How The CMO Show untangled 2022
For this year’s customary solo-show, Mark narrowed in on a subject that’s come up in each of our episodes this year: social impact leaders.
What does that mean? Tuck-in to our 2022 digest to find out and whet your appetite for what’s shaping up to be another big year of The CMO Show in 2023.
Ahoy listeners! It’s hard to believe we’ve come to the end of another year, our seventh producing The CMO Show.
While the world looks very different now from when we began, the expertise, passion and insight shared by each of our guests holds strong and continues to inspire us.
For this year’s customary solo-show, Mark’s narrowed in on a subject that’s come up in each of our episodes this year: social impact leaders.
Social impact leaders are visionary, progressive and person-centred professionals who believe change is necessary, and possible — and it turns out there’s plenty of them in marketing teams around the country.
So, tuck in to our 2022 digest over the next few weeks and whet your appetite for what’s shaping up to be another big year of The CMO Show in 2023.
We’ll be back Thursday 9 February with Pete Brennan, co-founder and head of brand at Heaps Normal.
Episodes referenced in this episode…
Credits
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The CMO Show production team
Producer – Rian Newman
Audio Engineers – Ed Cheng & Daniel Marr
Got an idea for an upcoming episode or want to be a guest on The CMO Show? We’d love to hear from you: cmoshow@filteredmedia.com.au
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Transcript
Mark Jones:
Well, we're coming to the end of another year of the CMO Show, and it's been a year of great conversations with leaders from renowned brands. This episode, we don't have an interview for you, but we're going to cap off the year by reflecting on some of those discussions. Yes, that's right. It is a solo show, and I've enjoyed doing the solo show once a year for many years now. And this year, I'm really excited about reflecting on the year that was and thinking about where we are going to from here.
Mark Jones:
Thanks for joining us, and welcome back to The CMO Show. Mark Jones is my name. I am the CEO and chief storyteller at ImpactInstitute, and it has been my pleasure to be your host this year for The CMO Show podcast. In fact, seven years, I'm looking meaningfully at my producer, Rian. He's nodding. Yeah, seven years we've been producing this show. Wow, what an incredible suite, if I could say that, of guests that we've had this year. As is always the case, I'd like to quickly go over some of the big themes that we talked about this year, and it's a nice way of reflecting on some of those macro trends that shape our lives as marketers. Some of the things obviously have touched on, what's it like in this post-COVID business environment, and we are seeing these really big changes in the way that we interact with brands and with each other, and how we make decisions.
Of course, evaluation was another big one. Measurement, it's the big conversation that will never go away for all the right reasons, and thinking about how do we do business, and the role of the CMO in the C-suite, and how they can become even more influential and use their influence for good. Of course, the other big thing that I'm most excited about is the rise of the social impact leader. This is somebody who is visionary, they're progressive, they're person centered, and they believe that change is necessary not just for the sake of the brand, but most importantly, they think about customers and their lives as people. What are the outcomes that we can influence as an organisation, whether we're a corporate or a government or a social sector organisation? How can we contribute meaningfully? In many ways, we've also looked at how can we do business better, how can we partner with the right people, how can we build out our teams for greater impact, and how can we make sure that we keep that customer, that person who's the focus of our business really at the centre.
Okay. The first theme I want to touch on is doing business better. I had a great conversation in August with Andrew Davies, who is the CEO at B Lab. Aside from the fact that we love the B Lab and B Corp ecosystem, and we're a big fan, of course, of bringing profit and purpose together, that's not really new. But what we have seen is real evidence that business models are shifting and changing, and it's a very active conversation that many CMOs are part of. We have a well-designed, purpose-driven business model that looks to be profitable and give back to the community and find really clear ways, from a marketing perspective, of telling that story of what we are doing to give back, to contribute. We are not just a business that's just in it for the money, but we are looking to build out that social equity, that social value that we love to talk about, particularly in the social sector.
That was really the theme that Andrew unpacked, and we've actually seen that theme stretch across all of our interviews, if I think about the entire year.
Of course, we did also touch on B Corp Certification, and it's a really great thing to do if you haven't become a B Corp. I will warn you, having been through the process, it takes a while and it's a lot of work, but it is a great response to this question of what does different look like? This B Corp Certification is a framework for creating change. One of the upsides of doing it, and we discussed this, is that as an organisation, you really do dig into all of the systems and the processes and the culture and all sorts of stuff that might be hidden within your business, which is both valuable and also some things that you probably want to throw out. And so, that process in itself is a really great way of cleaning shop for the benefit of everyone.
Here's a few comments from Andrew, few quick grabs from our interview, which really highlight some of these themes.
Andrew Davies
One of the phrases that we've used in the past ourselves is this idea of balancing purpose and profit. And I personally don't like that, because I think we're increasingly seeing evidence that a well designed for purpose business model can be very profitable, and I hope they are.
Because, again, it gets into the Simon Sinek territory here, but profit's not a dirty word, it's the fuel that drives a business and it creates scale. An IBM in our world is something that we recognise in our standards, and it's a way to earn points, where a business has actually been designed to have impact. And not to pick on lawyers, but if you're a regular law firm and your business is providing advice to other businesses, let's say, that's absolutely fine. To earn credits in the assessment you'd have to have some really strong operational practices.
But if your business has been specifically designed to provide legal advice to disadvantaged groups, maybe people who are working in indigenous enterprise, or even the not-for-profit sector, then you might earn some more credits, because you're actually designing a business to help solve a problem.
Mark Jones
This next theme, segment two if you like, Look Good, Feel Good, and Do Good. This is all about doing things differently, and I think really building on that B Corp idea is what can we do meaningfully that expresses our brand. One of the best organisations that really lives and breathes its ethos, its values, its purposes, Who Gives a Crap. Of course, the incredible toilet paper company. We spoke with Vanessa Morrish, who's head of creative and brand at Who Gives a Crap back in July, we looked at how creativity can be found in really conventional ways. I'm a customer myself, and I love the cheeky lines that you read even on the boxes where they thank the delivery person for making a difference.
So, what are some things to reflect on from Who Gives a Crap? Well, this is a great example of a brand personality that looks good, it feels good, and it does good. From a look perspective, really great clean, clear branding, vibrant packaging, has funny messages on the box, and of course, on the packets of toilet paper. The feel component, so moments of delight that are peppered through the customer experience and the home delivery type thing, and the way that you interact with them, particularly online and the messages that you get. I love that voice that comes through. It's a really human voice that really is filled with delight.
And then the doing bit, which we all know is really key to sustaining your traction with customers. In this case, they donate 50% of profits to building toilets in the developing world. So, you have a very clear alignment between the purpose of the product from a functional perspective and also your ability to contribute to something meaningful, which of course is sanitation in the developing world. What I loved about this conversation was hearing from Vanessa and the fun that they have doing. In marketing, it doesn't have to be boring, serious conversations all the time. We really need to make sure that our teams are having a great time coming up with ridiculous ideas. Here's a quote from Vanessa and that interview.
Vanessa Morish
Well, toilet paper is a really boring product. No one ever thinks about their toilet paper and nor should they because it's toilet paper. But what we've tried to do is take a boring product to make it interesting. And so, something that we see on our social and through our customer letters as well, is that people say, "I can't believe I got this excited about toilet paper." And we realised early on that there was something magical about the brand and the brand experience and all of these people suddenly becoming advocates for toilet paper and being excited about it and telling their friends about it.
And I think the magic of the brand is that it feels really human and delight is sprinkled everywhere. And I think that that kind of ridiculousness and delight is something that you can't fake and everyone in the company is ridiculous and delightful and thoughtful and driven by the impact that we can make as a company. And it's imbued everywhere in the brand and in the company and the experience. And so, I think that's what makes the brand magical and authentic, which is a word that is overused a lot in marketing and creative, but it's a good way to describe it. What you see on the outside is what you get on the inside and you can't fake that.
Mark Jones
Let's go to our next one now. We're calling this, Find What You Stand For. In November, I interviewed Justine Flynn, who's the co-founder at Thankyou. Justine is a social impact leader who really, from the beginning of the organisation, had a clear vision for change and how this could be a brand that makes a difference over the long term. It became quite clear when we heard about the constitution, about the way the organisation is structured, that it has value and it's designed to make a difference from the outset. This isn't something they've retrofitted into the brand. In fact, these values, the constitution, the governance of the organisation really does shape the way Thankyou is building itself out over time.
In fact, going through some big changes as we speak in terms of thinking about where value lies and where they should focus their effort. That was really something that came through in the conversation. So, what are they doing in the boardroom, how are they shaping their team and forming partnerships that really set them up to really focus on the areas where they make the most difference. For Justine and the team, these values really stood out to me, has been critical for helping them make all sorts of big and small decisions, even down to a new logo, for example.
Justine Flynn
I think it was Roy Disney who said that "It's not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are." And we had this list of nine different values, but it was hard to actually pull it all together into this roadmap. Yeah, so we're able to do that and put together, I guess, this little, I couldn't say it's little, but manual.
But like, even our new logo, we were looking at our logo and we did have someone who's a logo specialist, that we bumped into, and he was like, "Yeah, it's just missing your humanity." Because we are all about humanity and about the rawness. And so, we ended up doing a lot of work on it. And we're just like, how is the tweak here? And we've actually changed the second. It's actually funny, because we've spent so long with the designers, our art director, myself, trying to make an imperfect circle and it just makes us laugh at how much time we spent making the circle imperfect.
Mark Jones
Get one of your kids to draw it.
Justine Flynn
Yeah, right? How could it be this hard? But it's of that concept that you can't actually humanly do a perfect circle. Apparently it's not possible for anyone to, with hand, do a perfect circle. So we've got this imperfect circle at the back that shows our humanity but also shows, I guess, it represents so much to us. Even the world in which we live in, the complexities that there is. So yeah, there's a lot of meaning there, and just pulling out the meaning of everything and being able to know it and know how to run and operate.
Mark Jones
Now, the other thing, before we move on to our next topic, just to think about Thankyou, was this concept of knowing your 5%.. There's only 5% that really, really makes your organisation different. Focus on that. Make that the big, if you like, flag on the hill that you're all chasing and look to cast off other things that can be done by other people or other partners within your organisation. A really great lesson not just for the marketing community, but leaders in every category and at every stage of their maturity.
Mark Jones
Another part of what does different look like is this greater focus on people and communities. It's a theme that we're seeing in many organisations from the corporate government and the social sector where people really are wanting to, as I alluded to earlier, balance the purpose and the profit, and recognise that there is economic value in healthy communities. It sounds really captain obvious when you say it out loud, but healthy communities, of course, are thriving economic communities too. There's more trade, there's better jobs, and all the impacts that come through healthy families and community units.
That idea happily has been reflected in the government's wellbeing budget where they're recognising the value of systems in society that create social value. And so, it changes the way you invest government dollars, it changes the way that you engage with certain community groups. This is a really interesting shift in Australian society where we're starting to reimagine the legacy systems, the structures that we all use and rely on to live and to work, and starting to think about how can we be more inclusive and benefit all segments of our community.
Back in July, we heard from one of the organisations we think will be a big part of this movement to think about what different looks like and to be more inclusive. That is Islamic Bank Australia. I had a great chat with Dean Gillespie who's the CEO there, and really imagine starting a bank from the ground up and not just any old bank but an Islamic bank.
Now, the idea of an Islamic bank, of course, is not new. There are plenty of them all around the world, but we have seen in the Australian example, he's a man who by the way is not from the Muslim community, but is very much part of the team there and working with the values and the difference that comes with making an Islamic bank function. So, I really valued our conversation and learning how that works.
Maybe one of the biggest things here, a takeaway from the Islamic Bank Australia's story is that this of course is an organisation that operates under Sharia Council, under the Sharia law. And so, they have to structure their organisation in a way that both reflects their faith and the approach or the governance approach of that.
Look, this is a smart business. It's an interesting way of thinking about being part of a community where the bank is investing your money and actually has the potential to give you much bigger returns than what you'd expect under our fixed system that we see in the Western model. It's quite a smart way to do business. Here's a quote from Dean Gillespie as he talks about why this is different, how this is different, and how it works.
Dean Gillespie
I mean, our proposition is fundamentally different. It's a growing market. We've got no competitors in it at the moment from a banking perspective. Where it could be challenging a little bit might be raising capital. I think we're in an environment, in a world now where you've got rising interest rates globally. People might be shifting their funds into safer sources.
We've got instability around the world, things like wars in Ukraine, et cetera which sort of always impact corporate mindset. And so, a lot of those neobanks have struggled to raise capital.
We are really positive because I think whenever I talk to investors, whether there Islamic banks overseas or even investors here in Australia, everyone gets the business straight away. It's a really easy business proposition to explain to people, right.
It's a growing segment; 3% of the population growing strongly every single year; no competitors; unmet need. Everyone's like, "We get it," straight away. So I'm always cautious about these things and I see the trouble that others have had, but I'm also, as my team tell me all the time, I'm overly optimistic sometimes and I'm always the person that's going, "No, we'll be right." So, we'll just keep pushing on through.
Mark Jones
Segment number five, our fifth theme is evolving through impact. Well, we all want to make a difference in the world. In particular, we want to be able to work in roles in marketing, in comms, in brand, in creative, where we know we're contributing to the greater good. I was really thrilled to interview Louise Cummins, who is the CMO at World Vision in November. Some of the great ideas she's got about the application of their vision, excuse the pun, for the future, and how they can really improve lives over the long term. This is a brand, of course, that's iconic. It's always been purpose led, and it's always done good.
Of course, with that comes lots of fresh thinking and thinking about how do we engage with people and how do we make sure that the brand remains relevant, as I said. And so, I was thrilled to welcome her back on the show. She'd been on The CMO Show in a previous working life, and it was great to hear about how, now at World Vision, she's thinking about reaching new audiences and partnering with The Wiggles, which was quite a fun. I think, as a market to be able to partner with The Wiggles has got to be one of those life goals. Also thinking about new areas of focus and this regeneration project geared at tackling the climate crisis and a really great perspective on this underground forest she spoke about, where even though the trees are being cut down, there's ways of getting those forests to grow back again.
So to have that sort of perspective, what are the new things we can learn about how the world works and the way that our organisation can go out there and make a difference. In fact, what I loved hearing about was this continued focus on impact storytelling and why it sits at the heart of the organisation. We had some of our own experiences about our connection to World Vision as well. Here's a couple of quotes that reflect on how we've thought about World Vision and some of the things that Louise Cummins had to say.
Louise Cummins
Oh, stories are so important, right? And that's what World Vision's done so well over the years. So I remember I was at a resource allocation conference years ago in Thailand, and I heard a quote and it's always resonated with me, which was, the death of one is a tragedy, the death of a thousand is a statistic, and it's because our brains can't really wrap ourselves around-
Mark Jones
It just becomes numbers.
Louise Cummins
Exactly. The famine in Africa at the moment is just awful, but it's so hard to get our head around it. It's just so big, and the extent is so big, but when you bring it back to that one person, it brings it to life. So that's one thing that I'm really ... I've always been connected and committed to the power of the story, but especially in World Vision, that connectedness of sharing the stories is just so critical, and I'm so lucky I've got such a great team, both locally and internationally, that help with unlocking that.
Mark Jones
That's it. That's the five big themes for the year. But in truth, it's kind of just scratching the surface of all the conversations. And so, if you haven't dug through the back catalogue and you need something to listen to while you're relaxing in January, as I hope you do, then yeah, download some of those shows and look for the people and the topics that are of interest to you. From our perspective, we really do hope that that encourages you, gives you inspiration and lots of things to think about.
Mark Jones
Thinking about our focus in 2022, which is helping brands change the world in positive, meaningful, and measurable ways, I'm very excited to let you know we have some big news. In 2023, we have an event coming. I'm not going to say anymore, but I'll give you one word, which is pretty captain obvious and that word is impact, and it's all about making a difference. So, stay tuned.
I'm really excited for that. Of course, I'm really excited for the conversations we will hold with many of you in 2023. But for now, can I just say thank you for listening to the show in 2022. Thank you to all our guests who took time to chat with us and give us their expertise and their insights and to share with us. Because as always, we're interested in the ideas that collectively can benefit everyone.
Rising tide floats for boats. It's an old saying, but a good one that I love and really underpins how we think about you all here at The CMO Show. Once again, thank you so much. Make sure you do go and download all those old episodes. Tell your friends, tell your mom. Have a great Christmas, a great holiday season, and a New Year. On behalf of the whole team here at ImpactInstitute, thank you, and we look forward to speaking with you and being part of this exciting community of social impact leaders in 2023.