Episode 83: What makes a great marketing leader?

00:03  

Intro: 

Welcome to the CIM Marketing podcast. The contents and views expressed by individuals in the CIM Marketing Podcast are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the companies they work for. We hope you enjoy the episode.  

   

00:19  

Host: 

Hello everybody, and welcome to the CIM Marketing Podcast, the second of our new season as summer morphs into autumn, and to mark the change in seasons, we have a great guest with us today, Mr. Jasper Martens, who is Chief Marketing Officer at PensionBee and he's going to be grappling with a really interesting topic, what makes a great marketing leader. How are you, Jasper?  

 

00:43  

Jasper Martens: 

I'm doing very well thanks Ben. 

 

00:45  

Host: 

Leadership is an interesting one. I congratulate you on taking this on, because it's a bit of a sort of amorphous concept at times, isn't it? Leadership and being a leader. What do we mean do you think when we talk about leadership, when we talk about being a great marketing leader? Is it someone who just heads up a department, like yourself, or is it something else?  

 

01:06  

Jasper Martens: 

That would be the lazy route, wouldn't it, just to be at the top of some sort of like reporting line tree or whatever? Fortunately, in my opinion, that means something completely different. Yes, you might be a line manager of somebody, but actually the reality is, in order to achieve a great thing in marketing, you've got to work with great people. So on one hand, you've got the ambition or mission from the company you work for, especially if you are a brand side, but then on the other side, you work with a great group of people you've hopefully hired, got to know, start working with, and they've got ambitions and growth trajectories too. So for me, it's always been, how do you bring those two together? So something that aligns to the goals of the company that the company try to achieve, and what do the people that work for you are trying to achieve too? You can align them by working with them, inspiring them, empowering them, and then automatically, you will lead the company and the team into the right direction. So that's how I would look at it.   

 

02:12  

Host: 

That’s an interesting way of looking at it, because what you're talking about is a leadership as an enabler. You're aligning the wants of your people with the wants of the firm, you're empowering people to do stuff, and then they will go ahead and do it. It's not that, I suppose, in the sort of military concept of a leader is the guy or the lady at the front who has a whole bunch of people following them doing what they tell them to do. Your analysis of it, your paradigm of leadership is something rather different, isn't it? 

 

02:41  

Jasper Martens: 

Folks, to give you an example with regards to at PensionBee is, of course, we have to set goals. We have to set targets. Where do we want to be as a company at the end of 2024? That's a discussion we're going to have with the team next week in our marketing off site. The goals are there. We can talk with the team in terms of how many customers we want to acquire, how much AUA we want to have. Do we want to increase the AUA per customer? Do we want customers to move more pension pots per account to offer to us, therefore seeing us the main provider of choice? So you can present them with particular goals, what the company ideally would like to achieve. Don't enforce them actually, then ask for feedback. Do you think this is realistic? How can we achieve those? And again, if you empower people, and they feel that they can actually come back with, I think we should do it this way, or generally believe if we run it this way, it could go this way, then people feel like they're included. They're empowered to actually start making some bold decisions in the product or in the marketing mix or in anything they do that, for me, feels like a great starting point, because on the other side, if you do it much more on a military basis, we've got to get to that point at the end of 2024, no matter what, I think you probably will, you know, the wheels might come off the wagon. I think in that process, if it's unrealistic or it just doesn't make any sense. So for me, it's always been, yes, you set some goals, and I will work with our management team in terms of what those goals are, and then present them to the team and say, could we do this? And if so, how? Then you get that feedback. That, for me, feels like a much more natural way, and that's what we've always done at PensionBee.  

 

04:37  

Host: 

There's a military phrase about boots on the ground, isn't there? It's a sort of numbers game of how much power, manpower or woman power, you've got on the ground in the field of battle or wherever. But you're actually doing something rather different. You're tapping into the resources of your team, tapping into their brains, getting their insight, and convening and collating all of those insights so they become insights for the company.  

 

04:59  

Jasper Martens: 

But I’m not hiring boots, I'm hiring brains. That's the whole point. That's the whole point. We're paying people to think. I would like that my boss would hire me to think, right? So it's about, how would you do it? Challenge them. That's what makes marketing jobs and financial services also like, actually really exciting, because you can't just be on autopilot and just execute even in junior roles. We do ask people to use their brains and think, and guess what? Turns out to be, people are much happier as a result. Probably will stick around for longer. The machine, in that sense, will be much more oiled and much more running like clockwork. 

 

05:40  

Host: 

Yeah, it's interesting. The audience can't see this because we're an audio product, but Jasper is sitting here with a beaming smile on his face, thinking about how the leadership paradigm works at PensionBee. You're obviously a leader there. You're one of the one of the leaders there. But you're looking for other leaders, presumably in your business, and looking to develop other leaders. Is that possible? Is that something that you can do, or is a leadership something you're sort of born with, the sort of inherent in human beings? Some are leaders and some aren't.  

 

06:12  

Jasper Martens: 

I believe it's a mix of mixture of both. I think there needs to be something. Some people are just naturally much better in understanding, working with others to achieve a particular goal, and work collaboratively and support them than others, and that's okay, too. Not everybody should have to be a leader. Like if we had a plant full of managers or leaders, that would also be quite a bit concerning. But you also should not be doing, and think, oh, naturally, he or she is a great leader, here's a team. Good luck. It needs to come with some training, for sure, and it also needs to be embedded in the right culture sets. So at PensionBee, we work with a couple of core company values, such as innovation, love and honesty, simplicity, etc, and explaining them in a particular way. So making sure that people fit in that culture, give them some training. Every manager at PensionBee, for example, will be in a manager training, and also will have buddies and mentors helping them. So I've been a mentor of some new managers in the company too, in the past, and I have also had help from others in the company in terms of helping me to become a better a better leader in that sense. But I do think there is something around some people are just much more naturally prone to helping, well, being a leader and helping others to achieve their goals.  

 

07:38  

Host: 

It's interesting because you've sort of parsed it probably subconsciously, I don't know, maybe deliberately, into three groups, people who are great for want of a better word executive doers. They're not necessarily leaders or necessarily want to be leaders. Leaders as a second group, you also mentioned a third group, managers. Leadership and management often gets lumped together, doesn't it, as one thing. Is it one thing? Are they two separate things? 

 

08:03  

Jasper Martens: 

I do actually make that mistake. Thanks for calling me out Ben. You don't have to be a manager to be a leader, for sure, but I do think you know ultimately, when you manage your team, and in my case, at PensionBee, I do manage a team of fantastic marketeers. The managing bit for me is more kind of like the clockwork element to it, reporting lines, annual reviews, etc, but a leader is going much more further than that, and it's much more around how can I help you to achieve your goals, and yeah, I wouldn't say they're necessarily the same.  

 

08:45  

Host: 

It’s interesting, isn't it? So leaders have to do some management, usually, not always, and most managers will probably have to do some leadership, usually, but not always. But the two disciplines are quite different in what the demand of marketers. What's some of the best examples you've seen of leadership in your career?  

 

09:05  

Jasper Martens: 

I've seen quite a lot of bad examples, but I've seen also, fortunately, some really great examples. And in my previous role, there have been some people throughout my career, especially when I came to London I started as an as a search executive in 2009. I had some digital marketing roles before I moved from Amsterdam to London. The first time I actually ended up in a slightly bigger organisation, it was still kind of startup scale up, type of way, but a sizable team, and the then Chief Marketing Officer, Alistair Douglas who is now the CEO of totally money, quite liked because he always asked the question, what would you do? How do you think you could achieve this, looking at the channel you own or the project you own? So I felt exactly like he enabled me to be more successful than the role I was doing. So that's a really good starting point. He wasn’t a micromanager as well. This wasn’t somebody who would kind of like, tell me exactly what to do and how to do it, and then if you did it, then you get like, oh no, let me just do it, because I can do it better. He was very much hands off and an enabler for me to be successful.  

 

10:17  

Host: 

If leadership is about being first and foremost, an enabler, an empowerer of people. Micromanagement actually militates against that, doesn't it? What you're doing is you're telling people in detail exactly what they need to do. You're not enabling. You're not empowering. This guy’s a model of the opposite that what he's doing, he's empowering and enabling. He's not micromanaging. So there's an interesting lesson there for marketers.  

10:40  

Jasper Martens: 

I loved being led by Alistar at the time, and I know many in the team did. I'd say the phrase, people leave managers, not companies. I think it's a good one, because most people will leave a micromanager. Most people don't leave an inspired leader. If you see in a team, a lot of people leaving there all the time. Wow, don't place bets. But I would say that is probably due to micromanagement. That for me was a good learning point. The other leader that I backed and admired was the then CEO of simply business, which is Jason stockwoods. Not all of the things you always agree with. But one of the things that I really liked about what he was doing there is that he again, he enabled people to learn and to be their best self. At the time that was, for example, doing the first television ads campaign. I've never done that before. I was a digital marketeer. I actually went as I progressed in my career above the line. So I started to explore TV, out of home and some other channels.  

 

11:50  

Host: 

Did you find daunting at first when you made that move? And he helped you find less daunting presumably? 

 

11:57  

Jasper Martens: 

Yes, he had a marketing background, and therefore he was able to support me, and I also made mistakes, and he allowed me to make small enough mistakes to learn from it so that not a project derailed. I quite liked that, somebody who enables you to learn something to be successful. So I would say those two people at the time were quite special people. And I would say my current manager, actually, my current leader, our CEO of PensionBee, Romi, is one of those people that leads a company by doing exactly that. Like I've learned so much in my journey at PensionBee from the moment I joined them, when there were only five people in the room, and now a company with over 200 people, a public company, and every step along the way, leading by example, has been quite inspiring. So those are three people, I'd say, great leaders for me that I actually personally know.  

 

12:51  

Host: 

So the three leaders you've cited obviously all have slightly different styles, and there are many styles of leadership. Some of them are very easy to define and very obvious in the world view of the leader. Some are more subtle. What sort of styles of leadership have you encountered in your career, and how do you think they have changed or had to change over the years?  

 

13:11  

Jasper Martens: 

I've worked with leaders that were very top down, so I would say, you know, dictatorial leadership is maybe the wrong word, but you probably know, almost like army style. So I think that's disappearing, absolutely disappearing. And I think the enabler is a leadership style, it's just the one that has always been there. But I think it's only becoming even more important. Now, one of the reasons that I think that's happening is we've had COVID, and people who rely on their team to be in an office so they can look at them as like, this is my team and they are working really hard, and that's kind of like, I'm the manager and they work really hard. They found themselves a little bit exposed during COVID, because suddenly they were all working from home. And if you are an enabler and you work with your team, you care about your team. So this is the other thing. There's quite a lot of, there used to be a there used to be a shift, I remember working in the city that you didn't talk about your personal life, you didn't talk about your career and everything about your personal life, etc, etc. That was separate from the work. I think that's kind of like disappearing, because as a leader, you do care about the people that work for you, that work with you, and therefore that allows for them to be more successful. So I think that's been quite a shift, and COVID made it only more exposed that people who were still in that old mindset, well, what was actually the added value if they were just dictatorial, kind of like looking at their team and their structures, but actually, if you keep working with people and you enable them, you can do that in an office but you can also do that when they're remote.  

 

15:03  

Host: 

That's interesting. We've sort of gone through sort of three phases, haven't we, in marketing? One, was mostly, not entirely office based, but mostly office based, pre COVID. We obviously went through a couple of years where it was no office. We weren't allowed to come into offices for the best 18 months to two years, and we've now gone back in generally, most agencies, most marketing departments, have gone back into sort of hybrid model there with people in two or three days a week. But what you're saying is that in that period when we were all having to work from home, and indeed the latter period where hybrid has become the main model, the enabling style of leadership, has come to the fore, because if you're an enabler, if you're an empowerer, you don't need to be physically sat next to people in a room in order to lead them. Whereas the old style, let's not call it the dictator, but I know what you're getting at. Let's call it a strong-arm leader. He or she preferred to have what they considered, perhaps to be their rank and file around them. But this is the era you're saying of the enabler.  

 

16:11  

Jasper Martens: 

Yeah, also Ben, if you are asking people to come back to the office for like, four or five days a week, you are not an enabler. You're very old-fashioned leader, because you have to rely on presentism, like people needing to be in the office. If you are an enabler, you actually care about the people that are in your team that you work with. And guess what happens? If you care about them, then you understand that some of them have started a young family. They've got two young children. They need to pick up children from school, from nursery. Others will thrive when they have at least two days a week just solitude, time to get a script out or get some work out. And therefore, if you know them, you care about them, they feel they're being cared about, then guess what happens? Bringing them back full time to the office is probably going to be counterproductive, because you're making it very hard for them to live a decent and high quality of life, because they have to, you know, move childcare and all of this stuff around. And second, you also not asking them what the best solution for them would be, for them to be successful. So we don't do mandated going back to the office, but most of my team will be in at least two days a week, one or two days a week, for sure, because on those days, they know if I go in, this is when I have a brainstorm session with my with my fellow colleagues. This is when I do a project. This is where we set up. This is where we get creative. And then on other days they can execute. And that's not, I needn’t ask for them to do that. They came up with it themselves. And that's just when you know your people. You know the people you work with. Anybody who says, oh, we now need to come in four days a week, they just don't know what's going on with their people. And frankly, they just don't care about their people, and therefore they will leave, they will not be as engaged, less productive.  

 

18:04  

Host: 

It's interesting, a couple of things on that. Firstly, it's amazing how many marketers I speak to nowadays who voluntarily go into the office for two or three days a week, because they want to see their friends and colleagues and have that brainstorming. But it's not something that's mandated. It's something they themselves have done from the bottom up, rather than been told from the top down. The point about not knowing, there was an interesting statistic I remember vaguely from the COVID period, is that when suddenly, you know, everyone had to work from home, and everybody from the CMO to the CEO has had to suddenly join teams calls and what have you online, many C-suite realised that they knew nothing at all about the personal lives of their people. They didn't know whether they were married in some instances, they certainly didn't know how many children they had and what the ages of their children were, what their family circumstances were. Suddenly they knew everything about them. They knew what their house looked like. They often met their cat because she walked across the screen when they were doing it. And they certainly found out about their children, because children would often interrupt, and suddenly they do hear a little bit about the hub above daily life. And actually, it really brought down to lots of leaders that they didn't know that much about their staff. And therefore, as you'll say, if they don't know about their staff circumstances, how can they know what is going to work best for their staff in terms of enabling them? So in many ways there was, there was a lot of upside about it, and people suddenly became much more aware of their people as people. 

 

19:28  

Jasper Martens: 

Yeah, knowing more about the team you work with, and therefore actually knowing their circumstances and then helping them to be their successful self. Surprise, surprise, you get also a team from all walks of life, because not everybody fits in one mold. So if you do care about a diverse team from all walks of life, then this is also a really important thing. Naturally, you will have a much more diverse team, just asking people what's work best for them and then measure them against the goals you've set them, probably is the right call.  

 

20:05  

Host: 

It's a core point of leadership, actually, isn't it? What works best for you, so you can do your best for me? It's an interesting paradigm. It's a good paradigm. 

 

20:16  

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20:28  

Host: 

Jasper, you're a very modest guy. Let's talk about you for a bit because we haven't talked about you. We haven't talked much about pension Bee. PensionBee is a pensions app, a consolidation app, a service that you can put your pensions into if you've got a number of them, which many people have, particularly when they get later in their careers and they've had a number of jobs, it's an interesting brand. It's quite an exciting brand. As a CMO yourself, as a leader in a brand in financial services, what challenges of leadership do you find that you encounter, and how do you overcome them?  

 

20:59  

Jasper Martens: 

It has changed over time. I think the main challenge has always been, how do I build a product that people actually trust? So first of all, the first challenge was, how do we explain it to customers that actually you can actually do this, and it brings so many benefits. You don't lose track of your pensions, you can all combine them into one new plan that you can manage on your phone, getting that message across. But then later on, it was more also around but actually, do you trust pensionbee as a brand like, will we be around tomorrow? Yes or no. So challenges come and go throughout the years. When we started pensionbee in 2015 with just a few people to now, being a public company, challenges come and go, and interestingly, first of all, challenges in your marketing team changes, challenges in your leadership also changes. So especially hiring people at the start, you want to have people you work with that are very versatile, because you don't have departments, you just have a few people. And now we've got a much larger team, and actually we've got sub teams now, whether that's a content team or an acquisition team, so you're looking for more specialists along the line. So that has been the challenge.  

 

Most people that join PensionBee in the team are still here, so we've got quite a lot of people who are still here after all of these years. What is their career progression? What do they want to achieve in the next couple of years? And is that aligned with how the company is moving? So some of the generalists, or some of the people starting the junior role are now actually quite seniors, so that's been quite a challenge. And then on top of that, marketing is an ever-changing beast. When we started PensionBee, Instagram was our biggest acquisition channel, but today it isn't. It's probably app installed campaigns today, it's probably one of our top campaigns, paid search and also TikTok, for example, which didn't exist in 2015. So marketeers constantly need to learn and adapt about the changing landscape in terms of how we attract and retain our customers and make them very happy. So the company is changing very rapidly. So the roles change very rapidly, from generalist to more specialist roles and/or more senior roles. How do you do that? Second, how we reach customers, acquire them and retain them, also changes and in a fast-moving company like pensionBee, that is challenge and a half. 

 

23:39  

Host: 

So is the key finding some sort of universal truths or universal mantras that you can hold on to as a leader? It’s an interesting point you make about specialists. As regulations change, technology advances, you start to demand, you start to need a whole bunch of new specialists who perhaps you don't share their expertise by definition, they're specialists, so you don't have an immediate connection with them. As a leader, when you've got a sort of ever more diverse set of colleagues, are there some sort of universal truths and universal mantras that you can hold on to as a leader which apply equally to all?  

 

24:12  

Jasper Martens: 

There's always two questions I ask. First of all, this is the challenge. If you were me, what would you do? So I ask them directly. It’s me not being lazy and asking them to do my job but it's more around, especially when it's a specialist, from their point of view, if you were in my shoes, what kind of decision would you take? How would you approach this? Second, understanding where they are in their journey and where they want to grow into and actually asking them the question, this is the problem. This is the goal. How do you think we should solve this? Those are two questions you want to ask. So you ask people to come up with like, how would you do it?  

 

24:53 

Host:  

It's a great question to ask, isn't it? How would you get to this goal? How do you suggest we get to this goal? That's inclusive, it's enabling language, and it's a sort of universal way that you can lead a very diverse team.  

 

25:08  

Jasper Martens: 

I don't have to put my commander hats on and say, okay, this is how we're going to do it. No. How are we going to do it? How do you think we should do it? And they haven't done it before, but all these brains switched on will deliver an excellent result.  

 

25:26  

Host: 

Get your people to help you and to help the company with their insights and as you say, their brains, not their boots. Do you think as a leader, you've got the opportunity to actually change organisations, to create a positive change in organisations, if you use the right tools and techniques? 

 

25:42  

Jasper Martens: 

I think yes, you can. So to to give you an example in the journey of pensionbee, especially the first few years, acquiring customers and growing at scale and growing is very important. So your marketing team, the rest of the organisation is very much designed around that goal of getting as many customers as you possibly can. Profitable customers, of course. But there is also now a point in time where that is still overall, still important. Our retention at PensionBee is 97%. So 97% retention rate is very high. Now in wealth management, it is usually quite high. But we were very fortunate with that, but it also means that we need to keep our customers engaged and, of course, very happy, that we can help them build a happy retirement. So what will happen is that you start to look at specialists that look more at retaining customers, customer happiness, customer panels, customer communication, rather than just acquiring customers, because you can consolidate eventually and then what? So advocating that we actually need a team really looking after that. I mean, I've been quite vocal about that in the organisation. And then you work with, you know, your design and product team, you work with the management team, and we've got now a multi-disciplinary team that's all around team customer experience. So we've got a team around customer growth, and we've got a team around customer experience. Those teams weren't born overnight, and it wasn't me saying we need one team, and that team and that's coming, now, which as a leader, you can highlight the new challenges that you're facing as an organisation, as a team or as a leader. You can set the goals around, I want to keep the retention rate as high as it is right now. I do not want that to drop. So who do we need, and how are we going to do this? So you can drive those changes throughout the organisation. And I'm very happy how the teams are now set up.  

 

27:56  

Host: 

What about sort of social goods, like being more sustainable or more inclusive? Obviously, they can translate, as we know, into business advantage as well. But is that something leaders can do and should do, or is it something that should be done by separate sort of bodies and organisations?  

 

28:11  

Jasper Martens: 

Oh, god no. I mean as much as you want somebody dedicated to the organisation who looks after ensuring that we've got a diverse team from all walks of life, because let's face it, if you've got that team representing the society, you probably will build up, provide a service or build a product that helps that society moving forward. If it was only Jasper’s types building a better product you can believe in maybe only the Jaspers would believe in that. And we don't want that for sure. So that's the kind of thing you want. However, you can't have a head of diversity and inclusivity achieving that. That's not how you're going to move the needle. So at pensionBee, we as management team, as leaders, from a management team, we are organisers of initiatives that help to champion diversity and inclusion in the company. So me, as an openly gay man, very happy to organise our LGBT+ month in June with my other colleague, and, you know, I did a panel of like other members of the community in the company, telling their lived experiences, for example. So me doing that panel, me organising that, me working with panelists, I think that's really important. Is it my job? No, it isn't. But is it important? Oh, yes, it is.  

 

29:36  

Host: 

And can you bring it about? It's not necessarily. It may not be part of your job description, but you have the agency to make those things happen as a CMO and you should perhaps use them.  

 

29:48  

Jasper Martens: 

And me doing that, just doing that in the organisation, it hopefully inspires all of our colleagues to be more acceptant and much more inclusive, one. Two, if people want to be more open about, that they are from the community, it's good to see a senior leader just being very happy and open and comfortable about it. You know, those things really matter. So whether that is Black History Month, whether it's LGBT month, Pride month in June, we've got throughout the year, everybody in our management team will work on initiatives that they also feel very close to and want to help to. I think that's important, and that should not be left to a head of inclusivity or ahead of diversity. They only can be successful if we are again enabling them to do their job very best and for us to be the role models. Otherwise, it's just a token job. And we don't want token jobs.  

 

30:45  

Host: 

We certainly do not want token jobs in marketing or anywhere else. Jasper, it's been a great session, but before you go, I'm going to put you on the spot with one final question. It's 2023 it's nearly 2024 I suppose if you give us a couple of months. If you're going into the business today or even as you are today, what sort of leader would you yourself want to follow? 

 

31:12 

Jasper Martens: 

I want to follow a leader that asks me to think, asks me to solve a problem, or asks me to take on the challenge or get as close to the goal we want to achieve, asking me, not dictating what I should be doing. My ideal leader is somebody who I don't feel I need to tell to sorry I'm half an hour late, I got stuck on a train. My leader that would trust me, that no matter when or what I do, as long as I can be my very best self and meet the company goals. So people, they care about me, but they don't look over my shoulder all the time if you know what I mean. So micromanagers. Leaders of today, an ideal leader of today should not be a micromanager. If you're a micromanager, then something is seriously off, you're insecure, or you don't have the connection, or whatever the reason is. I certainly would run for the hills if I had somebody who was like that. So an ideal leader for me is the opposite, and will work with me on being successful for myself and the company. 

 

32:25  

Host: 

That's interesting. Great advice there. I'm sure your desires are shared by the majority of our audience, and there's some great tips for being a leader and also for being a follower. If you are someone who is being led, try and think what you want from your leader, and trying to find a leader like Jasper and the people that he cited today. It's been a great session, Jasper. Thank you very much indeed for attending. It's been fascinating. I find it fascinating. I'm sure our audience will find it fascinating. It's been great having you, and I hope that you will come back on the CIM podcast very soon.  

 

32:58 

Jasper Martens: 

Thanks for having me, Ben. 

 

33:01  

Outro: 

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