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Fuelling the fires of innovation

Pitch Consultants

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December 9, 2015 | 5 min read

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As a specialist recruiter in the marketing and digital space Pitch is fortunate to have an interesting window in to the talent market and how agency teams are structured.

Working with an array of brands and agencies gives us real insight into how teams and roles are evolving and the impact innovation and technology is having.

Over the past few years this has impacted every facet of organisations from job titles to traditional role profiles, marketing departments and culture.

Our experience is that Digital is fuelling an ever growing array of new job roles. Nearly half the roles we now recruit for didn’t exist five years ago and this is continuing to evolve.

For the marketer (regardless of discipline), technology has been the single biggest disrupter on role profiles and responsibilities over the past few years.

It’s not just the technology itself, but its influence on customer behavior; consumers are now more demanding than ever and want problems solved in real-time, which builds added pressure & requirements on marketing teams. As a recruiter we see examples of this daily.

So, perhaps a question many agency leaders are asking is should we all forget about traditional marketing skills and throw ourselves headfirst in to all things digital?

There’s no question that developing a good understanding of the digital landscape should be a pre-requisite, however, while we obsess over fixing the digital skills gap, there’s a risk that young marketers don’t know enough about traditional marketing.

The point being innovation doesn’t override the fundamentals of the marketing skill set.

Conversations with clients clearly show that we’re now in the age of the hybrid marketer. What we see in job specs every day is that marketers (and creatives) can no longer be one dimensional - DM, email, advertising, PR etc…

Today marketers must understand and embrace the different tools. This has led in recent years to the concept of ‘T-shaped’ people: those who are specialist in one area, who think broad and collaborate with other teams/departments.

The best people are constantly looking to upskill and are always looking to challenge their own thinking.

So, what effect is this having on agency teams?

What we’ve seen over the past few years is a huge shift in the make up of marketing teams.

First the crash came; teams tightened, budgets decreased and more had to be done, with less.

At the same time, the world of digital innovation has been accelerating and has arguably had more impact on teams than individual role profiles.

When we’re talking to marketing directors about how their teams have evolved, what’s immediately apparent is the influx of more technical, analytical and data oriented roles.

So the challenge the modern-day marketing department faces is how to combine the creative, right brain aspects of marketing, with the technical, left brain side of data, analytics and technology.

Digital has created an “always on” world, which means marketing teams must now be faster and more agile to capitalise on opportunities and threats.

Employers are looking for that same mindset. Not working 24-7, but having that curiosity and awareness to spot opportunities, or neutralisethreats in real time.

Inevitably, just as digital has had a huge impact on marketing jobs and teams, it also directly impacts culture and your ability to hire & retain the best people.

Digital hasn’t so much driven culture, but it has created more ways in which culture can be impacted. The single biggest impact is the shift in ownership of culture; employees now own culture, not the employer. Social allows any negative or positive feelings towards culture to be quickly amplified and we frequently see the direct impact of this.

Brands have had to adapt as a result of this. If you look at some of the biggest global tech brands, they’ve been redefining what culture means and why it’s so important in a talent scarce market.

Culture is aligned to purpose, which directly impacts performance, both at an individual and organisational level.

Culture tends to be based on a set of values that define a business and what a lot of start up tech brands have realised, is that values are far more than a set of buzzwords in reception.

A well defined culture allows future star hires to quickly and easily buy in to vision and culture.

And where salary and rewards fit in to culture is another interesting area.

The findings of our most recent salary and market survey show that the biggest motivator for switching jobs is training/development & progression, not just a pay rise.

Brands need to be awake to this and build it in to their culture.

Ollie Purdom, Director, Pitch Consultants

Tel: Pitch Midlands 0121 270 4080, Pitch North 0161 870 6074

Email: info@pitchconsultants.co.uk

Web: www.pitchconsultants.co.uk

Twitter: @pitch_talk

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Pitch Consultants

Hello, we're Pitch: specialist recruiters within all areas of the marketing, PR and creative industries and organisers of @B_Hive

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