 and welcome to all of you. Thanks for coming, it has been raining outside and I had the pleasure of seeing it from the hotel room window, which was pretty way more comfortable than for some of you on the street. I'm very glad you're here and I wanna talk about the hardest thing known to any marketer in the world and that is making change happen in companies. The hardest thing and because no matter what you talk about in digital, no matter what you talk about in marketing, there will be the day when you come home into your company and then you have to somehow make it happen and then all the other people and maybe they don't agree with you and that is a challenge we see a lot in marketing. So I wanna talk about how you can make change happen. That's the purpose and how better to do it than to tell you about my biggest digital change project when I was a partner at McKinsey. Do you know what it is? This is a McKinsey chart, a beautiful piece of art that gets delivered in thousands to clients every single day across the world, made on laptops by people and a while ago when I was still at the firm, we thought this is ugly. We want something really, really nice and at the time I was leading something that you would probably call the customer experience function of McKinsey. McKinsey doesn't call it, they call it client services and we said, you know what? We wanna change it, we want what gets nicer, look better. So what do you do in a big organization if you wanna change something big, you're looking for a sponsor and so did we, we looked for a director that's a very senior person and we asked the director to make a proposal to the shareholders council, the governing body of McKinsey to say we wanna change how the charts look like, typical company project. They brought it back to me saying, hey, client services, please help do it. That was then when we briefed the design team, this was year two of the change project in a large firm. Now guess what? We then worked with the design team, proposed to the director, he proposed to the shareholders council and guess what the shareholders council said? We have a lot of additional ideas, go back to the design team and work with them. So we made another proposal back to the shareholders council and guess what they said? We have more ideas, what we wanna change. So we went back to the design team and we had another proposal to the shareholders council. At this point, legal got involved. Saying whoa, wait a minute, you cannot change all these flights on all the machines and all the computers in the world. That's difficult, you can't. IT got involved too. Well, wait a minute, you wanna change the design of all these documents that they are loaded on our laptops, you can't, it's weird. So they got back to me saying, you fix it, right? You work with the design team and with legal and with IT. At this time, that was year three, the IT user groups got involved and say, wait a minute, we don't like the new design you proposed and they complained to the country practices, they complained to the shareholders council, they told me fix it, right? Go with work with all these people and so on and so on. We worked with the design team and made the final proposal to change all the McKinsey flights in the world. At this point, the director left the firm. So our sponsor was gone. And then we had this all back and forth with the shareholders council and I said, you know what, I'm in charge, screw it, we're gonna launch. And from one day to the next, McKinsey globally went from this to this. And it's really unfair you're laughing because have a look. You know, we had caps before in the headline and now it's no caps. We had no color and now we have color. And have you ever seen a little blue bar on the bottom? Big change. I tell you what, this is a typical example of how change happens in large companies. And no matter whether you work in an agency, no matter whether you work as a marketer, as a digital expert, as a brand expert, it doesn't matter. Success in your job will not be so much about the technology you know, the skills you have to know your brand and to know your digital. It will be whether you'll be able to make change happen. And I will talk a lot about marketing today but it applies in the same way in technology and others. Your success and everything we were talking about at this conference, the success of all these ideas will depend on whether you are able to make change happen or in another way, great marketers are great change leaders and great digital leaders are great change leaders. That is the thing. So now here's the problem however, your job is really difficult. Okay, let's do a show of hands. Who of you, let me show a show of hands. Who of you believe they really understand all the digital marketing solutions that are out there for your specific area? Show of hands. Who thinks they understand them really well? Interesting, right? Nobody, maybe just so very tired but I guess nobody really raises their hands. And here's the thing, right? You go to one of these amazing digital marketing conferences and then you go home and you think about your skills and a lot of people when they look into the mirror, they will pull a face like this because oh my God, you know, there's so much to learn. And there was a time in marketing when you knew it all, right? You just had like 20 years of experience and you knew it all. And now you feel like oh my God, I never know anything, right? There's so much new stuff but that's not half of it. How much of the work you're doing this week will be about the future. Like the future revenue, the future customer behavior, the future customer career. I mean how much, like 10%? No, no, maybe, I think it's more, right? A lot of people I met this morning that told me stories about what they're doing and I'd say it's 70, 80, 90%, right? Of the work you're doing is about the future. Now what do you say to someone who tells you I know the future? Well you don't trust them, right? And this is the issue. That's why when you stand next to someone from finance, right, who have the odd numbers, everything you say will always sound a little bit less reliable because it is. And as a marketer, as a digital expert, as a digital agency, you will always be facing a massive trust gap. That's the thing. In fact, there are many very senior leaders when they think about the digital department, they think about, you know, they probably have like an SVP of overpromise and the head of La La Land and the VP of Brandstaff and the chief budget burner and they're all working with some too cool agency. It's like this, right? Sometimes people don't see it. So you will face a big trust gap. But here is one more. Just imagine your company, your agency or your client would have the world's best customer experience, like five stars, everything is great. How many people in the company will have to be involved to make that happen? Many. And how many of those people report to you? Very few. As a digital marketer, as a digital agency, as a marketer in general, as an IT expert, you're always facing a massive trust, a power gap because you can't tell people what to do. So now think about your job. You have a skills gap that's growing every single day. You have a trust gap and you have a power gap. And then your job is to make change happen. That's the reality of what we're doing. And this is pretty, pretty difficult. But we don't talk about this because if you start out in your job and you're moving to Mumbai or moving to Delhi, you wanna make it big and you're working hard and you're getting 500 emails a day and every blog tells you Steve Jobs was great and your parents still have absolutely no clue what you're really doing because it's hard to understand. And then you work hard, right? Because you wanna be successful. And then you work hard and hard and hard. And you think, you know, one day I'll have this great project, this wonderful brand idea, this wonderful clients thing that I do. And when I succeed, I'll be influential because people will come to me and ask for my advice. And then you have this idea and you're presenting it and then your boss isn't sure and your clients don't like it and your agency's pulling, dragging their feet. And you're hitting a wall. And you say to yourself, you know what? I probably must work harder and harder and harder to have more influence. Well, let me tell you, it's exactly the other way around. You have to influence harder. So the good work you're doing can actually pay off. You have to influence harder so the good work you're doing actually pays off. Now, everybody can do a chart like this. It's really easy, right? It took me about 10 minutes to do on PowerPoint. Very easy to say and then I say this. Well, let me prove this to you. Let me prove this to you. We have done indeed the largest ever study on the success of marketers and of digital marketers of agencies in the world ever. We had 1232 leaders from over 80 countries and we had 68,000 surveys. Personal assessments we looked at of marketers and finance people and operations people and CEOs to see what really makes a difference for success in your role. Okay, so what is it then? So let's look at the numbers. Is it B2B versus B2C, so the industry for your success? Does it make a difference if you work in consumer goods or in B2B? What do you think? Early, right? Early morning. Well, here's the answer. It doesn't make a difference. It's under 1% of the number. So under 1% of the set is explained by B2B versus B2C. So it's not a big factor. How about gender? Male versus female. Does it make a difference for your success in business? Exactly, I see some people violently shaking their head and saying, no, it doesn't. And you're exactly right. When it comes to screwing up in marketing, we have total gender equality, right? Same, no difference. Okay, how about personality? How you're wired? The introverts and extroverts and all these things. How important is that for success in your role? So I'll tell you what, surprisingly little. Under 5%. And it has to do with the fact that there's a trust gap, a power gap, and a skill gap. It's a really unusual job. So success in marketing is an acquired skill. You can learn the stuff. However, that's really bad news because you can't blame your parents. Not about your genes, right? Success in marketing and social and digital is on you. You can learn the stuff. Okay, how about technical skills? So basically, all the other things we're talking about after I'm gone at this conference and all the things you learn in the books and the stuff you learn at the university, how important is that for your success? Now, here is probably surprising news. It's about 15%, one five. Does this mean it doesn't matter? Does it mean skills don't matter? No, it just means that everybody has them. All of you in this room, you're really skilled. It's nothing special. It's your entry ticket. So welcome. Now, I put a lot of pressure on you now, right? Because that's all you. So let's find someone we can blame if you work for a really shitty company. It's hard to be successful. 25% of success is your company, the boss, the budget and all these things. But far and away, the largest driver of success of marketers worldwide are change, leadership, skills. And you're most welcome to take photos and tweet this. There's another hashtag if you want on the top. You know, free knowledge, you can send this to whoever you want. That's quite important. The best people we looked at in our study weren't just good marketers or good technical people or good agency people. The best people knew also how to make change happen, how to influence people, how to remove the barriers to change. That's important. So this is the thing. Or in other words, great marketers are great change leaders. That's the summary. So on here are the facts. By the way, if you're interested in this, we've written this up in a book called The Twelve Powers of a Marketing Leader and don't take my word for it, but take the word of Seth Godin and Jim Stengel and Phil Taylor really leading global marketers to basically say that it's the only ever marketing book that was written that has to do with leadership for marketers. Not about brands, right? But about how you guys can actually be successful. And please buy lots of it. I really, I get $1 each, so it'll make me really rich when you do. So this is it. So this is the book. Now, let's do this. Now, you're of course here to learn what we can do. So let's talk about a few tips. I have a few tips for you. Tip number one is tackle big issues. If you as a marketer, if you as an agency, if you as a digital expert want to have any influence, make sure the issues you tackle are big. This is the PlayStation. It's Sony's most important product. It's the world's best selling gaming console. What a lot of people don't know is when gaming got something in the industry when it started out, you know, the technology came. Everybody in Sony was against gaming. Nobody wanted it. Except one guy. And his name is Ken Kutaragi. And Ken in an almost 10 year long battle convinced the Sony management to get into gaming. And through this, he's basically saved the firm. He was a young engineer. He was not a CEO. And he made that happen. Now what did he actually do? Now Ken did two things. He convinced the Sony management of two things. Number one is that gaming is a customer need. There's a real customer need. And he showed like pictures and I guess better max videos right at the time of people enjoying this. And he showed facts. This was important. But he also convinced the Sony management of something else that gaming is serving a company needs. That the company can actually make a game. Technically. That it's compatible with the values of Sony to do gaming, which they didn't believe. And most importantly is that gaming is going to make money. So Ken worked in what we call the value creation zone. That is the zone where you as a marketer, where you as an agency, where you as a digital leader have actual power. And that's the only zone where you have power. That's the only zone. And that's why this is a key concept. As a marketer you always have to think about am I working in the value creation zone? Am I serving a customer need and a company need and do they overlap? Now naturally they don't overlap because you know the customers are changing their mind and the company is changing their mind. So the market you constantly have to like fight and make it larger. That's your job. But you can't not work in the value creation zone because then you get either fired or you have nothing in the market that happens. That's the challenge. So the question I have for you is how could you enlarge your value creation zone? Okay, tip number two. Site with the revenue camp. If you as a marketer, digital marketer, digital agency, digital expert, whatever your job is, if you want to have influence you have to be associated with profitable revenue. Let me explain this to you. This is a chart that a friend of mine has given to me and he's really regretted it because I've shown it at hundreds of conferences by now and he presented to the board the marketing priorities 2016. Now what were the priorities? Number one is a segmentation review, adding the millennial dimension and yes there is a typo. Scaling up programmatic across all platforms and I cite the CEO and who said to me whatever the fuck that means. Launching the next phase of brand engagement, blah blah, virtual reality trials. The problem is if marketers are showing documents, charts like this to senior leaders that are not working in marketing, these people are losing their will to live because why would they care? This is internal marketing blah blah lingo and there's a very simple test. If you want to know how confident someone is, look at what they're writing and saying. If they're writing and wobbling on about stuff like this, they're not very confident because it's easy to hide behind segmentation and programmatic and whatever. Confident people talk plain language. It's harder, right? So if you want to be a confident leader, if you want to be a confident market, you don't write like this. You basically write like people would talk, not this stuff. So let's think about the target group just for a moment. What is on the mind of a typical CEO? I'm very glad we have a few CEOs in the room, which is great. So they can actually confirm what we're saying. What does the CEO think about? What does the CEO of Polycap think about when you think about the company? What are the top things you think about? They could have value creation and how do you create value, right? That's one of the questions. And typically it's about managing the cost somehow, right? Making sure you're not like spending too much and getting revenue into the company, which is a great way of, you know, of creating profit. Now, what if you as a marketer? What if you as an agency? What if you as a digital leader? What if you are not revenue? What do you then cost? And what do smart people do with cost? We do stuff, right? So you have no choice. It's really simple. You can either, you know, be a cost and hope people give you money or you can say, look, you know, I'm revenue and then you can prove your case. So how do you do this? Number one is do your numbers. Now, many markets say, oh, we can't do the numbers because it's so complicated, right? There's so many people involved. Well, tell you what, don't worry. Have you ever met a sales person who says, I've sold 5 million, but it wasn't really me because it was also engineering and marketing. No, they say I sold 5 million. So why in marketing don't you do the same and say, look, you know, we've calculated this together with finance, we made the numbers and it's a range of this and this, our new website will probably, you know, attract so and so many new people and they'll buy so much on average per year. So I think that's the impact we'll have. You can do numbers. There will be estimates. And if you're really, really not sure how to do it, you know, get in, get together with the devil and work with finance. Don't work against finance. Don't prove your numbers to finance. They're better at this. So get them involved and say, hey, can we do this together because we're adults who want to figure out how much value we're creating. And secondly, great words to use in the C-Suite is revenue, customers and profit is something everybody understands and something that will make you much more confident than any war balloon about programmatic and millennials. Okay, so how could you side with the revenue camp? Okay, more. Become your own influencer. This is quite important. The internet is really, really good. If you know something and you want to write a blog that 100,000 people read, you can. If you know something and you want to do a podcast that 100,000 people hear, you can. But the internet is also great if you don't know much, if you're wearing a funny cap and if you're really good with the camera. And then you call yourself an influencer. And there are many of them. And influencers normally exist because they have a business they want to promote and their job is to try for you to follow them. That's why they create content, many of them. The problem is there are a lot of influencers out there. If you really, really challenge what they're saying, if you really, really put some magnifying glass on and try to check it, you will really quickly see it's nonsense. And that's why I call these people bin influencers because the stuff they do should actually go straight into a bin. And here's the influencer problem. An influencer doesn't have time. So they have to churn out messages every two days. Every message has to be special and big and dramatic. So they make up stuff and they dress up stuff. Think about this. World's famous author Malcolm Gladwell, a really good researcher as well. He takes it a day or longer to write a single paragraph of his book. And then he edits it for many, many days before it's really good. A great researcher at a business school that, you know, they take a year to find one really, really interesting nugget. Influences don't, bin influencers don't have that time. They need to hook you fast. And the challenge is, therefore, that some of these things are nonsense. I'll give you some examples. How about this? It's all about brand engagement. It's all about brand engagement. And yet, every single day, you know, millions of people are queuing up for the privilege to be humiliated by crews of Spirit and Ryanair or all sorts of low cost places just to save some money. No, it's not about that. You know, people, here's the other thing. It's all about a great customer experience. Well, what are the fastest growing retail chains in many countries? Discounters. No service whatsoever. Because they give you a good deal. Someone recently wrote, another bin influencer, he said, in modern marketing, it's all about getting your customers to spend more time with your brand. Really? The biggest success in consumer goods marketing I've witnessed over the last couple of years is the Dollar Shave Club. You know what the Dollar Shave Club is? You basically, it's like a subscription for a shaver blade. You know what the promises of the Dollar Shave Club? You now need to spend less time with your shaver brand. It's not that simple. People don't spend time with brands. People spend time with things they care about. And sometimes commercial offers aren't topping that list. The point is, if a bin influencer on the back of a New York cap is telling you stuff, chatting into a microphone with a camera and it looks funny. And you're passing that chatter on. What you will become is a chatbot. And you know what we'll do with chatbots? We'll replace them with new chatbots once we have a better version. A chatbot is easy to replace and you shouldn't become a chatbot. So that's why, number one rule I really recommend is unfollow the bin influencers, unfollow the people who are basically just turning on stuff that looks funny. I don't wanna name names, I have a long list. But Mike, you're not. But how do you figure out and how do you figure out what a bin influencer is and whatnot? Well, the only way to do this is to by becoming your own influencer. And how do you become your own influencer? It's a very simple task. You gotta ask yourself, what are the truths? For your industry, what are the real truths? Why are people coming? Why are they coming again? Why are they buying more? Why are they reading more? What do they actually care about? What are competitors really doing? And this stuff exists, it's just not on YouTube, right? You have to find this, there's research, there's papers, there's documents, there's colleagues, there's customer research. And you have to have your own list of the own truths in your industry. And my list isn't complete and my list isn't your list. You gotta have your own list. You gotta find out what the right questions are. And once you know what the truths are, the real truths are for your industry. Then you spread the word and that will make you a true influencer. So how could you become your own influencer? Now, there are a lot of people left you haven't talked about. This was all about mobilizing up and getting your boss to listen to you. There's all these colleagues, remember, we have the colleagues, the people that don't report to us and that's so important. So what do we do with those guys? Now, it's really important that you find ways to mobilize your colleagues and let me explain to you why that is. Do you know what it is? What this is? Have you seen this? This is a dongle dangler. And the dongle dangler is a solution for a problem that should not exist. This is a MacBook, relatively new one and this is a new iPhone. I have both, exactly those. And at home I figured out that I can no longer connect my iPhone to my Mac. And the reason is that the Macintosh computer laptop department has changed all the socket to USB-C, right? While the iPhone department couldn't care less and didn't. So you now cannot connect them. And because to connect them we now need these dongles, right? These little adapters, we call them dongles, dongles. In fact, sometimes I felt that by doing this Apple has screwed up so much they probably need a new logo, right? Because we all carry these dongles now, right? And because people like me are losing these dongles someone has come up with the dongle dangler. So you can take a dongle and connect it to your keychain and you won't lose it anymore. The problem is every dongle dangler in this world is one to many and it has to do whether people are able to communicate with colleagues so we don't create dongle dangler situations in the market for our customers where they have to figure out how they deal with the stuff that we're creating, right? We gotta get rid of this. So you gotta find ways to mobilize your colleagues. The most powerful way is you gotta walk the hall. As a digital leader at the market you are in a business of change. And change is a contact sport. You cannot do change by email if you can't. You have to get out there and talk to your colleagues. The problem is if you go home and say, you know what, I was a tech munch and I met these wonderful people they have this great piece of software. You know what we wanna do? We wanna install it. And then we're gonna delete your software because ours is this new one is much better. We're changing the way we work. We need a little bit more budget for this and then we have a new way of approach and then we need to meet and we need an agile team by the way to make all of that happen. And you walk into the silo next door and you tell that story, right? You're really excited and the moment you leave the room, right? A lot of your colleagues will hope you'll get sucked into a big black hole because they don't care. It's not their agenda. So you need to find a way to actually mobilize people. This is Ed Smith. Ed Smith is one of the most successful chief marketing offices in recent years. And Ed has achieved the unthinkable and the typical digital project that he did and it's the unthinkable. He installed a paywall in front of Australia's largest business magazine. It's creatively called The Australian. And now what do journalists say if you wanna install a paywall? Exactly, get lost. They hate you. They don't wanna paywall. They want their stuff to be read. So this was really challenging. So Ed did something extremely smart. He went out there and told a story. He didn't say we need a paywall. He said, let's save quality journalism. Wow, that's powerful. Hugely powerful story that really got people's attention. In fact, he wasn't the only one. This is Jim Farley. He was former CEO of Ford. And he had a story when Ford was bankrupt, was basically bankrupt. He didn't say we need to do more marketing. We need a programmatic campaign. He said, you know what? The reason my parents bought a Ford was that they were proud of the Ford Oval. And we need to bring that pride back to people so they come again. Those are powerful stories. And for every change project you have, for every project you're working on, think about it. What is the real story you wanna tell? Notice what the project is about. What is the, why is it hopeful? In fact, as a leader, you are a dealer in hope. And Napoleon, when he said this was right, your job is to give hope. And I tell you what, there are a lot of people in your company, when they hear you talk about digital marketing, they're freaking out because they don't understand it. They just won't tell you. You gotta give hope. But then, Ed did something extremely smart as well. He told a story that he shut up and he listened. And he said, you know what? Let me tell you, let me hear your concern. He talked a long list of concerns. He didn't promise anything. And then they made a decision. And then he did the most important thing that we have to do then. Do not open the champagne bottles quite yet. But go back to people and explain. And he explained, you know, here's what we've decided. Here's what you've told me. Here's what we've taken on board. Here's what we have not taken on board. Listen, decide, communicate. Huge importance. And you know what? He didn't make everybody happy. But he earned the most important currency. You can earn as a chain cheater. And that is respect. So how can you walk the horse? By the way, if this is interesting, I'd love to have you. There's a blog called Try This Blog. There's one of these ideas every one or two weeks, not more, it's really short. And I don't have a consultancy. So it's completely safe to do this. I don't have a product I can send you. I can send you any offers. It's basically a blog about change. You're most welcome to have you. Try this blog. I'd love to have you there. So I got one more. Show the fire in your eyes. Think about it. You have a job where everybody can say no. Your boss can say no. Your clients can say no. Your team can say no. In fact, your agency can say no. Everybody can say no. You have no power. The biggest power you're there for half is your ability to inspire people. To show the fire in your eyes. How do you inspire people? What's the trick? So in 2019, everything is called inspire. I mean, you have inspire coffee and inspire pudding and everything is inspire. So how do you do it? What's the trick? Well, it's very simple. If you wanna inspire people, you have to be inspired first about something and then simply show this a lot. That's roughly how it works. And if you don't know what inspires you, that inspires other people, here's the trick. Give 10 people, you know, a blank sheet of paper and ask him, can you write down in confidence how I have inspired you in the past? And get a friend to collect the paper so it's confidential. You don't wanna see who's written what. And then when you look at all of these things, you will be amazed how everybody in this room already today is inspiring other people. Inspiring because you're funny, inspiring because you're serious, inspiring because you're thoughtful, inspiring because you're great. Listen, there's so many ways of doing this. And once you know what that is, bring it out. How to run is not good enough. You need to find ways to remove the barrier. And the same is true for your job. If you have a good idea for what you wanna do, if you know marketing, if you know digital and you really know what it is that you're trying to do, knowing your technical skills is not good enough. You need to find ways to remove the barriers to change and make your stuff happen. And you know what, when I look around here and I spoke to some of you this morning, I saw who's here from who in terms of the company. It's the who and who of marketing. And I'm pretty sure that the people here in the room, that you in the room here can actually change what customers in your country and your industry are experiencing. You can up the game. But there is one condition. You have to know what you wanna do. But once you know, you gotta be ready to take your job description, to tear it apart, to throw it away, and to do what's right. Because as George Adele said, everything you ever wanted is on the other side of fear. Thank you. Have a great conference. Thank you very much. So it's been a brilliant start to this fantastic morning and we have a token of appreciation. May I request founder and CEO Ventus Avenue's Ms. Nilo Ferdun to kindly come on the stage and give Ms. Bard a token of appreciation. Thank you.