The fearless pursuit of better

What could be better for a petrolhead with a job in marketing than spending a day at the McLaren Technology Centre and listening to their experts talk about their marketing experience and ideas?

Every aspect of the day was truly breathtaking, from the quintessentially modern - not to say space-age - state-of-the-art facility itself, to the million pound supercars casually scattered everywhere you looked. I knew from the starting line that this day would be hard to beat.

There were plenty of messages to take away from the day and reflect on.  

John Allert, McLaren’s Chief Marketing Officer, suggested: “we are at our best when we’re at our bravest”. This certainly resonated with me, since marketing is an industry where bravery and risk-taking is key to success but perhaps we take the conservative route too often. If we give freer rein to our innate instinct to use our imagination to progress, we will produce better and more inventive work. There may be failures but we can learn from them.

Designing and building high-tech supercars for track or road use requires highly organised teamwork, very evident at McLaren. It was instructive to hear how in Formula 1, half a percent makes the difference between 1^st place and 10^th.

The search for these tiny marginal gains has forced McLaren to work as effectively and efficiently as possible.

Critically, they have mastered the balance between keeping people in individual ‘silos’ and breaking down the boundaries between silos. “Our own ideas are limited to our own experience. The genesis of creativity comes from collaboration”. This is very true and particularly important for marketers. No-one can be expert at everything and this collaboration is something that I’ll be striving to implement at Dairy Crest.

After I digested the key messages from the day, I was given a tour of McLaren’s Technology Centre. As someone who loves cars, it was truly a day to remember. I witnessed a pit stop simulation, saw the wind tunnel where the cars are tested, toured the floor where the customer cars are manufactured and saw a whole host of historic and iconic McLaren racecars.

The day was a genuinely amazing and inspiring experience, and I’d like to think that I’d be back again soon. 

By Nicholas Beven, marketing executive, Dairy Crest