Jack and Jill Went Up the Hill (eBook)

How Senior Marketers Scale the Heights Through Art and Science

Nancie McDonnell Ruder (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2018 | 1. Auflage
150 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
9781543953251 (ISBN)

Infos

Jack and Jill Went Up the Hill: How Senior Marketers Scale the Heights Through Art and Science provides readers with a fresh take on maximizing their potential. Author and marketer Nancie McDonnell Ruder conducted more than 50 in-depth interviews with some of the world's best marketers to study how they reached the pinnacles of their careers. These 'Jacks' and 'Jills' are prototypical marketing rock stars thriving in today's complicated landscape. In gathering and examining their collective knowledge and behaviors, Nancie identifies the patterns that fuel their success. Offering the Noetic Art & Science Assessment and toolkit of resources, along with anecdotes, insight and wisdom, Jack and Jill shows readers where they fall on the marketing art/science continuum-and teaches how to ascend from there.

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Jack and Jill Went Up the Hill: How Senior Marketers Scale the Heights Through Art and Science provides readers with a fresh take on maximizing their potential. Author and marketer Nancie McDonnell Ruder conducted more than 50 in-depth interviews with some of the world's best marketers to study how they reached the pinnacles of their careers. Their wisdom is featured prominently and is backed up by Nancie's insight from 25 years of experience on both the agency side and as the founder of her own marketing consultancy, Noetic Consultants. Nancie introduces you to "e;Jack"e; and "e;Jill,"e; who represent prototypical rock star marketers thriving in today's complicated landscape. In gathering and examining their collective knowledge and behaviors, Nancie identifies the patterns that fuel their success. They are Jills- and Jacks-of-all-trades. They have grit. They place learning above looking like they know it all. They aren't afraid to fail. And so much more. The critical commonality Nancie finds is an uncanny ability of Jacks and Jills to combine what Nancie calls the art and science of their discipline-and to know when to shift from one to the other. In Jack and Jill, senior marketers (and those who aspire to be) get the secret to marketing success whispered in their ears, straight from the marketers' mouths. Offering the Noetic Art & Science AssessmentTM and toolkit of resources, along with anecdotes, insight and wisdom, Jack and Jill shows readers where they fall on the marketing art/science continuum-and teaches how to ascend from there. To paraphrase the iconic Leo Burnett Company campaign (Nancie, herself, is a Leo Burnett alum), modern marketing is not your father's Oldsmobile. In order to drive products, services and careers where they need to go, today's senior marketers need to hone some skills and trade in others for a newer model. The stories, advice and methods included in Jack and Jill enable today's senior marketers to give their campaigns, clients and careers more horsepower by unlocking the philosophies, strategies and behaviors of the best in the field.

Textauszug

By now, we’ve gotten to know some interesting tidbits about who our Jacks and Jills are. Let’s talk for a moment about who they are not. They are not complainers. They don’t spend time focusing on or fretting about how it is hard to keep up. They don’t grouse about the old days, when things were simpler and marketing was more straightforward. They don’t overly lament privacy issues; clutter in the marketplace; or the effort it takes to learn new platforms, apps, data and programmatic elements—or they do for a minute, then they do something about it. (I’ll share some of the actions they take shortly.)

They don’t whine, and they don’t stand still; they just keep moving forward, seeking the technology, channels and learning that will keep them in the game. It’s not that Jills and Jacks don’t ever fear what’s new on the horizon—of course they do, they’re human—but they don’t let their fear stop them. They view complacency as the enemy and curiosity and learning as their best friends.

My passion and interest is solving problems, so I love the fact that marketing is evolving and changing, because it creates new information, new technologies, new problems to solve. What is media? What is content? We are in a rapid cycle of change. It’s not about fear for me. I think it’s all about opportunity.

Andrew Swinand, Chief Executive Officer, Leo Burnett

We were early adopters on drones. We were the first to go out and talk to companies about how in the future they could use drones for effective assessment of safety, news, etc. We looked at this new technology and tried to figure out an opportunity to implement it.

Alina Gorokhovsky, Chief Marketing Officer, Wiley Rein LLP

In the current landscape there is so much going on, it’s so complicated, so rapidly changing and anything we do can be interrupted overnight, literally. So, what is exciting is how fast we are moving.

Terry Bateman, Executive Vice President, Washington Redskins

What is pushing us? Incredibly high expectations from customers. What we are seeing is that the more digital experiences become, the more customers expect the great experience they get on Amazon to be the same in other places. They want relevance, they want to know that you know them. So, this is exciting. I have to think about how to deliver on customer expectations like this. The bar is very high. I think this will be a very exciting place for marketing and it starts to make the need for data and operations excellence so important—marketing cannot do it all on its own.

“Jill”

You may wonder if all senior marketers are this forward thinking. Maybe you worry that everyone, except perhaps you and your team, is cheerfully embracing change and adapting to the new-world marketing order without a care in the world. I assure you this is not the case. If you, or those around you, are anxious about the marketplace and your ability (or even desire) to keep up, you’re in very good company.

Many of us, including my fellow Noetic consultants and our clients, feel daunted and reticent at times. Nelson Mandela said, “The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” We try to embrace this concept at Noetic: to dive into uncharted waters even when they look deep or choppy. We have developed a practice of naming and then making a point to conquer, our fears. These can be big or small, work-related or not. For example, some years ago, we identified a need to dig deeper to build our digital acumen. We sought out various avenues—some of them quite experimental—to grow our skills and create new mastery. This led to new capabilities, new projects and new momentum for our clients.

In a smaller way, we recently took a company excursion to do rock climbing. Several of us are not too wild about heights. I personally thought I was okay with heights until I actually got there and started climbing. But we’ve learned that recognizing and conquering fear is a path to pride and empowerment. When you experience this and practice it consistently, your hesitancy is unlocked. And, on the other side, with fear faced, you feel truly empowered.

As I interviewed more and more successful senior marketers, I realized Jills and Jacks share behaviors (as well as traits) that help them push their careers into overdrive. They:

 

• Displace fear with learning

• Seek out and commit to creative avenues to learn

• Strengthen both art and science sides of marketing

• Surround themselves with strong teams

 

These four key actions, or, as I like to call them, “,” are employed with regularity to help them perform at the highest level and get maximum results. In this chapter, I will share how Jacks and Jills do these things, offering tangible examples for you to emulate and incorporate into your marketing journey and the fabric of your organization.

 

The first of addresses how successful senior marketers set aside fear in favor of gaining knowledge. Why do any of us fear the innovative, novel and new? It seems so silly— grown-up men and women scared of a little progress. But we are frightened. Successful senior marketers feel the exact same fear as everyone else when confronted with something innovative, strange, atypical or moving too fast. Why? Because we are all hardwired to feel that way. According to the excellent book The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Success, by Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman and Kaley Klemp, this response dates back to our cavewoman and man days, when vigilance in the face of danger was necessary to survive.

Today, while Paleo diets may be fashionable and saber-toothed tigers are no longer a threat, the innate inclination toward fearing predators and seeking safety remains. In modern times, this looks like avoiding discomfort, embarrassment and humiliation. Now, seeking safety mostly means staying within a metaphorical, rather than literal, comfort zone. Especially in a work setting, we homo sapiens want to play it safe, let someone else go first, know the answer before we contribute and cover our butts if we think we’ll get called out. Think of all the meetings you’ve attended where there is a prompt for questions. Nine times out of ten, a full minute goes by before a brave soul raises her or his hand.

According to the authors of 15 Commitments, all of us, regardless of upbringing or educational background, tend to work “below the line,” which is defined as closed, defensive and committed to being right. We feel most secure when we feel we are “correct.” We want to be good A-plus students, perceived as smart, or at least not totally stupid. I will say for myself, I simply love it when someone tells me I am right. I want to ask them to say it again, a little slower, so I can bask in this below-the-line space. But while this may feel like it serves us well, that’s an illusion. Correctness leaves no room for learning. When we are below the line, holding on to the need to be correct, we are unable to ask critical questions and learn new things, as we’re too focused on getting the right answer. We are not pursuing knowledge; we are not curious; we are not asking questions; and we are not opening ourselves to possibility and learning. In short, operating below the line may be comfortable, but it is highly limiting.

What distinguishes the men and women I interviewed for this book is their willingness to go above the line, cultivating a stance that is open, curious and committed to learning. It’s not that they lack a normal reaction to reaching beyond what feels secure, but that they take constructive action to displace hesitancy. They acknowledge the feelings of fear or doubt—and proceed regardless. They “feel the fear and do it anyway,” as Susan Jeffers advocates in her book of the same name.

“The only time you will fear anything is when you say ‘no’ and resist the universe,” says Jeffers. “You may have heard the expression ‘go with the flow.’ This means consciously accepting what is happening in your life.” Jacks and Jills not only understand this dynamic, they embrace it in their life as well as their life’s work.

You have to get over the feeling of not wanting to ask the questions. You have to be vulnerable. Not only does it help to make yourself vulnerable and own up to what you know and don’t know, but it also shapes the environment you create and the team-building that goes along with that. It is a win all the way around. Of course, you can’t appear inept about everything. But assuming you bring value in other ways, it is GOOD to be vulnerable in the ways you don’t know…and the whole culture will be better for it.

Pat Lafferty, President, McGarryBowen U.S.

I try to be a student of the game, to challenge myself, to go outside of my comfort zone.

David A. Wright, Chief Marketing & Commercial Officer, Minor League Baseball

I simply love learning and I believe you shouldn’t worry so much about what you know and don’t know. If you get a job you could do in your sleep, it’s probably not the right job. Push your comfort level and your boundaries of experience. Force yourself into that new environment. You should never stagnate in your career, or in life, in order to...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 13.11.2018
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Betriebswirtschaft / Management ► Marketing / Vertrieb
• ISBN-13: 9781543953251 / 9781543953251