Stop Hiring Marketers Who Are Good at Meetings

We need to hire a Marketing Manager.

Excellent.

What are we looking for?

“Strong stakeholder management.”

Of course.

“Excellent communication skills.”

Yep.

“Comfortable presenting to senior leadership.”

Naturally.

“Highly organised.”

Good.

“Experienced managing multiple agency partners.”

Lovely.

“Ability to drive cross-functional alignment.”

There it is.

Anything about taste?

“Sorry?”

Creativity?

Culture?

Understanding what makes people give a shit?

“Well, they’ll have agencies for that.”

Right.

So we're hiring the person who will brief, judge, change, approve and ultimately be accountable for millions of dollars of creative work…

based largely on their ability to run a nice meeting.

Fantastic.

Marketing Has Accidentally Become a Meeting Profession

Look at the average Marketing Manager's calendar.

Weekly WIP.

Agency WIP.

Media WIP.

Campaign status.

Brand alignment.

Sales alignment.

Leadership update.

Budget review.

Research readout.

Social review.

Creative presentation.

Creative feedback.

Pre-read for the meeting about the meeting.

Then someone blocks out 30 minutes for:

FOCUS TIME

Declined.

Stakeholder conflict.

By Friday, they've spent 31 hours discussing marketing and approximately seven minutes experiencing any.

Then Monday:

“We need to be more culturally relevant.”

Maybe start by leaving Microsoft Teams.

Being Good at Meetings Is Useful

Let's not be stupid.

Marketing is collaborative.

You need to communicate.

Manage budgets.

Coordinate people.

Get decisions made.

Explain strategy.

Bring stakeholders with you.

Sometimes you need to tell a room full of very senior people why the thing that looks like it was filmed badly on an iPhone is actually the strongest creative.

Useful skill.

The problem is when these skills become the main definition of a good marketer.

Because then we select for people who are brilliant at moving marketing through the organisation.

Not necessarily people who are brilliant at making marketing work outside it.

Those are different jobs.

Your Customer Is Not in the Meeting

This is the bit worth remembering.

Your campaign can have a fantastic internal journey.

Everyone aligned.

Every stakeholder consulted.

Feedback captured.

Actions clearly documented.

Timeline met.

Budget managed.

Launch delivered exactly as planned.

Beautiful.

Then the customer sees it and thinks:

Nothing.

All that organisational excellence doesn't buy you one second of attention.

Customers don't know how difficult it was to get Procurement aligned.

They don't care that the GM approved the final route.

They don't award bonus points because the project was delivered without an awkward email from Legal.

They see the work.

That's it.

The external outcome does not give a shit how smooth the internal process was.

We’ve Confused Managing Marketing With Being Good at Marketing

This might be the bigger problem.

There are people who are extraordinarily good at managing marketing.

Timeline.

Budget.

Agency.

Stakeholders.

Approvals.

Deck.

Done.

Important.

But marketing itself asks for something else.

Can you understand people?

Can you recognise an interesting idea?

Can you spot when culture is moving?

Can you tell the difference between a trend and something that's already dead?

Can you look at data and find the useful bit?

Can you recognise why a creator works?

Can you tell when feedback is improving the idea and when it's slowly murdering it?

Can you make a decision when there isn't a benchmark telling you exactly what to do?

Can you make someone care?

That's marketing too.

Arguably the rather important bit.

“Great Stakeholder Manager” Can Be a Warning Sign

Not always.

Calm down, LinkedIn.

There are phenomenal marketers who are brilliant stakeholder managers.

The best ones need to be.

Because interesting work often requires somebody internally capable of protecting it.

But stakeholder management can mean two very different things.

One version is:

I understand the strategy, make clear decisions, explain them well and bring the right people with me.

Excellent.

The other is:

I am extremely good at making sure nobody senior is ever uncomfortable.

Ah.

That one produces different creative.

Because if your primary professional instinct is keeping everyone happy, creative work becomes difficult.

Good creative makes choices.

Choices create disagreement.

Disagreement creates uncomfortable meetings.

And suddenly the marketer's strongest skill starts working against the marketing.

Alignment Is Not the Objective

We fucking love alignment.

Everyone aligned?

Excellent.

Aligned on what?

“The campaign.”

Is it good?

“Well, everyone's aligned.”

Fantastic.

Does the audience care?

“We had unanimous stakeholder support.”

Great.

Will anyone remember it?

“The CEO is really happy.”

We're answering different questions.

Internal alignment can help you make great work.

It can also help you make extraordinarily mediocre work with breathtaking efficiency.

Consensus is not a creative strategy.

Sometimes everyone agrees because the answer is obviously right.

Sometimes everyone agrees because every distinctive part has been removed.

Learn the difference.

The Most Dangerous Marketer Is Excellent at Getting Things Approved

Because eventually, approval becomes the game.

They know what Brand will accept.

What Legal won't question.

What the GM likes.

What the CEO dislikes.

What language gets through.

Which agency ideas are going to create admin.

And people adapt.

The brief gets safer.

The agency presents safer.

The social team stops suggesting things.

The creators learn not to push back.

Everyone becomes incredibly efficient.

Campaign goes live.

Nobody complains.

Nobody remembers it either.

But holy shit.

Did that thing launch on time.

Hire the Person Who Has an Opinion

Ask a marketer what advertising they love.

Not:

“Which campaigns have won awards recently?”

What do you love?

What did you see this week that made you jealous?

Which brand do you think is doing terrible work?

Why?

Which creator would you give $500,000 to tomorrow?

What did you watch last night?

What's the last ad you sent to someone?

What social account do you wish you ran?

Which campaign does everyone else love that you think is shit?

Now we're learning something.

Not whether their opinions match yours.

Whether they have opinions.

Whether they've developed taste.

Whether they're paying attention.

Whether they can explain why something works beyond:

“It really cuts through.”

Ask Them What They’ve Killed

This might be an even better interview question.

Tell me about a piece of work you killed.

Why?

Was it off strategy?

Boring?

Wrong for the audience?

Did the data change your mind?

Was the agency phoning it in?

Good.

Now:

Tell me about a piece of work you protected.

Who wanted to change it?

Why?

What did you do?

Did it work?

What happened when someone senior disagreed?

Now we're getting into the job.

Because marketers aren't simply there to approve work.

They need to know when to kill.

When to push.

When to listen.

When to change their mind.

And when to put their body between a good idea and fourteen pieces of completely reasonable stakeholder feedback.

Hire Curiosity

This might be the biggest one.

Curious people make better marketers.

They want to know why something worked.

They use the platforms.

They read the comments.

They notice strange things.

They talk to customers.

They follow creators outside their category.

They look at what younger people are doing without immediately commissioning a GEN Z TRENDS REPORT.

They understand what competitors are making.

And what completely unrelated brands are making.

They watch things.

Read things.

Listen to things.

They don't need someone to put culture into a quarterly PowerPoint for them.

They're already in it.

You can teach someone your campaign process.

Curiosity is harder to install.

Hire Someone Who Can Say “I Don’t Know”

This one sounds contradictory.

Shouldn't senior marketers know things?

Some.

Hopefully.

But marketing is full of people pretending certainty because certainty sounds senior.

“Customers want authenticity.”

Do they?

“Short-form is the future.”

All short-form?

“Gen Z doesn't respond to traditional advertising.”

None of them?

“We know our audience.”

All 2.4 million of them?

Sometimes the smartest person in the room says:

“I don't know. How could we find out?”

Then tests it.

Looks at the data.

Asks someone closer to the audience.

Makes something.

Learns.

Changes their mind.

That's considerably more useful than somebody confidently quoting a benchmark they saw at a conference in 2023.

Hire People Who Can Be Wrong Without Having a Fucking Crisis

This matters too.

If you have taste, you will occasionally have bad taste.

If you make decisions, some will be wrong.

If you test things, some will fail.

If you back ideas, some won't work.

Fine.

The dangerous marketer is the one who needs every decision to have been correct retrospectively.

Because then data becomes defence.

Reports become theatre.

Failures become media problems.

Agencies become scapegoats.

Nobody learns anything.

Good marketers can say:

“I thought that would work. It didn't. Here's what I think we learned.”

Beautiful.

Do another one.

AI Is Coming for the Professional Meeting Attendee

This is where the next few years get particularly interesting.

Think about how much traditional marketing work involves:

Summarising.

Coordinating.

Scheduling.

Reporting.

Writing briefs.

Consolidating feedback.

Preparing decks.

Taking notes.

Chasing actions.

Moving information from one meeting into another meeting.

AI is looking at that workload like a Labrador looking at an unattended roast chicken.

A lot of it is going to get faster.

Automated.

Compressed.

Which means being the person who is extremely good at moving information around becomes less differentiated.

The valuable human skills move elsewhere.

Judgement.

Taste.

Curiosity.

Empathy.

Leadership.

Creativity.

Courage.

Knowing what matters.

Knowing what doesn't.

Making a call.

The Future Marketing Team Might Need Fewer Professional Approvers

If AI can produce the report, summarise the research, analyse the comments, draft the brief, generate the options and consolidate the feedback…

What are you doing?

Hopefully not scheduling another alignment meeting.

The marketer becomes more like an editor.

What should we make?

What should we believe?

Which data matters?

Which idea has something?

Which creator understands this better than we do?

What deserves money?

What deserves killing?

What should we ignore even though someone senior asked for it?

Those are judgement calls.

And judgement doesn't come from being good at meetings.

It comes from having something worth bringing into them.

Your Best Candidate Might Make the Interview Slightly Uncomfortable

They might disagree with you.

Good.

They might say they hate one of your campaigns.

Interesting.

They might tell you your social content looks like it has been approved by 14 people.

Potentially accurate.

They might have strong opinions.

They might ask why you do things a certain way.

They might say:

“That doesn't make sense.”

Excellent.

Maybe they're an arsehole.

Don't hire arseholes.

But don't confuse easy to agree with with good at marketing.

Because if you hire exclusively for people who make everyone internally comfortable, don't be surprised when they make work that does exactly the same thing externally.

Stop Hiring for the Calendar

Hire marketers who understand business.

Obviously.

Hire people who can manage.

Communicate.

Collaborate.

Deliver.

We need functioning adults.

But also ask:

Do they understand creativity?

Do they consume culture?

Do they have taste?

Can they use data without hiding behind it?

Can they challenge an agency intelligently?

Can they challenge management intelligently?

Can they recognise when the weird idea is the good idea?

Can they make a decision?

Can they protect it?

Do they actually give a shit about the work?

Because the next generation of tools will make managing marketing easier.

They'll make reporting easier.

Coordination easier.

Production easier.

Generating options easier.

Which leaves one awkward little question for the human in the middle:

Do you know what's good?

If the answer is no, being excellent at meetings probably isn't going to save you.

Because customers don't buy meetings.

They don't share stakeholder alignment.

They don't remember a beautifully managed approval process.

They remember the work.

Maybe start hiring for the people who can make that bit better.