Sherilyn Shackell, founder and global CEO of The Marketing Academy has had quite the journey from being a high-level headhunter, unhappy with her life to leading senior marketers on a journey of self-discovery and propelling them onto boards and into the CEO’s office.
Shackell was speaking to The Growth Distillery’s Stories (Un)Told vodcast in collaboration with Cairns Crocodiles, presented by Pinterest, discussing her journey and how she got off the treadmill of doom.
“I [was] driven by ego, pride, competitiveness and fear. I’d found myself in my early forties in a successful role. I was the owner and CEO of a quite big headhunting company. I was working 16, 17 hours a day because I wasn’t developing my people, I wasn’t developing my team, which meant I had to work harder. I didn’t trust them because my ego was too big,” she said.
“It was a self-fulfilling prophecy and a complete shit-short. I made myself ill… It was the manifestation of how discordant a life I was leading.”
This led Shackell to change her life and start looking for greater meaning in her work. Long having held senior marketers in high regard for the expertise and insight they bring to a business, she started The Marketing Academy to help them unlock their full potential.
This potential, she felt, was left unrealised and it was to the detriment of not only the businesses these marketers worked for but also the detriment of society.
“Marketing, media and advertising can influence every human being on the planet. We believe that leadership and the definition of a leader are about influence. And that’s really all it’s about. If you have influence over another human being, good, bad or indifferent, you’re leading,” she said.
“Our industry, holistically, is the only medium, function or industry sector that can have a direct influence on the 8 billion people on the planet. We can literally influence what they think, feel, buy, the behaviour they exhibit, how they parent and what choices they make.”
When brought into this sharp relief, Shackell’s point becomes inarguable. The stories told through different media are enabled by advertising dollars.
The gravity of responsibility goes underappreciated by many in the industry due to a lack of self-confidence, less so in the US but especially so in Australia, according to Shackell. It also goes underappreciated by the business that marketers work for.
“I think our industry is the leadership industry and that’s the story that all marketers should be telling themselves because we believe marketing should be in the centre of the boardroom and it’s not,” she continued.
“It’s undervalued and underinvested in, but my God, it’s the engine of growth. Marketers need to be telling themselves that story so they can be in the centre of the boardroom and they can influence it… You have to be able to explain to a CEO, who usually knows fuck all about marketing, exactly what power you can bring them because there’s a real gap in awareness. There’s a gap in our storytelling of it.”
Stay tuned to B&T for the next episode of Stories (Un)Told featuring Maz Farrelly. Or check out the previous episode with Xanthe Wells, Pinterest’s global creative VP.
