In 2015, Ania Jakubowski, then Managing Director at Coca-Cola for Poland and the Baltics, was voted best speaker at the inaugural edition of the Marketing Kingdom Cairo. Two years later, she is back at the event, this time focusing on the growing need of leadership in the marketing industry. Her presentation titled “To be a Great Marketer You Have to be a Great Leader” is on 16th October, on the second day of the Marketing Kingdom Cairo 3.
For those not familiar with Ania’s work, she is a business practitioner who believes that ‘what’ you achieve is important, ‘how’ you achieve it, makes all the difference. Working as a Senior Executive, Ania relates her daily leadership practices to the areas of speaking, training, consulting and mentoring. She inspires; bringing a fresh perspective and encouraging self-reflection, to promote a more human approach to leadership, and a more sustainable approach to how organizations deliver their bottom line.
She recently shared with us three tips for developing an effective marketing strategy.
1) 1+1 = 3 … really.
Creativity and potential on your brands and business will be multiplied if you truly embrace your agencies as partners (and not ‘just’ suppliers). Understanding your strategies, working transparently, facing challenges together, celebrating successes together … when agencies feel they are truly part of the ‘team’ delivering results with you – you will be rewarded with greater engagement, greater creativity, first cut at ideas, and their best talent.
2) Invest in experimenting
What percentage of your marketing budget do you have against ideas that are new, innovative, not sure they will work out? If the answer is zero, it is the wrong answer.
If you don’t experiment you will not move forward. In order to find new approaches, new opportunities for tomorrow, you need to explore today, and yes, that means that some if not many of those ideas could fail at first try. But you will learn what works and what doesn’t, fine tune, and explore further.
You will need to decide what the right percentage is – a suggestion – 10% of your budget invested (and yes, I consider it an investment) in exploring ways to continue to grow your brands/business for tomorrow, particularly given the fast pace of technology, communication in today’s hyper-connected world.
3) Get out from behind your desk/your computer …
Particularly if you work for a mid or large scale organization, the office and meeting culture, along with an eternally full e-mail inbox can ‘chain you’ to the office, your desk, living your office hours behind your computer screen. Don’t fall into the trap.
Get out and spend time with consumers, visit stores, join sales reps on their routes, visit customers, visit the production plants, go to events … in short find ways to experience your brands and business in real-time, And not just once a year, or once a quarter – but every week (even for a few hours)! Doing so brings forth fresh thinking, offers up solutions, strengthens networks, and gives you broader perspective on your business.
The third edition of Egypt’s biggest international gathering of marketing professionals also includes presentations by marketing and social media experts from Google, Instagram, Twitter, Rolls Royce Motor Cars, Nissan, Socialyse, IBM and DMS. For info on tickets and pricing visit Marketing Kingdom Website
