What you need to know:

• Three CMOs who have influence in spades – Tourism Australia CMO, Susan Coghill, Creative Australia executive director of development and partnerships, Leisa Bacon, and former Google VP of marketing ANZ, Aisling Finch – have taken the mics in the latest CMO Awards podcast episode to reveal how they exert influence across peers, executive leaders, CEOs, stakeholders – even the CFO.
• Data, empathy and consistency are all essential toolbag items for each of these three executives as they’ve looked to convince global and local CEOs and executives to invest in their bold brand and growth ambitions.
• According to Bacon, you can’t influence without credibility, and that means delivering outcomes and values that earn you kudos from the non-marketing people in your organisation. Per Bacon: “If you want to have a seat at the table where you have a lot of highly skilled people who are also quite critical, you've got to bring value. And how do you bring value? You've got to understand their needs. You've got to talk their language.”
• For all three, a no-surprises policy is also a must. Bacon, Coghill and Finch further subscribe to the need for marketers to avoid sugar coating and being transparent, early and often, on their work to build trust. “Bringing bad news early is actually a credibility builder,” says Finch.
• It’s equally about knowing audiences inside and outside the organisation. “If you think about how busy boards are, or your CEOs, how do you distill all that information into the most meaningful data points so they can understand what’s happening, understand the context, but not drown in data? That is a real skill set,” says Coghill. Cultural relevance is then how brands stay creatively relevant, topical and engaging, she adds: “We still have to lead with emotional storytelling; it’s what moves people. But we do use data and insights to make sure we’re delivering those stories to the right audiences in the right way at the right time.”
• Experimentation and learning should also be actively encouraged. Finch puts it in terms of distinguishing between inputs and outputs. “You can be hard on the output: Did we achieve our objective? I think it's important actually to be very honest about how far you got to the objective,” she says. “But it's not helpful to be tough on the inputs.”
• Listen to the podcast here.

Data, empathy and consistency

For Finch, who spent 13 years with Google, advocating for the local market to global stakeholders was a daily job. Early on, she took an Australia-first advocacy approach – that the local team loved her for – picking and choosing the metrics to tell the story she wanted to tell. Years later, she’d switched such a blunt instrument for nuanced engagement and put herself in the listener’s shoes. Exhibiting empathy, having the data at hand to build the narrative, and demonstrating consistency all proved instrumental to building influence, she says.

“I found it actually quite a disarming strategy to almost go the opposite way of advocacy and say to people: ‘Okay, so we're 55th in population in the world, why are you even spending time with me?’ It’s almost that underdog card. But then you build a bit of credibility – you bring data, bring empathy… and you start to build a story. It's quite disarming and builds trust when you say, ‘interesting, we’re 55th in terms of population, but guess what, we’re 13^th on GDP. And look at the willingness of consumers to spend on smartphones, or content,” she says. “Putting yourself in their shoes, being empathetic, bringing in data without over advocating – I found that to be more effective.” Well that, and sharing the odd Tim Tam, she quips.

Hand-in-hand here is consistency. “Let’s say you secure that investment. You have to go back with the results,” Finch says. “You can’t just be asking when it’s annual planning. You have to be constantly building those relationships, sharing the data and making sure you’re closing the loop.”

Building credibility through value

In complement to empathy is credibility, according to Bacon. You can't actually influence without credibility, and you need outcomes and values to actually build that credibility, she argues. 

“I think back to my journey at ABC, which is probably my best example of the need for influence in an organisation where half the staff are journalists. As journalists, their starting point is hypocritical. If you want to have a seat at the table where you have a lot of highly skilled people who are also quite critical, you've got to bring value. And how do you bring value? You've got to understand their needs. You've got to talk their language,” she says.

“If you're talking to a group of journalists, they don't want to hear about your marketing efforts. But what they do want to understand is how to get out the stories they've worked hard on and researched, and at times put their own lives on the line for. They want that story to have impact. They want that story to reach as many people as possible. You can help with that.”

Reframing the role of marketing, and how Bacon and her team were adding value to what journalists needed, was a winning formula. “They want their stories or their programs to get out, and you can help bring them an audience,” she says.

“You just need to flip it into the way they are thinking about the problem, which is: What are the right distribution channels? Who are the right audiences? How do I reach as many of those people as possible to ensure my story has the most impact possible? That's what gives you influence: Being able to tell that story, and being able to sit with them and say, ‘here's how I can help you reach your audience’.”

The best moments for Bacon came when those ABC journalists began opening the door at the beginning of the story, shared what they wanted to do, then asked: How do we actually get to as many people as possible? And how do I best bring it to life?

“When you're in those meetings, you're like, this is it. I've made it when the news team, or the programming team, want me here, because they now care about the audience and how they get out to that audience,” Bacon says. “By the time I was at the end of my decade at the ABC, I loved people playing back to me things I had said about the audience.”

The short and the long of influence

The challenge is it takes time to get these sorts of wins on the scoreboard, demonstrate consistency and earn trust. Having recently taken up a new role at Creative Australia, Bacon says she’s already asking herself repeatedly: Where are the short and longer-term steps I can take that will shore up my influence across the organisation?

“I need quick wins. I need to pilot some things. I need to demonstrate success, understand the challenges in the business and how I can quickly add value so I am at the table for when they actually do need to understand more about audiences, and if they need to get their programs out,” Bacon continues. “It is harder to do that quickly. But for everyone walking into a new job, that’s still part of the job. It’s really understanding the problems where you can add value early, so you build that bank of trust quite quickly and so people start inviting you in. That’s so you can make the real change over time. You’re building the foundations of long-term success. Having those conversations early and often to steer your organisation, is really important.”

The absolute necessity of CMOs orienting themselves around the perceived business value and internal expectations of marketing is something recruiters recently told Mi3 was vital in the current jobs market where the CMO remit is more diverse than it’s ever been. Every CEO’s understanding of marketing’s role and the input a marketing leader can provide to deliver growth outputs is different – even if the commercial imperative to know how to translate your worth to finance remains consistent.

Having conversations early and often with executive peers, bringing data to the table every time, while simultaneously leveraging the power of storytelling were critical for Coghill as she worked to build something big to re-engage with the world with Australia post-Covid lockdowns in 2022. Not only was it a competitive moment, as many markets reopened, new competitors had entered the fray looking to woo the lucrative traveller Tourism Australia had its sights on. Enter the $125m campaign, ‘Come and say G’day’ campaign platform.

“It was about making sure we were coming up with a big idea that would put Australia back on the map in the minds of our high-yielding travellers but importantly, one I could get our industry behind, and get all my peers on the executive team behind, as well as the rest of our stakeholders,” Coghill recalls. “It wasn’t just about marketing; it really was about how Australia turns up on the world stage at that really crucial moment. So no pressure at all.

“I found engaging early and often using data, providing context, was key. We have talked about the campaign when we launched it… there was data and analysis that sat behind every decision we made. It was all about bringing stakeholders on the journey, helping them understand why we made every single decision, rallying their support along the way and making sure we’re sharing the success stories and learnings along the way as we continued to iterate the campaign and work on that next chapter.”

Honesty and sharing the bad news early

Being honest and sharing bad news early is another must our three CMOs insist on, especially given how often marketers continue to be perceived as the eternally optimistic executives on the c-suite – to their detriment. Coghill has a “no surprises” rule she applies from team to CEO, finance team, and corporate affairs.

“I joke with them I am still a Catholic school girl and feel the need to confess everything and bring everybody into the tent,” she jokes. “But it has served me well, and it has kept my colleagues well informed and able to help me when and where I've needed it.”

It’s also been a key relationship builder with finance and corporate services. “When I have had challenges with projects in the past, one of the first calls I will make is to our exec GM of corporate services and our CFO, because they can help me find solutions. Being vulnerable in that way and transparent with them also helps build trust. But then it’s also little things. My entire leadership team and I went and did the finance class at AIM, and you learn a lot in it. But to be honest, I think the gesture of just going and taking that course was really great from a relationship standpoint.”

It’s a similar philosophy for Bacon, who says her former ABC boss taught her the value of sharing upfront and often.

“In media – and especially the ABC – you are so heavily scrutinised, you have to be transparent about the good and bad all the time, and even things that might never come out,” she comments. “I would make sure he [ABC MD] always knew if something worked or didn’t work. It was 100 per cent transparency. And I would apply that going forward to every job I would do. Transparency builds credibility, it builds trust, but it also is just a good way of working.” 

It’s also the ultimate way to gain trust, something all three CMOs believe lies at the heart of building strategic, sustainable influence. “Bringing bad news early is actually a credibility builder,” says Finch.

“It’s really important not to sugar coat and say, ‘we had a really good view’. Well, was attention there? Did people’s perceptions change? It’s not just picking the metrics that make it sound a bit better. That’s where we can fall into a trap as marketers… in the finance conversation, just sharing vanity metrics as I would call them, or lead indicators and the good news. If it’s not translating into the commercials, the business is going to see that. You’re better off calling that early. If you think the creative is not as effective as it should be, or if it’s not landing as well as you thought, share the bad news early.”

Intermingled with this is a continuous learning and experimentation culture Bacon, Finch and Coghill all work hard to build. The only failure is not encouraging learning from it, they agree.

“It’s helpful for the team to distinguish between inputs and outputs. You can be hard on the output: Did we achieve our objective? I think it's important actually to be very honest about how far you got to the objective,” comments Finch. “But it's not helpful to be tough on the inputs. If someone has done fantastic work and to the best of their knowledge, and everyone's been on the journey, then it's important they know. We stole from the engineering org the idea of ‘blameless retrospectives’, where you just unpack what went well, what didn't go well, both in the outcome and in the process and ways of working. I find mentally, if I separate inputs and outputs, it's easier to manage.”

Know all your audiences

As much as CMOs need to know their internal audiences, they equally have to demonstrate they know the audiences of their organisation’s products and services.

“It’s about having an always-on, current perspective on consumer sentiment, business sentiment, what are the other influences out there on consumers and business and having very strong audience data,” says Finch. “Sometimes it’s harder to have data, and there are decisions that are a bit more of a hypothesis, or you’re trying to predict how people react to things. Having as much input and knowledge as you can have about your audience is always really firm ground in terms of influencing.”

Combine it with storytelling, urges Coghill, adding it’s about “meaningful” data sources, not just cherry picking the juiciest ones.

“If you think about how busy boards are, or your CEOs, how do you distill all that information into the most meaningful data points so they can understand what’s happening, understand the context, but not drown in data? That is a real skill set,” she says.

Add in cultural relevance and you’re onto a winning wicket – internally and externally with consumers and audiences.

“Cultural relevance is how we stay creatively relevant, topical and engaging,” says Coghill. “We still have to lead with emotional storytelling; it’s what moves people. But we do use data and insights to make sure we’re delivering those stories to the right audiences in the right way at the right time.”

Cultural relevance and storytelling are particularly critical at a time when we’re experiencing “a zeitgeist moment right now where being Australian actually matters again, as does Australian content, Australian stories, Australian artists,” says Bacon. “That’s never been so important as right now. So what can we do to actually tell stories right now that people are remembering and caring.”