outlines everything you need to understand to be an effective marketer.”

Ristevski said that NAB’s people find what they are good at, the gaps they need to work on and focus on work on the specific areas they want to improve, such as commercial acumen or technology advancements, through learning programmes.

“It’s a really good way to consolidate where individual members are at. There are many marketing people in the community, so having a baseline to work with and everyone’s work through their capabilities is super important.”

Upskilling the NAB marketing team’s capabilities

Ristevski said that most of NAB’s marketers have completed ADMA’s capability frame framework of 16 marketing capabilities assessed against 54 skills, providing a clear view of their capabilities.

“Our initial focus has been a general marketing overview. We found that our team wanted reminders on the general frameworks and tools.”

Ristevski explained that they began with Mark Ritson’s Mini MBA delivered through ADMA and noted that now between 60% to 70% of their marketing community had completed the Mini MBA.

“I think it has been extremely successful. People are now focused on diagnosis, strategy, and tactics. 

“A lot of our community understand and know marketing, but doing that course was incredibly helpful with getting everyone to talk in the same vernacular and use the same tools and frameworks.

“I think that was mainly the key success of the first component of the programme.”

Ristevski shared that people enjoyed it and that the net promoter score (NPS) was over 90. She said: “92% of participants said that they would use their Mini MBA learnings in their current role, and 97% said the course has improved their marketing skills overall.”

“I think it’s fantastic that each of our people who have completed the course love it and feel like they’ve learned something from it,” she added.

Ristevski and the NAB team’s takeaways from the ADMA partnership

Suzana Ristevski noted that all their senior leaders have been involved and completed the Mini MBA and Storytelling Workshop.

“We all know how important it is to be able to communicate and articulate things clearly. On the back of the ADMA capability assessment, we also established a capability roadmap, and all our senior leaders have been involved in that.

“I love that all my leadership team are actually doing what they’re asking their team to do and building out those top-line capabilities.

“We love that it is ongoing and that our team are all doing it, including the leaders and reminding ourselves, there’s not just magic in our craft but so much expertise involved in our craft,” she added.

Ristevski also participated in the course and shared that she enjoyed the experience.

“I loved it; it’s not a quick half hour of learning. The Mini MBA was 12 modules, and each module was about four or five hours of reading and summarising, and then there was an assignment.

“You are putting a bit of effort in, but we’re doing that intrinsically motivated to do so. I’m also learning, which I love,” she added.

Ristevski added that she appreciated how ADMA is focused on continuous development.

“I know there are lots of conversations around the re-invention of marketing and all the things we need to learn.

“But if we remember that you know that you don’t know and that you continuously learn, you’re better able to keep up with all the technological advances, consumer sentiment changes, the market dynamic changes. It’s super important to continue learning,” Ristevski concluded.

This article was originally published by MediaWeek.