Former #10 CMO In Australia Launches New Breed Of Agency

Tyron Hayes (pictured) has left Curtin University after eight years to pursue his vision of supporting other leaders to drive growth, transformation and innovation.

His new firm, Growth Generators is set to bridge the gap between strategy and execution through the knowledge Hayes has built in driving marketing, digital and cultural transformations from the driver’s seat as a top ten CMO (CMO50 2017) and leader of Australia’s best marketing team (AMI Awards 2017).

As Curtin CMO, Hayes helped Curtin increase its first preference domestic market share from the high 30s to 53% per cent through employee and customer-centricity and building a high performing, agile culture within the marketing team.

Hayes believes there are three core capabilities that drive growth for an organisation.

These are: Design and Innovation – making products and services customers want; Modern Marketing – constantly experimenting in how you go to market; Leadership and Culture – upskilling and aligning your team and building a high performing, agile culture.

By getting all three drivers working in symphony, Hayes believes you can create a centrifugal force that drives growth, transformation and innovation.

Hayes has been conducting discovery interviews with CMOs, Agencies and Industry Leaders from a range of sectors to understand their key pain points and test the product-market fit of his new offering.

“The response has been consistent and encouraging,” says Hayes.

“Leaders are grappling with at least one of the 3 areas of the offering depending on their stage of maturity.”

Common pain points include driving capability uplift and cultural change in alignment with a digital transformation agenda; aligning internal structures to become more customer-centric; becoming more agile as a team; progressing from journey maps on a wall to a CX strategy that is executable.

Some organisations are looking to get the foundations in place, whereas more advanced organisations are looking to up-skill in growth marketing to unlock new avenues of growth.

Hayes believes the benefit of his offering, is that it is customisable to the maturity of the organisation and specific team he is working with.

He’s also had feedback that his inside perspective, and hands-on approach is a differentiator against some of the larger consulting houses.

Consulting services vary from operational model reviews and cultural transformation, through to customer journey mapping, service design and growth marketing sprints.

Growth Generators also offers a series of contemporary, hands-on workshops on topics ranging from Agile Marketing, Leading High Performing Teams, to Design Thinking for Growth and Innovation.

While Hayes is spearheading the new company, he’s in discussions with a number of agencies, consulting and technology partners that can be brought in if the work is of a requisite size and scale.

Growth Generators also has offerings that helps clients to find the right agency partners and/or build high performing agency partnerships.

AnalogFolk managing director Matt Robinson remarked on the strength of the relationship that AnalogFolk has with Curtin as a result of the initial on-boarding work that Hayes drove when CMO at Curtin.

“Our relationship with Curtin is one of the strongest client relationships we’ve had and we believe it’s due to the high performing team culture that Ty set for his extended team and the work we undertook together to develop our Partnership Manifesto which sets the scene for how we work together,” Robinson said.

Growth Generators will also run Growth Sprints for clients working with their agency partners.

A Growth Sprint is a rapid experimentation process that enables the client to test new ways to drive growth in a low risk, high-velocity format leveraging the data analytics, UX and marketing skills shared between the client and agency partners.

The business is based in Perth, but Hayes already has prospective inter-state clients and foresees it becoming a national, if not international business. Hayes is content that his career has come first circle.

Hayes started his professional life in a brand & marketing agency in Perth, before moving client side into product development, professional services marketing and an illustrious career in higher education that took him to London and Sydney.

He’s now looking forward to applying what he’s learnt to help other leaders drive transformation and growth.

The target audience for Growth Generators is any medium to large organisation, in need of digital, marketing or cultural transformation and more than likely tackling disruption or aggressive competition.

Typically, they will have a decent sized in-house marketing or digital team and a number of external agencies – but the leader needs some support in building capability or developing and executing the transformation agenda.

“Higher education, financial services, retail and large not-for profits are some industries where we believe there will be initial demand for our services” says Hayes.