Top 12 thoughts from our Global Marketer of the Year shortlist

As part of WFA’s Global Marketer of the Year 2019, we sat down with the six shortlisted candidates: Cheryl Goh, Group VP of Marketing & Founding CMO, Grab; Syl Saller, Chief Marketing and Innovation Officer, Diageo; Fernando Machado, Global Chief Marketing Officer, Burger King; Richa Goswami, Senior Director, Office of Marketing Value, Global Digital and Technology Excellence, J&J Consumer Health; Lubomira Rochet, Chief Digital Officer, L’Oréal; and Marc Pritchard, Chief Brand Officer, P&G. The interviews raised some interesting insights and questions for marketers, particularly surrounding diversity, creativity, and partnerships, which we have compiled here.

Creatives unleashed - Marc Pritchard, P&G

“A big part of the job for me is to set the great P&G people free to do wonderful things. Every person has immense creativity and capability and is closest to the consumers that we serve. So, by giving them the freedom, by giving them the tools and the opportunity to create big ideas at the local level is where you’re going to get the best work.”

Empathy is key - Lubomira Rochet, L'Oréal

“I have always said that one of my biggest strengths is that I’m an immigrant. When you are an immigrant, when you arrive somewhere you have to observe, you have to understand how everything works, to understand the codes, respect them and then try to maybe make the room different and bring something different to that culture.”

Creativity comes first - Fernando Machado, Burger King

“As I grew in marketing, I realised that to be really successful I had to add one more thing which was to have a strong creative criteria. Understand what great creativity is, understand what good design is because most people don’t, and if you only rely on research you may not necessarily do the right thing.”

Purpose accelerates growth - Syl Saller, Diageo

“Helping people find their personal purpose and how that connects to the company purpose...that's a huge accelerator of people's growth and company growth.”

The ideal client-agency partnership - Cheryl Goh, Grab

“The best kind of [agency] partnership is one where we feel that they are a part of us, they’re part of our company, they understand our goals and how to achieve them together with us – there’s no division. We don’t treat them like they’re external […] they are a very big part of our brainstorming process even as we’re trying to get plans approved.”

Marketing with heart - Richa Goswami, J&J

“If you set yourself in believing that what you’re doing is the right thing for the consumer and you go make it happen, great things will happen. Don’t worry about the accolades: just do what you believe in your heart is the right thing to do.”

Ideas from different places - Fernando Machado, Burger King

“I think that if we’re able to increase diversity we can become more creative in general, because you’re not sourcing ideas all from the same background and from the same paradigms, but also it will help us better reflect our consumer and help us come up with ideas that will make even more sense for those segments.”

Closing the gender gap in creative departments - Syl Saller, Diageo

“We see that there’s a big gap in creative departments between the number of men and women particularly in senior leadership. We want to close that gap.”

Give someone a head-start - Richa Goswami, J&J

“The start-up community has got great capabilities, and as much as we work with our agencies, we also wanted to bring that in. So, for example, AI in the creative space is something that we will be testing a lot more of this year.”

 The flexibility of marketers - Cheryl Goh, Grab

“Creativity is always celebrated in advertising but not so much in other roles. I think that there are a lot of skills that marketers have that can be applied to other parts of the business. We have people at MD, CEO level, at country levels whose background is pure marketing, so I think that’s where the industry should be headed.”

 Constructive disruption - Marc Prichard, P&G

“Marketers should really think about 2020 as a major inflection point. How are they going to deal with the disruption that is happening and, most importantly, how are they going to lead it?”

Crossing the streams - Lubomira Rochet, L'Oréal

“One of the key KPI’s of success is that you now have crossed career paths, meaning people coming from a traditional L’Oréal environment taking on your digital jobs and people coming from digital backgrounds and taking marketing or GM’s jobs so this is how you can measure concretely a transformation.”

Voting for Global Marketer of the Year 2019 has already closed. The winner will be announced soon. For more information, check the Global Marketer of the Year 2019 website.