152: Amy Fuller of Accenture discusses resiliency, innovation, and adaptability

05/08/19 • 36 min

This week on “Marketing Today,” Alan talks with Amy Fuller, chief marketing and communications officer for Accenture. Fuller has built a career working on world-class brands like Kraft, IBM, Kimberly-Clark, Verizon, and Deloitte while working on both the agency and the client side. Before joining Accenture in 2017, she spent time in various leadership roles at Deloitte, MasterCard, Y&R, and Ogilvy & Mather, among others.

During the course of their discussion, Fuller breaks down the complexity and challenging scope of serving as the chief marketer for a company the size of Accenture while offering observations and thinking that can be applied to an organization of any size. And she discusses formative experiences — from spending time throughout her childhood on an off-the-grid river island between the U.S. and Canada and earning a liberal arts education at Bryn Mawr College to learning how to “thrive with scarcity” while working on the agency side and her experience with the Posse Foundation, which helps diverse groups of college students find academic success — that have influenced her thinking and career.

And Fuller offered her take on the future of marketing: “How you reach people, how you measure your efficacy in doing so, are technical,” says Fuller. “And they're very real and very important. But the human part is not going away. And, if anything, it is getting more important.” Fuller goes on to add, “The more technical we become, the more important the human element becomes. And I think that is the future of marketing — it is the marriage of both.”

Highlights from this week's “Marketing Today” podcast include:

“Lots of responsibility and no resources, which is the definition of how you learn.” How Fuller's first job helped prepare her for a career in marketing. (1:33)
Working with world-class brands is the thread woven through Fuller's career. (2:50)
Fuller: “Understanding what you're really trying to solve — not what you're being told to solve, necessarily, but boring into the true business problem — is the only way you can succeed in marketing. (4:45)
Fuller discusses the complexity and massive scope of her responsibilities at Accenture. (6:39)
Fuller: “What Accenture is extremely good at is doing the kind of analysis that builds business cases.” (13:52)
The why and how of taking a stand on causes in this polarizing time. (17:35)
Fuller on the articulation of the talent brand at Accenture. (20:17)
Simple advice for any new CMO: Ask questions and listen to the answers. (24:40)
Growing up, Fuller learned resiliency and innovation during summers spent on an off-the-grid island on the St. Lawrence River. (26:50)
What Fuller wishes she'd discovered earlier in her career: Asking for advice and coaching is a sign of strength — and a lot less stressful. (29:19)

Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/marketingtoday

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Highlights from this week's “Marketing Today” podcast include:

“Lots of responsibility and no resources, which is the definition of how you learn.” How Fuller's first job helped prepare her for a career in marketing. (1:33)
Working with world-class brands is the thread woven through Fuller's career. (2:50)
Fuller: “Understanding what you're really trying to solve — not what you're being told to solve, necessarily, but boring into the true business problem — is the only way you can succeed in marketing. (4:45)
Fuller discusses the complexity and massive scope of her responsibilities at Accenture. (6:39)
Fuller: “What Accenture is extremely good at is doing the kind of analysis that builds business cases.” (13:52)
The why and how of taking a stand on causes in this polarizing time. (17:35)
Fuller on the articulation of the talent brand at Accenture. (20:17)
Simple advice for any new CMO: Ask questions and listen to the answers. (24:40)
Growing up, Fuller learned resiliency and innovation during summers spent on an off-the-grid island on the St. Lawrence River. (26:50)
What Fuller wishes she'd discovered earlier in her career: Asking for advice and coaching is a sign of strength — and a lot less stressful. (29:19)

Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/marketingtoday

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Previous Episode

151: Ty Shay on performance storytelling and marketing jiujitsu

This week on the “Marketing Today,” podcast, Alan talks with Ty Shay, global chief marketing officer for Norton LifeLock, which was acquired by Symantec two years ago for $2.3 billion. Shay's career as a marketer began somewhat unconventionally. After earning a degree in accounting and serving a brief stint in investment banking, Shay returned to the classroom for a Stanford MBA. After cutting his marketing teeth at P&G, Shay subsequently served in chief marketing roles with SquareTrade and Hotwire before joining LifeLock. He also currently serves on the board of directors for the Ad Council.

During the course of their discussion, Shay explains his concept of marketing jiujitsu and why, sometimes, it's a good idea to “turn off” your marketing efforts. He also talks at length about performance storytelling — its key elements and how it can be successfully implemented — and the impact of losing his father at an early age.

Shay also offered his perspective on the future of marketing: “I think it's going to continue to be about accountability,” said Shay. “I think it's going to continue to be where if you don't really have first-party data and can't really own your data and your customers, I think you're going to be in trouble. So I think you'll continue to see that evolution of marketers. Really, I think, the successful marketers will have to be able to not choose between being a brand marketer or a performance marketer. I think you'll have to be a performance storyteller going forward.”

Highlights from this week's “Marketing Today” podcast include:

Ty Shay's unconventional path to a career in marketing. (1:23)
“Let's just turn the marketing off and see what happens.” — Shay explains the secrets of marketing jiujitsu. (5:21)
Is Ty Shay a marketing Jedi? (12:57)
“I thought the story they were telling was overly complex.” — Shay on how he utilized performance storytelling when he joined LifeLock. (18:17)
The three-step framework of performance storytelling. (22:20)
The two core competencies necessary for successful performance storytelling. (25:47)
Shay embraces a growth mindset. (37:44)
Just Do It: Shay admires Nike's work featuring Colin Kaepernick. And he thinks Southwest Airlines and Geico are two brands that “really know who they are.” (42:45)

Links to other resources mentioned:

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (Book Mentioned)

Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/marketingtoday

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Next Episode

153: Bill Macaitis on scaling brands like Slack, Zendesk, & Salesforce

This week on Marketing Today, Alan speaks with Bill Macaitis, a man that needs no introduction. He has been involved in 5 highly successful tech industry exists with companies such as IGN, Salesforce.com, Zendesk, and Slack. He now enjoys teaching tech founders how to grow and scale their business via sophisticated MarTech stacks and a customer-centric approach to marketing. Macaitis' mindset is that B2B marketers should be innovating the go-to-market strategy on the marketing side as much as they do on the product side.

Macaitis recognizes that many B2B companies feel the need to play it safe and take a very bland approach to branding, and this a great opportunity for those willing to take risks to stand out. He tells stories of how his teams at Zendesk and Slack disrupted conventional customer branding opportunities by making simple things such as logos, loading messages and release notes fun and whimsical.

According to Macaitis, “Your brand is the sum of all the little experiences that someone has with your company. Optimizing around each of these experiences, coming up with the right metric, and pivoting” are what leads to a successful recommendation of your product/service.

Highlights from this Marketing Today conversation include:

Macaitis' first startup experience in the B2C space was a great lesson in bootstrapping (1:40)
Macaitis brought a Consumer DNA to Salesforce.com (3:20)
Macaitis' team disrupted the basic pricing and packaging model at Slack (5:40)
Macaitis encourages B2B companies to take risks to develop an emotional connection with their users (9:30)
“Everyone does the basics...I like going a few steps further:” Macaitis on using more sophisticated marketing tech stacks (predictive lead scoring, multi-touch attribution, multivariate testing, net promoter score (NPS), etc.) (11:56)
Macaitis discusses tips for improving multi-touch attribution models (15:15)
It's a really fun debate: Macatais on brand marketing vs performance marketing (17:42)
Macaitis on how the B2B space needs more Customer Centricity (22:34)
Macatis tells us what he loves about helping companies grow (25:15)
Macaitis discusses qualities he looks for in a Founder (26:35)
“Be opportunistic:” Macaitis gives sound advice from his career (29:39)
Macaitis says the focus should be on lifetime revenue and customer centricity ([34:30])

Other Resources: