Articulating the value of marketing, knowing what is effective, and bringing people together are three things marketers need to focus on doing to improve their relationship with the c-suite and drive growth through measurement, according to Standard Chartered’s Jyane Quek.
Jyane, whose serves as Global Head of Planning & Effectiveness for Corporate Affairs, Brand & Marketing at the global bank, joined me on stage at an AANA Masterclass event in Sydney in April.
She began with a primer on the customer base of the 170-year-old business, which ranges from emerging affluent and ultra-high net worth individuals to multinational corporations.
Tailoring marketing to complex customer needs
Jyane said the diversity of the Standard Charter’s customers demands a highly tailored approach to marketing. In particular, she emphasized the importance of understanding the unique needs of each customer segment.
For emerging affluent individuals, for example, the objective is to build scale. “If you look at the marketing activities that we do, it ranges from brand investment in sponsorship to day-to-day performance marketing [around credit cards and personal loans],” Jyane said.
At the other end of the wealth spectrum, ultra-high net worth individuals require more of a “life cycle approach”, including engaging the next generation through activities like entrepreneurial classes.
When it comes to measurement, the different objectives and activities associated with these different customer segments, which span multiple geographies, mean simplicity and consistency are key.
The iceberg approach to metrics
An iceberg was a useful visual analogy Jyane said she used to help create a scorecard – or hierarchy of metrics – for how marketing was delivering on business objectives. The top of the iceberg represents key impact metrics, such as assets under management, while below the surface lie key drivers, such as inflation.
While noting that it’s important for specific local factors to be accounted for, Jyane said the iceberg was “a very simple summary of the ecosystem of factors that have been delivering for the business.”Creating this hierarchy of metrics shows how marketing intends to contribute to business growth, but Jyane noted it was also “really important” to build a roadmap to demonstrate how marketing is making progress towards delivering outcomes.
When I asked how she got stakeholder buy-in to this scorecard and roadmap, Jyane explained the importance of “creating a ritual” by which marketing would say to stakeholders “this is what we have delivered for you in this quarter”.
Being invited to contribute to the annual planning cycle was “a very significant moment” as it helped to position marketing as being “in service of future growth and in service of the evolving needs of our clients,” Jyane said.
Why marketers need change management
When it came to getting buy-in from the rest of the marketing organization, senior marketers need to embrace change management techniques.
“You will come across some levels of resistance,” Jyane said, citing changing goals, metrics, and measurement programs by way of example. “It’s a process and you need to highlight what’s in it for them.”
Jyane outlined how her approach to change management involved her sitting down with every local marketing team in what she called “immersion sessions” where they dived into the data.
For example, they discussed in depth what had driven incremental growth over the past 12 months. Then they looked at the different channels and analyzed which had the best ROI and which drove short- and long-term growth.
“This is when I realized marketers were most engaged,” Jyane said. “It’s a validation… when they feel that they’re really benefiting and they’re learning from the process.”
Value, effective, practice
To bring the session to a close, I asked Jyane for some key takeaways. She summed her thinking in three words: value, effective, and practice.
- To position marketing as an organization that delivers value to the business in service of future growth, it’s important to articulate impact, contribution, and incrementality.
- Find out what’s working. To do this, Quek said the first question she asked marketers was: ‘What has proven to be effective?’
- Bring key people together by building a “community of practice”. Whether that’s product, finance, data, and marketing or, within marketing, brand, sponsorship, and corporate comms – it’s important to plan and review your work with different stakeholders so you can collect feedback that enables you to improve.
Jyane Quek was speaking at From data to decisions: Driving profitable growth with marketing effectiveness, a Marketing Masterclass event by the AANA in partnership with Gain Theory.