Kate Young (lead image) is the head of customer centricity and capability at the ANZ Bank. In this guest post, Young takes a look at what’s required to be a master of modern day marketing…
As ANZ’s head of customer centricity and capability, I’m proud to lead a team who are committed to building a culture of learning for our marketers. We work in a dynamic and fast evolving industry, so we must ensure our skills and knowledge keep up to date with this ever-changing environment.
Recently, we held an amazing Marketing Masters Summit, bringing together our Australian marketers in Melbourne and our New Zealand marketers in Auckland. These were huge all-day events in each city celebrating and promoting our industry-recognised Marketing Masters program and promoting learning, growth and development. It included guest speakers and breakout masterclasses featuring representatives from our learning partners, such as Google, Meta, Thrive PR, Special Group and PHD.
What was particularly special was the variety of topics these masterclasses covered – we learned about coding, crisis communications, measuring success, new and emerging technologies, podcasting, and leadership skills among so much more. After these compelling sessions, I was left with learnings from both days of the summit I can now take into my own work and broader professional development, which is exactly what we wanted to give to those who attended.
I can’t stress the importance of businesses investing in their team’s marketing capabilities enough. Marketing is a growth driver, an investment that provides strong returns when executed well. Leaders who build high-performing teams and support their marketers to be their best reap the benefits this process provides.
As marketing evolves and we adopt new technologies and channels to reach our customers, it is vital our marketing team has the knowledge and skills to match this. Marketing continues to move up the value chain for businesses as technology supports scale and customer reach.
This all means that marketers need to upskill now and into the future. Workplaces need to encourage and support this, embedding a culture that acknowledges and rewards personal development.
For ANZ, our Marketing Masters program has become a talent factory, where we support each other to be the best we can be. This enables us to retain great marketers, as well as attract top industry talent. By doing so, we build our broader capability, the team continues to evolve their skills, and overall we remain modern and relevant.
It wouldn’t be possible to build on existing capability without our amazing culture of learning, growth and development at ANZ. The Marketing Masters Summit was a fantastic example encapsulating this want to learn, grow and develop. Seeing our team together, highly engaged and entertained by our speakers and presenters highlighted the great work we have established.
As an experienced marketer, I know I am continuing to learn new tools and skills that support me to be a better marketer. New tools are likely to emerge in the future as technology advances. Marketing is never static, which means we need to seek continuous opportunities to learn, grow and develop. So, continuing this journey of career-long learning is vital to remain a leading, next-gen marketer.
Regardless of the scale of your work or business, making time and effort to invest in your marketing capabilities is vital for now and in the future.
I hope every marketer out there can celebrate how awesome our industry is, embed new learnings into their work, and access new knowledge and connections to remain a modern and established marketer.
