Welcome to the CMO Chapter Podcast, where we dive deep into the dynamic world of chief marketing officers.Join us as we explore the careers, insights, and strategies of top marketing executives who shape the brands we know and love.
Whether you're a seasoned marketer, aspiring CMO, or simply just curious to understand what it really takes to step into the shoes of a CMO.
This podcast is your backstage pass to discovering what it's like to lead and innovate in the ever-evolving landscape of business.Stay tuned as we uncover the stories of the visionaries behind the brand.To introduce the wonderful Paul Murphy.
Thank you very much, Lucy.It's an absolute pleasure to be with you.
So, Paul, would you like to, I guess, well, I'm going to get you to introduce yourself, but before we go on to that, I guess this podcast episode is going to be a little different one from what we normally sort of position.
Paul is actually a lecturer at Monash University, but I guess I wanted to speak to Paul because you really are at the forefront when it comes to teaching marketing graduates.
And I guess a lot of the reasons why we developed this podcast was to really educate and support the next generation of marketing leaders that are coming through.
So I thought, right, let's speak to people like yourself who are very much at the forefront seeing this.So Paul, over to you.Would you like to introduce yourself?
Thanks, Lucy.Yes, as you said, I'm a lecturer with Monash University in the Department of Marketing.I've actually only been a full-time academic for about four or five years, but I have worked as a sessional since about 2006.
So I was full-time working in corporate, in sales and marketing and business management roles, and I left the corporate world to start my own business. And I started teaching then as a way to supplement my income.
What I found was that I actually really enjoyed it, so I kept doing it.I started teaching because I needed the money, but I kept doing it because I enjoyed it.
Now, I still take the money, but I've had the bit of a luxury, I guess, of having my own in the middle part of my career. Um, where I was, I've been doing a lot of consulting and, and running my own small businesses, uh, but teaching on the side.
And then Monash said to me, Hey, would you like to think about doing it full time?
Brilliant.Brilliant.And can I just confirm again?So can you share the courses?What are you teaching exactly?
Yeah, at the moment I'm teaching a subject called marketing insights and that's about secondary research for basically desktop analysis around consumers and competitors and channels and also how the macro environment impacts on that.
So, and I've just taken that over in the last 12 or 18 months or so.And I've been teaching strategic marketing as well, which was the capstone unit for the Bachelor of Marketing.So, I've been teaching that for about seven years.
Okay.Excellent.Okay.And so, a lot of students, I mean, is it, how long roughly would you say that they're with you for approximately?
In the marketing insight subject is a second year unit and so they spend one semester with me.Strategic marketing is the capstone so it comes at the end of their degree and again it's another semester so it's about three or four months.
And they're spending three hours a week putting up with me.
The pleasure of Paul Murphy, love it.
And I'm curious to know, I mean, obviously, as I said at the beginning, when we first spoke, you know, you really are at the forefront, you're seeing lots of, you know, changes in behaviours, certainly within this pool of graduates that are coming through that are hopefully at some point wanting to then gain employment.
What emerging, is there any sort of emerging trends or areas that you're noticing that graduates are wanting to just necessarily hone in more so than others?
I guess there's two things.Certainly over the last six or seven years, graduates have a fascination around social media.It's a media and an environment that they know and understand. not necessarily from a business's point of view.
So they don't think of it as an advertising or promotional channel so much.But a lot of students on Open Day, I say to them, what do you want to do?And they say, I want to work in social media.
And I say to them, social media might be a great place to start your career, but you don't necessarily want to be 55 and sitting in your office and punching out another Facebook post on a Friday afternoon.
So unless, of course, you own the agency and then that could be very rewarding.Otherwise, it's going to be a fairly Eventually you might find social media quite boring.
So what I try and tell them and teach them is that we have to give them the underpinnings so that they can see where effective social media fits in the arsenal that's available to a marketer and to learn to
develop a neutral perspective based on what it is they're trying to achieve.And it's a mistake that so many practicing marketers make is they think my target market must will like this or have this preference because I have this preference.
And so we get this transference.So trying to teach students to step back and develop this neutrality around their decision-making and get rid of their unconscious biases is kind of a little more challenging.
The second thing that's happened in the last few years, as everyone knows, is the COVID thing. impacted.There's been a lasting impact on young people as they went through their early university degrees, but also secondary students.So we're now seeing
university students who were in year 11 or 12 during those lockdown phases in Melbourne.And they are a little different.
Through absolutely no fault of their own.We're all, as I said, we're all a little different as a result of what happened.But there's, they're a little bit more used to being told exactly how to do things.
So they struggle, of course I'm generalizing, but there's a little bit of a struggle with ambiguity and uncertainty and a little bit of, resilience is not quite the right word, but.
Is it almost like they're scared to fail?
Yes, that's a really good way to put it.A tickophobia or a telephobia, I think, is the fear of failure, fear of making mistakes.So they are very tentative.Tentative, that might be the word.And again, I'm generalizing.
Some of these students are just as robust and as tough as they ever were.But I think just in general, there's a little bit more of a tentativeness about them.
Yeah, it's really interesting you share that because, I mean, yeah, I know, I mean, it was such a bizarre time for all of us, such an artificial time, you know, in so many ways.
And, you know, I mean, individuals with kids, you know, teach, trying to work and obviously, you know, teach at home.And, you know, I really felt for all parents, you know, and children, you know, it was just a crazy time.
But absolutely, it's such a fair point I think you've made, because coming out of that, I mean, And I'm curious to get your thoughts on this.
I know in the past when I've certainly interviewed, you know, for roles that say have been at coordinator level and really solid grads that have come through, a lot of the time what I'm very much looking at is, is almost those personalities and trying to, you know, dig out the,
I guess the softer skills and, you know, individuals that can articulate themselves and communicate really well.
And it's hard because you sort of, I guess, learn that as you go and get more confident, whether it's working in retail or McDonald's on a Saturday, whatever it might be.And some either have that or they don't.
And that used to sort of being behind four walls or looking at a screen and they've not had the interaction. Would you agree?Is that something?
Absolutely.Yeah.Absolutely.And, and, and that's kind of the soft skills.And some of them are not very soft at all.Some of them are hard to learn and they're really important.
I tend to think of them more as generic skills that are not sort of discipline based, but yes, you make a really good point in that they need interaction and repetition to develop those skills.
And they didn't get that sitting at home in their bedroom alone.
What, what advice would you give if there's, you know, say, I don't know, marketing coordinators out there or graduates, like I know for a fact it is very difficult for these guys to get just, uh, just to try and get a step up, like, especially in this market.
I know it's tough.What, what sort of job search strategies or advice would you give to, to these individuals that are wanting to, to just try and develop and grow anything that you would suggest?
Yeah, absolutely.First of all, I tell them, a lot of them worry that they haven't got the right kind of experience.
And I'll give you a direct example, and he will not appreciate me doing this, but my son has recently graduated, and he's been working part-time since he was 14 at a local liquor store.
And he's been saying, you know, it doesn't, it adds nothing to my CV and it's not expanding.
And I said to him, you're underestimating the generic skills that people are looking for in terms of customer service and problem solving and being polite when you don't feel like it.
Dealing with difficult customers. I'm dealing with pressure.He's been robbed twice in that role at knife point.And I said to him, You want to talk about decision-making under pressure and resilience and coping with the unexpected.
They are skills that employers are looking for.
You get in front of any hiring manager and tell them the story about you being held up at knife point and you get the job because you're demonstrating something that 95% of the applicants can't demonstrate.
A hundred percent.I mean, it's an awful example that unfortunately we've gone through to actually have to share, but I mean, my goodness.
I mean, yeah, you'd like to think that's probably not going to translate to being in a real life situation at work, but.
Correct. But in terms of staying calm under pressure, resilience, bouncing back from that, he's gone back to work in the same liquor store the next day after.So I'm not sure I would have been ready to go back to work so soon.
So students need to understand that they're more than the sum of their grades or the sum of their, their experiences are wide and varied. And that is really good grounding for employment.
And so looking for the lessons learned, whether it be on the sporting field or in clubs and associations and things like that, in friendship groups, in any sorts of part-time roles.These are really important generic skills as well.
And being, I was having this discussion actually with some graduates in class, or soon to be graduates in class the other day, about performance versus values.
When I worked at GE, as part of the annual performance review, the matrix was around your commercial value that you were adding and the brand value that you were adding in terms of what were you like to work with.
Did you make the people around you, did you make their job easier? Or were you making work for your co-workers?Were you a pleasure to work with?Did you make people smile in the workplace?These are important things.So the ability to, for cultural fit,
And most employers will take, if they've got to make a choice between commercial and cultural, they'll choose cultural.You can't have big disparities between either.
If you're in a commercial role, then you've still got to make your commercial contribution. But you can't do it at the expense of poisoning the culture in the business.
And it's really interesting, on my way into work this morning, I was reading that another business, one of the large businesses, ordering their staff all back into the office full time now. And the discussion wasn't about productivity.
It was about collegiality.And we're missing out on developing internal relationships.And that's where great ideas comes from.It's where problem solving comes from.Contribution by each other to each other's work has been absent.
So the discussion wasn't about individual productivity.It was about the synergistic effect that we get from working in a team.
It's a really valid point because I feel like it's such a fine line because, you know, you've got so many that, you know, that they just, you know, they don't, they want the hybrid, you know, they want the balance between, you know, being at work and being at home.
But also, you know, I think about graduates that are learning from other managers and their peers around them.Every day they're just soaking up like a sponge.They're just soaking up information.And I know that's how I learn, you know,
101 recruitment back in the day.You know, you get thrown in the deep end and it's sink or swim.
And yeah, I just think that that is a very strange and sort of different dynamic when you are a graduate and now you're in this hybrid sort of working from home sort of scenario.It's a different.
And if you want to be a leader at work, whether that carries a management title and salary or not. You need to be contributing to that learning process of those around you.
And it's not on too many job descriptions, but it's a really important part of institutional growth and learning and institutional human capital.So it's not formalized by too many organizations, I don't think.
But it's a really important part of doing business.
Yeah, absolutely.A hundred percent. What advice would you give, and I'm really curious to get your thoughts on this, but I do speak to various companies throughout Melbourne, Sydney, et cetera.And they may say, we're looking at hiring graduates.
What's the standard rate nowadays?And if we were to do that, what's the right channel we go down?
You know, that's fine.I can advise them around that, but I do think it's important around cementing expectations.Absolutely.
You know, graduates that are coming in, because I think occasionally businesses think, right, they're going to be this and they're going to be that and off they go.Well, actually, they're not.And it's like watering a plant.
You've got to support and invest to watch it grow.What are your thoughts?
My thoughts are there's not a lot of variation between graduates in terms of their conceptual knowledge.Some are better than others, obviously.But the degree of variance is quite slight compared to somebody who hasn't done a degree.
What will vary is those generic skills.And my advice for employers is number one criteria should be your generic skills because the conceptual knowledge is a given.There's a baseline there that's a given because they've got a degree.
Don't expect them to be practitioners.They'll have conceptual knowledge.They won't necessarily know how all those pieces of knowledge fit together yet. but that will happen rapidly for them once they're in a role.
I think it varies a little bit too, depending on with, as an employer for a marketing person, if you're client side or agency side, I think that's different.
And I've, in my experience, both working with, I've never worked agency side, but I worked with plenty of agencies when I was, in industry and I talk to plenty now still.
In my experience, agencies tend to have higher expectations about graduates being skill heavy and plug and play.
They tend to be a bit more, have expectations that students will be able to sit in the chair and they'll be able to do this task the way we want it done and they'll know exactly how that task should be done and they'll be able to take it.
And I don't think that's the case.My advice for agencies is unless you are deliberately fostering a mentoring, learning, coaching kind of environment, then maybe don't hire the graduate, hire the person who's got a couple of years under their belt.
Or the graduate who has done the additional skill development in the specialty that you're looking for.Because agencies by their nature specialize.
They're PR agencies or they're advertising agencies or they're creative agencies or they're media agencies.So they tend to specialize by their nature. So, if you need those specialist skills, make sure that your graduate has a grounding in those.
So, for example, when I talk to students and they're talking about the course structure, You know, they might have eight core marketing units to do but then they've got this whole mess of electives they can choose from.
So if they're interested in social media or if they're interested in digital, I say to them, you go pick up an IT elective on code writing if you want to be a web designer.
If you want to work in digital advertising, you go to the arts faculty and you pick up an elective in copywriting.
So they have this ability to pick and choose their menu as they get further into their degree and hopefully have a better idea of what they want to do.
If you're client side and you're recruiting and you don't have a formal graduate program, then what you're looking for is a generalist who understands the scope of marketing
activities and won't necessarily be expert in any of them, but will understand where they fit.And so then you're looking for somebody's appetite to learn.So you're hiring for aptitude, not for experience.
Yeah.Yeah. So, that would be my kind of advice.Recognize that these guys, they're at the beginning of the next stage of their learning.They're not the finished article, and they're going to need some support.
There'll be a baseline of conceptual knowledge and there'll be varying degrees of skills and interest and that kind of stuff.
But if you've got a good match between what the employer is passionate about and what the applicant is passionate about, then you're a much better chance of earning a good job.
And that is actually no different at any level of experience or seniority, I would suggest.
A hundred percent.Absolutely.I mean, I agree. It's really interesting to hear what you've said about both client side and agency because my advice would be, and I've occasionally if I'm asked this question,
within the agency side of things, you know, I've had, you know, certainly in the past marketing candidates that, you know, might start in agency and they do account exec, account manager, they might get to see an account manager.
And then they get to that sort of point and go, you know what, it's time to go client side.And I've often seen, you know, that sort of career pathway, those individuals really excel because.
you know, they've really learned the hard yards working at agency.They're highly reactive.They tend to be really awesome when it comes to time management.
You know, their listening skills are exceptional, because you're constantly taking briefs, you're back and forth, you've got to communicate.So they tend to then really build on the stakeholder expertise.And then they make that move into client side.
And then, I mean, some will say, Oh, but I get, I now get work-life balance.I mean, I don't know how many would always get that. I'm not too sure.I mean, is that a pathway you'd also recommend?
Absolutely.I tell students, if they want to be well-rounded marketers who end up in a decision-making chair, so CMO or above, I tell them they, they should spend time client-side and agency-side.
And I also tell them that they should spend time in a sales role.Whether that sales role is about hunting or gathering is kind of immaterial.But in a sales role, it's the only time you get to speak to customers rather than looking at spreadsheets.
And the other benefit that being in a sales role gives you as a marketer, even if you're And your classic large FMCG structure, you'll have marketing as a different function to sales where you have your account managers and things like that.
But in the marketing role, if you're in product management or brand management, you are actually going to have to compete for brain space with the sales team, with the other product managers.
So you're going to have to try and convince the sales team, who are the implementers of your strategy, that their time and effort is worthwhile. Now, if you spend time in the Salesforce, then the two things happen.
First of all, they know that you understand their job and you know them all by name. Yeah.
So you go and do some ride alongs with those salespeople having been in their shoes and you'll have a lot more empathy and you'll get their respect and brain space.
So therefore the chances of your beautifully crafted strategy being implemented effectively go up enormously.So because the commitment and buy-in from the sales team will make or break your strategy.
A hundred percent, I agree.
I think it's actually a really valid point you've mentioned around the sales component because it's often the case and I've heard this many times when, you know, it's been really difficult for marketers to work alongside sales teams or they don't align, they've got different objectives.
Um, you know, they don't get us and we don't get them.
And, you know, there ends up being friction and it's just, yeah, I think it's, it's really solid advice to actually, if you can, step in the shoes and be on the other side of the fence to at least get that expertise and experience.
Yeah, they must work hand in glove to be really effective.It's a management structural issue is the reason that they've been separated.Sales is a function of marketing.And it's the hands on face to face part of the communication mix.
And the more the two are separated in decision making, the harder both of their job becomes.And they, they sometimes forget that they're all on the same side.
But your point about, again, about these generic skills where in that sales role or account management role or whatever you want to call it, you really develop your empathy and listening skills.
So important, just so important in business for effective decision making.
And again, the second thing I tell students that they should do or the third thing is they've got a lot of students, they think marketing and the external impression of marketing is that it's the coloring in department.
this anathema that they have towards numbers because they think it's math.And I say, you don't have to like maths, but you have to love numbers because they tell you a story about the business that one of your key audiences understands.
And marketers have two key audiences.One is a target market. The other are shareholders and shareholders speak the language of numbers.
So if you as a marketer, you can't talk to the shareholders or be it indirectly through senior management, then you are not going to be good at your job.It's just part and parcel.You're not going to make that CMO decision maker level.
Yeah, absolutely.I agree.You've got to get to that point.
And many of your other guests, I would imagine, would talk about the CMO level as being focused on communication parts still. And a lot of them come up through that part of the business mix.
And it's difficult for them to get the same level of acceptance or gravitas at the C-suite as the finance director or the operations director or those sorts of things.Because there's this stigma around it.
And the more we have to get more CMOs into CEO roles,
Yeah, I love, I love a hundred.Yeah, I agree completely.And I really, I love what you just said that I've seen it happen.Absolutely.
We have certainly some businesses and from a hiring perspective, especially when I've had roles in those businesses and I've been engaged to, to, you know, hire a marketer of some form. My candidates love it.
Music to their ears because it's like, gosh, marketing will be really valid and I'll be heard and it'll be deemed as a really, they'll understand exactly how important that part plays.The frustrations very much tend to be when it's say,
I don't know, reporting into some of these structures, you know, head of marketing reports into a CFO or a sales director.And there's nervousness around that and I totally get it because it's like, well, they just want to look at numbers.
They're not going to understand why I want to do a brand campaign versus a, you know, performance marketing campaign of some kind.
So there's this misunderstanding about what marketing is and does.Students often come into the program with a misunderstanding around that as well.
And some of them don't like being told that they're going to have to embrace numbers and it requires a mind shift.They don't need complex math skills.
But they have to embrace the idea that numbers gives you an ability to interrogate your business in a way that qualitative discussion doesn't.And it gives you credibility.
It gives your story credibility and it will give you confidence in decision making.If you can't, as a marketer, if you can't tell that story with numbers, then you actually surrender the decision-making to those that can.
Because you're always going to be going, I've got this idea, can you see if it works?And that's a different conversation to going, I've got this idea.I think we're going to make a bucket load of money.Can you check my math?
That's a different discussion.So I was kind of fortunate in most of my career as a practitioner was in B2B and industrial marketing.So I was surrounded by engineers as well as accountants.My goodness.
And so I had to get across the detail really quite quickly.And I didn't go to university straight out of high school.I was a terrible student.And so I went to work and I didn't start uni.I started night school at Monash when I was about 27 or 28.
By that stage, I was kind of in senior account management roles and not long after I started university, I moved into a sales management role.
And so I started turning up to the monthly management meeting, and I did not understand what was being discussed.And so I would just, they'd say, what do you think, Paul?And I would just be smiling and nodding, not knowing what these numbers meant.
When I went to university as a sales and marketing person, I actually started an undergrad in accounting. Okay.Because I was desperate to know what language was being discussed in those meetings.
It's so important.I mean, I agree.I think I actually had this conversation with somebody recently where We were talking about the importance of marketers becoming a lot more data aware.
And especially right now, where, let's be honest, you know, CEOs, MDs, business owners, we're looking at the bottom line.And you've got to, if you're going to spend X on a campaign, well, what's the return of investment?
You need to understand the insights, your data, be across your Google Analytics.
And it's, you know, we're saying in 2022 when, you know, maybe there might have been a bit more money to play around with, there was a lot more appetite to try and be creative and let's do some expensive brand campaigns.
And, you know, great as brand campaigns work, but nowadays I think, you know, there is a little bit of frustration with, with certain leaders out there that are trying to,
really sort of, you know, support and, and I guess get the team to, to really have more of an emphasis just looking at data and have that as a backbone.
And I know from a recruiting perspective for myself, if I've hired marketers and they can commercially, very simply tell a story for using analytics or data, that person will go very, very far.
And marketers sometimes underestimate their CFOs.CFOs understand brand equity.It's just that they call it goodwill.And so it sits on the balance sheet as an intangible asset and they know exactly how to calculate it.
So as a marketer, when you're talking about, and there's this great debate going on in amongst marketers at the moment about long versus short and active brand performance versus brand building and all this kind of stuff.
And it's largely a moot discussion.It's been driven by this need, I think, to get more numerically savvy, but And the short-term ones, immediate return on sales, things like that, are a little bit easier to measure than the longer-term brand equity.
But it can be done, and finance people understand it.They just don't call it brand equity, they call it goodwill.It's basically the same thing.
So marketers understanding how they impact the balance sheet as well as the P&L, which most senior marketers are pretty good with the P&L.
But they're not great with the balance sheet, I think.Okay.Understanding how they impact the balance sheet, inventory, cash at bank, goodwill, these are all marketing impacts.Debtor days.If you're giving your retail customers 90-day trading terms,
You need to understand how that's impacting your data days on your balance sheet as well as your cash flow.So it's a really interesting dynamic.
I think it's been a little bit easier for finance to develop that kind of maturity around there because of the third party external accreditation that goes along with being a CPA or something like that.
And because legislation encodes certain accounting practices.But legislation doesn't encode too many marketing practices.And the marketing fraternity doesn't have that legal support for their accreditation system.
So I think that's part of the reason why, again, the colouring in department kind of reputation has evolved.So it's a dilemma.And then, of course, there's the whole thing about, well, do marketers need a university qualification?
What's your thoughts on experience versus education?
Education should be lifelong. Formal education gives you a foundation.Formal education, we make students look at all facets of marketing, not just the social media, kind of whether they like it or not.
And by the time they've done three years, and it doesn't matter if they do it at Monash or RMIT or Swinburne or wherever they do it, or Melbourne or whatever, they've got a foundation.
Now they might, if they decide at the end of the three or four years that, they didn't like that part of the foundation or they don't like that, that's a good thing.Because now they have an indication of what they do want to focus on.
And so if they go through that process and go, you know what, I'm still in love with this idea of social and digital. Then great, go work at a social digital agency and really hone those skills.
But if you want to stand out amongst the couple of thousand graduates that are going to be applying for those roles, then you better have gone and done some Google certification or Facebook meta courses in your own time.
to really stand out because you're not going to have a story to tell about how you cope under pressure because you got held up with a knife or something.So you're going to have to stand out somehow. Experience is invaluable.
Don't expect them all to have it.It's the old dichotomy of experience versus qualification.We want them to get good grades, but we want them to get experience.
So sometimes somebody with a lot of experience might only have a grade point, you know, a WAM of 65, compared to somebody who's got one of 85 but doesn't have as much experience to talk about. And sometimes you get the shooting star.
5% of them will have done it all and all that sort of stuff and they're perfect.But guess what?The average employer is not going to attract the exceptional graduate.So most average businesses are average and they will recruit average people.
That's just kind of the The way it goes.Um, there's a lot of businesses out there that are not exceptional.
Yeah.I mean, it's really, I've had this conversation with quite a few marketers over the years and I think brand perceptions are really interesting one because I've, you know, even myself, I mean, I'm not going to mention names, but I've
you know, I might be a shopper at a specific brand or I'm a consumer at that brand, you know, it aligns to me and who I am.And I have this perception that they'll be amazing to work for, like it's shiny and glossy and it's amazing.
And then you dig deep and you get in there and it's like, oh gosh, like, You know, right.Okay.So the cultures like that and, oh, there's, you know, loads of people leave after a year and there's no progress.And then, you know, it's a small world.
Like, you know, I often believe from my perspective, it is very much about who you report into, especially, I mean, broadly speaking, I'll always say that no matter if a brand does have a great reputation or it doesn't.
And I think especially these bigger businesses, it's hard just to sort of wash away and say, Oh, it's an awful place to work there.Because at the end of the day, it depends what team you're in and who you report into.
And if that manager is going to back you, they're going to support you, and they are collaborative in the way that they manage, that's really important.And I think take feedback and vice versa.It's super, super crucial.
So, yeah, it's an interesting one because I, for one, have just recently actually filled some more with the junior sort of coordinator.
And I can say the managers that those guys are going to be reporting into have got the time to develop them, have, you know, they're delightful people to work with.
And from a recruiter's perspective, you walk away and you go, great, I know that they're going to be looked after and they're going to be in safe hands.
And it's so important because again recruitment is an agency business so recruiters have skills and resources that are not commonly found within a business so the business outsources that part of their function.
But they don't abdicate responsibility to the recruiter.
So having the best recruiters I've ever dealt with, whether from a placement or as an employer, they've taken time to get to know how the business works, how it thinks, what the values that underpin it are.
And then they look for that cultural fit with employees.And there are recruitment agents out there who are very much transactional.And it's hit and miss.
The hiring process, as a candidate, you risk ending up saying yes to something that's not going to be a good fit for you.And as a recruiter, as a management, you risk hiring people who are not a good cultural fit for your organization.
And that's just never going to work well.Again, it's this culture fit more important than the skills or experience fit is my opinion.
A hundred percent.I agree.I think I had another conversation with a CMO recently and she made such a valid point around learning to identify what the red flags are in interview.
And I say to anyone, you know, when you are interviewing, yes, you're being interviewed, but you're always also interviewing that person.Do you want to work for them?Do you want to work for that company?And I've personally always followed that.
methodology that, that, you know, way of thinking.Um, and I'll share that with anyone, but I think it is, it's hard because I think when you're a graduate, you know, you've not had some of those lessons and battle scars, unfortunately.
And so sometimes, you know, you're going in there and you're kind of going, well, they seem really nice.And, you know, guess what?We get Fridays where we get to work from home and they have a pub lunch.So yeah, I think I'll go with that.So.
Again, I tell graduates and firms, can you articulate your values? Are they written down somewhere?Can you sit down and have a discussion about, and again, we'll call them soft skills, generic skills, values, attitudes.
Here's how we treat each other in this workplace, and is this candidate going to be a good fit with those values and behaviors?And as somebody who's looking for a job, particularly if you're one of those more exceptional students,
I have students who I say, you take whatever you can get, and I have other students who say, you pick and choose.And every year I talk to students who come to me and say, I've been offered a job here, here, and here, which one should I take?
Gosh, wow.Now, they're the exceptions to the rule. But these are people who leave school or leave uni with multiple offers sitting on the table for them.
And the first thing I talk to them about is not about how much does it pay or what the title is or any of that stuff.It's the values.
And so, to have them to go through, are they going to be in an environment where they're learning, where they're coached, where they're, that encourages responsible risk and growth, not just bottom line growth I'm talking about.
um growing the way people the way organized how they open to new ideas and and trying new things do they regularly throw everything up in the air and see where it lands and reshuffle um so these types of environments are far more dynamic and interesting to work with and if it if the people are driving that process that you're going to work with and that suits you that's what you're looking for then you're going to have a great time the the industry will become secondary
All that kind of stuff.You're so right.
The people that you work with, I'm sure there's research around this, so I'd have to ask my management department colleagues, but the people that you work with, in my experience, determine how happy or content you are with your job.
Yeah, couldn't agree more.Just finally, before we wrap up, I just wanted to ask.
Is there any, I guess, resources or individuals that you would recommend, say, you know, whether it be, I don't know, marketing managers even or marketing general or graduates should perhaps start to follow or any podcasts that you request or books that you recommend?
Not really.I actually tell students to keep the textbooks of the subjects they hated.
Because they're not going to retain that knowledge, and they probably didn't absorb enough of it to begin with.But if the book is on the shelf, it'll always be there.
And you may not remember the specific discipline knowledge, but you remember where the book is because you walk past it every day.For example, I've still got my maths and statistics
textbooks and my corporate finance textbooks from my accounting and MBA studies.They're sitting at home on the shelf.Now, I wouldn't be able to, off the top of my head, calculate the weighted average cost of capital.
But I know where to find that textbook.
Yeah, it's winking at you.
I could torture myself for a couple of hours with that textbook and then sit down and calculate a weighted average cost of capital again.Not that I'm in any hurry to do that. But, um, so keep your textbooks.
Um, I know that they're boring, but keep them anyway.Um, truth is old.Be aware, be aware of, you can't, to quote Jim Rohn, you can't manufacture antiques.So the old stuff, fundamentals of what we do as marketers change really slowly.
How we do them changes really fast. So, at university you've got to change, you've got to learn what to do.In the workplace, you've got to constantly educate yourself about how to do it.
And we've got another new bright shiny thing now with generative AI, and that's going to change how we work.Academia is really struggling with this at the moment because
And for an applied discipline like marketing, we actually kind of have to work out how practitioners are going to use this product productively in order to be able to teach it.But we can't teach AI for the sake of AI.
But because it's a how we do things, it's not a – I don't know yet if it's going to change what we do.I suspect it probably will in the long run.But it's certainly going to have a massive impact on how we do things.
So as a marketer, whether you're a student or – I would suggest that people are students at any stage of their career.
Of course, we're always learning.
Yeah, so continual professional development is your own responsibility.And how we do things changes all the time, so you've got to stay up to date and relevant.
The what we do, understanding the fundamentals, don't change very much or change really slowly. So having a good grounding in those is important.
And so that mix of new information with credibility versus the old fundamentals, you're always going to need that mix, I think. Whatever source works for you.The other thing I teach students is a model called Scrape.
It's about reliability of the sources of information you use.It doesn't matter if it's whatever knowledge you're trying to develop. your ability to use the right source for that knowledge is really important.
So you've got to develop these judicious, discriminating skills between what I read on Wikipedia, what I read in somebody's blog, versus
You've got to make a call on the quality of the information because if you use it, you're going to be held responsible for the quality of the decision making that follows.
So accountability and responsibility for your actions and decisions, you've got to have good information going into your system to get good outputs.
Yeah, so a variety of information, both traditional and emerging, but be judicious in your choice of who you listen to.There's an awful lot of gurus out there. I agree.
I'm seeing it myself.Absolutely.I agree.I think, I mean, look, Paul, I am, I've got like a wealth of knowledge now.
And I think also, I'm sure my listeners would agree, complete respect for a lot of these graduates that are coming through because, you know, it's, it's hard out there.It's tough.
I mean, I've been... Employers, give them a go.There's some really good people coming through.They're not the finished product, but there's a lot of quality people coming through.
Yeah, love it.Well, thank you so much for your time, Paul.I've really enjoyed the conversation.
Yeah, excellent, excellent.Thank you. Remember, the road to CMO isn't always linear.It's filled with challenges, decisions and moments of transformation.
Whether you're charting your course or navigating a career shift, the experiences, wisdom shared today as with our guests is invaluable.Thank you for joining us.
Keep dreaming big, keep pushing boundaries and remember that your journey towards becoming a CMO is as much about the destination as it is about the growth you experience along the way.
Until next time, continue to innovate, evolve and carve out your path to CMO.
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