Make it personal: Future marketing leaders on how to drive influence

Having internal influence and being able to effect change is critical as a marketing leader. It isn’t without its challenges, though. And even as the CMO, it can be difficult to ensure the value of marketing is understood by the wider business to get ideas over the line and investment secured.

It is perhaps even harder to be influential and lead change when you are not the most senior marketer in an organisation.

But there are core skills three of Marketing Week’s Future Marketing Leaders have learned work when it comes to driving impact internally.

For Bomo Piri, vice-president of brand at music tech business Native Instruments, the key is to make it personal.

“I fundamentally believe that people need to feel things in order for it to really stick,” he said, talking at Marketing Week’s Festival of Marketing (2 October).

He likened it to the idea that politicians are often slow to implement change until it directly impacts their family members, “and then policies change very quickly”.

“The way I influence people is by creating scenarios where they are in it, where they have to feel it. Because naturally it just changes their perspective,” he said. “Sometimes you don’t even need the data. It makes it personal.”

‘Rational drowning’ might be a good sales technique, but it doesn’t work that well in a boardroom or leadership forum.

Steph Osiol, Sage

Piri wanted to set up a dinner with Nashville’s best producers to help build the city as a hub for Native Instruments, but was struggling to convince his CEO of the value.

“All the data did nothing to sway him until we invited him to this dinner. He was able to hear all the conversations that were happening, and he said we’ve got to do this in LA, we’ve got to do this in Tokyo, we’ve got to do this everywhere,” Piri recalls.

“It’s because he was surrounded by people saying, ‘This is amazing. Your products are amazing. I hate this thing. I hate this plug-in’. But him feeling it was the only way to convince him that it was worth doing.”

Donna White, senior head of marketing at the King’s Trust, and another Future Marketing Leader, agreed referencing the musical Hamilton and the importance of being in “the room where it happens”.

“There is something about taking it offline, getting people in the room and just laying out your pitch,” she said. “There are times I’ve done that [where] I’ve literally exhausted people into saying yes to what I believe in.”

She added: “Sometimes it’s just about connecting with the energy [of the people in the room] and letting them see your passion and the work that’s gone behind it.”The virtues of great leadership? Discretion and loyalty

Avoid data overload

Given her role as global director of marketing analytics and automation at financial services firm Sage, the advice from Steph Osiol was to not “fall into the trap of bringing too much data to the conversation”.

When speaking to commercial people, it can be tempting to provide multiple data points but that’s not the most effective way to communicate, she said.

Instead, Osiol has found it far more effective to focus on fewer, more powerful pieces of information to make her case.

“I spend a lot of time before I go into a meeting sifting and cutting out a lot of data, so I come in with only one or two things that really matter, because it’s really easy to overwhelm,” she explained.

“‘Rational drowning’ might be a good sales technique, but it doesn’t work that well in a boardroom or leadership forum. Curation and making sure that you’re really straightforward and to the point, and that the insight you’re bringing to the conversation is just enough – that is the core skill I’ve been trying to hone.”