Barnaby Dawe: leader of year?

A sneak peek at who's in the running to be Marketing Leader of The Year 2017 - we interview Barnaby Dawe, Chief Marketing Officer, Just Eat 

 

What advice would you offer other marketers wanting to be at the bleeding edge of technology?  

There’s a saying that as a marketer you should make friends with finance and marry technology.  Finance, because you need to ensure you have an adequate marketing budget and technology because we become more dependent on tech and product to do our jobs properly.  So building a trusting relationship with the tech team is key and, even though you won’t know all the answers, you should make sure you know the right questions to ask and have an insatiable curiosity for all things new.

 

What does bold marketing leadership look like?

Being decisive, engendering trust and instilling bravery in the marketing team – encouraging them to listen to the data but sometimes being prepared to go out on a limb and go with their gut.  Some of my best work has been realised through sticking my neck out. 

 

What’s the bravest thing you’ve ever done at work?

Standing up to a bully of a boss when I was given an unnecessary and public dressing-down.  Everyone thought I was going to be fired but I wasn’t and they never bullied me again.

 

What’s the hardest part of your job?

We operate in 13 countries and it’s hard giving enough time to all of them especially as they’re all growing so fast.  I’m lucky to have a really supportive central team who help ensure we drive best practice rapidly to all markets.  But I’d love to spend more time with the teams in our international markets.

 

What advice would you give others earlier in their career looking to become successful marketing leaders?

My top three pieces of advice are:

1) Whatever you’re working on, big or small, always stop and ask yourself the question: how can I make this bigger and better? 

2) Understand what pressure your boss is under and work out how you can support them.  It’s amazing what tiny things you can do to alleviate their stress, no matter how junior you are.

3) Don’t be political.  Build trusting relationships and be open and honest with all your stakeholders, junior and senior alike.   

 

What’s the biggest challenge facing you in the year ahead?

Ensuring that our new vision, purpose and values continue to be brought to life throughout our organisation and don’t just become words on a page or images on a wall.  Having a strong brand in a fast-growing category is key to our success. 

 

Looking to the future, what will the marketing department look like in five years’ time? 

Some things will remain as important as they are today:  providing strong leadership, ensuring your brand remains relevant to your customer base, being at the cutting edge of technological innovation and engaging with today’s customers to help shape the messaging for your customers of tomorrow.  What will continue to change is the dominance of technology and data in the CMO’s decision-making.  At Just Eat we have created a global growth team which was borne out of the technology department but reports into me.  They ensure that we create a balanced eco-system where technology drives our understanding of customers’ behaviour when they are with us, and helps shape messaging to bring them back to us when they’re not.  We will see a lot more product managers and data scientists being integral to the marketing team in the next five years.  

 

Marketing Leader of Year 2017: voting now closed
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