
Time For A Reset Marketing Podcast: Insights from Global Brand Marketers · 2026-08-26 · 35 min
Key moments - from our scoring
Substance score
58 / 100
Five dimensions, 20 points each
Jennifer Warren brings her experience as a three-time CMO to a crucial conversation about reunifying fragmented marketing organizations. Indeed, the world's largest job site, faces unique challenges in balancing brand-building with performance metrics in a data-driven environment. Warren advocates for viewing growth as the single outcome all marketing disciplines should drive together, not treating brand and performance as separate departments competing for budget. She reveals a pivotal moment when Indeed's CFO challenged her to connect brand metrics to revenue, leading her to implement media mix modeling, incremental experimentation, and triangulated analytics - fundamentally changing how she approaches brand investment justification. The discussion extends to AI's role in amplification rather than replacement, drawing on a concrete example of how generative AI enabled a full-scale German campaign featuring medieval castles and thousands of extras within budget by handling backgrounds while humans managed acting. Warren emphasizes that breakthrough creative emerges from deep problem-solving, customer empathy, and the ability to feel emotional resonance - capabilities AI enhances but doesn't replace. She addresses the organizational challenges of protecting innovation budgets and fostering psychological safety around failure in matrix organizations.
Implement a brand science function using media mix modeling, incremental experimentation, and triangulated analytics to connect brand metrics directly to revenue impact, as Warren did at a previous role after being challenged by her CFO on the business value of brand consideration gains.
Reframe both as integrated components of a single growth outcome rather than separate departments, ensuring decision-making centers on customer journey and business impact rather than disciplinary expertise.
Use generative AI to handle production elements like backgrounds, animation, and data triangulation while reserving human expertise for big-idea development, emotional resonance assessment, and strategic problem-solving - as Indeed did with its Germany campaign featuring AI-generated medieval castle backgrounds.
She evaluates whether the idea solves a clearly-defined customer problem, aligns with brand positioning, connects all relevant dots, and makes her feel something emotionally - then validates with both quantitative testing and qualitative feedback before refinement.
Build structural budget protection explicitly for experimentation and innovation rather than allowing high-performing campaigns to cannibalize it, and foster culture where failures are celebrated as learning opportunities to be shared broadly.
Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.
The episode contains some genuinely useful frameworks (brand-performance integration, media mix modeling, testing methodology, delegation structures) but is hampered by significant padding, repetition, and throat-clearing. Key insights like 'stop treating growth as a department' and the CFO challenge moment are valuable, but much of the runtime is spent on obvious advice (curiosity matters, collaboration is important, test ideas) or rehashing the same theme (brand and performance should work together) across multiple questions.
I would stop treating growth as a department and really thinking of it as the outcome that all of marketing is driving
our CFO at the time said, well, Jennifer, what does a few points in brand consideration mean to our bottom line, how did that really drive revenue? And it really changed the way.
The core argument - that brand and performance marketing should be integrated rather than siloed - is a well-established thesis in 2024. The guest does not present contrarian or first-principles thinking; instead, she reiterates industry consensus with personal anecdotes. The AI discussion touches on well-worn ground (AI as amplifier, not replacement). There is minimal fresh perspective or surprising reframing of established marketing doctrine.
I think it leads to less impact overall because it's exactly what you said. I think it leads to decision making where you think that the things that are easier to measure must be the most valuable
you have to understand what's going on in culture. You have to understand what problem your business solves in the world
Jennifer Warren is a credible B2B operator with genuine scale: Global VP of Brand at Indeed, a Fortune 500-scale company; three-time CMO; Adweek AI Trailblazer recognition. She has measurable experience shipping campaigns, managing 100+ people globally, and navigating C-suite politics. However, she is primarily a practitioner sharing lessons learned rather than someone with exceptional strategic depth or unique insight that distinguishes her from other senior brand leaders at large tech companies.
I lead our brand marketing and experience team at uh, Indeed. And as you mentioned, we are the world's largest job site and we are global
I lead six teams, over a hundred people, global team
The episode includes some concrete examples (Super Bowl campaign, CFO challenge, Germany castle campaign with AI-generated backgrounds, Indeed's 'Jobs Need People' campaign) and data references (hiring lab research showing marketing will be impacted by AI, 31 seconds statistic). However, most claims lack specifics: no actual metrics on the Super Bowl campaign's impact, no hard numbers on the brand science function's ROI improvements, vague mentions of 'recent data' without figures, and limited quantification of business outcomes. Many points remain at the abstraction level of 'we test everything' without revealing sample sizes, lift figures, or decision frameworks.
every 31 seconds we actually help somebody get hired
it was about showing how despite all of your barriers and how hard it is to get a job, you know, indeed can make it a little bit easier by helping you get seen and connect. And so the concepts came in and it was like there were medieval castles involved and hundreds and hundreds of extras
The host (Speaker C) asks competent, relevant questions that build on the guest's answers and occasionally probe deeper. There are some good follow-ups (e.g., on failure tolerance, on hiring priorities, on delegation challenges). However, the interview rarely pushes back, challenge, or disagree with the guest. When the guest makes broad claims (e.g., 'creativity should make you feel something'), the host accepts and affirms rather than interrogate. The conversation meanders and repeats themes; the host sometimes pivots rather than drilling down. There's minimal evidence of host preparation or willingness to introduce tension or alternative perspectives.
How do you think about that? This is a really hot topic for most marketers at the moment is figuring out what is the right use of AI with human in the loop to stop that feeling very automatronic
Having a good testing framework to be able to go, okay, we'll do a couple of variations and then we'll test and we'll see which one outputs. Is that how you are handling that type of situation
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
In this episode of Time for a Reset, host Fiona Davis speaks with Jennifer Warren, Global VP of Brand Marketing and Experience at Indeed, to challenge one of marketing’s most persistent divides: brand versus performance. Now, we all know and love Indeed! Jennifer argues that growth is not a separate marketing discipline. It is the outcome driven by brand, performance, PR, and communications working in tandem. She explains how separating these functions can create budget battles, fragment the customer journey, and ultimately limit business impact. The conversation explores how CMOs can make brand investment more accountable by applying brand science, media mix modeling, and incremental testing to connect creative activity with revenue. Jennifer shares why rigorous measurement can shift conversations with stakeholders from subjective opinions about whether creative is “good” to evidence of what it actually delivered. She also discusses how generative AI can act as a creativity amplifier by helping teams bring ambitious ideas to life while keeping human judgment, insight, and storytelling at the core of messaging.
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
Speaker A: I would stop treating growth as a department and really thinking of it as the outcome that all of marketing is driving. Because that is the truth. Right? We are all there. No matter if you're in brand or in growth marketing, PR comms, we're all there to drive growth for the company.
Speaker B: Welcome to Time for Reset, the marketing podcast that gets behind the thinking of the industry's sharpest leaders shaping the world's most iconic brands. We ask the big questions, what does it take to drive real change? How do you stay ahead when the rules keep evolving? From shifting consumer expectations to marketing seat in the boardroom, every episode dives into what's working, what's not and what's next. Expect smart conversations, real world insights, and a bold perspective on modern marketing leadership. Let's hit Reset and turn strategy into action. Now into the conversation.
Speaker C: Welcome back to Time for a Reset. I'm your host Fiona for the day and um, please welcome. We are very excited to have on Jennifer Warren from Indeed one of the largest job sites in the world. I believe Jennifer, you can tell us a little bit more about that. She's the global vice president of brand marketing experience and indeed, welcome to the show, Jennifer. It's great to have you on.
Speaker A: Thank you for having me. I was looking forward to the conversation today.
Speaker C: So, Jennifer Best, by way background, you have quite the broad background and our listeners will be very interested to hear some of your examples as we go through. Because you started in ages and then have obviously worked brand side, you are three time cmo, you've been through all of the things I think in the
Speaker A: marketing space, it's a good way to put it. All the things you've been working at,
Speaker C: that sort of intersection of creativity and business impact for a long time. And I think what I would do is actually get you to talk a little bit about what you're doing and indeed to bench the conversation there. But also, uh, listeners be aware that obviously Genev has a quite broad background. She's been part of CMOS Club Top cmos for creativity. She's had some pretty trailblazing campaigns that we're going to probably touch on as we go through the interview today. So I'll start with you.
Speaker A: You want to just give us a
Speaker C: bit of background on your job today at Indeed.
Speaker A: Of course, thanks for asking. I lead our brand marketing and experience team at uh, Indeed. And as you mentioned, we are the world's largest job site and we are global. And so the way I think about my job is really helping us connect as many job seekers as possible to the best job possible on a daily basis. I think it's every 31 seconds we actually help somebody get hired. So it's a pretty massive opportunity. I love my job and being able to help people understand that we are able to help them get seen for what they have to offer and really connect with the right job. And so I don't know. I think it's a really fun job. When I think about the brands that I like to work for, it's those that actually are doing something really interesting and important in the world. And so that's what attracted me to the opportunity.
Speaker C: Doesn't get much more personal to people than. So sort of like you're right in the sweet spot of people. The human component of that is incredibly important. It's an interesting space to be as a marketer. Right. So I was going to start by asking you, as we do all of our guests on the podcast, what would you hit reset on in the marketing industry if you have the big red button to push today?
Speaker A: Well, thank you for asking. I would stop treating growth as a department and really thinking of it as the outcome that all of marketing is driving. Because that is the truth. Right. We are all there, no matter if you're in brand or in growth marketing, PR comms, we are all there to drive growth for the company. So I just think it's done as a disservice as an industry to separate the two and name one growth. So that is what if I could wave a magic wand, I would reverse that decision.
Speaker C: It's a really interesting time to be talking about that, actually. We're starting to hear more and more people in the industry talk about that because there has been a bit of a history of over indexing on performance marketing because it's easy to measure or easier to measure. So people tend to put money where they can show their CFO it's working. What do you think the industry's lost as a result of that swing towards performance marketing and the separation actually of their two separate disciplines that shouldn't be working in tandem.
Speaker A: Yeah, I think it leads to less impact overall because it's exactly what you said. I think it leads to decision making where you think that the things that are easier to measure must be the most valuable. And I don't think that's always the case. I think when you think about it from that perspective, demand has a ceiling. And so you have to always be also thinking about your future demand. And that's why it has to be a system. You have to Be thinking about your future customers that you want to bring in. You have to make sure you're staying top of mind and then the demand should be capturing it. So if we're not thinking of it as a total system and how we're driving growth both short term and long term, I think there's impact loss to the business. And then I think it also just creates unnecessary conflict internally when you're feeling like you're having to compete for budgets or if you're not in performance marketing, you feel like you are constantly trying to explain in the terms of performance marketing what you do. And it just makes it to me unnecessarily hard to think about it as two separate things.
Speaker C: Absolutely. And it's also quite interesting that in that discussion of trying to separate it, uh, everyone loses the concept of you still have to have a relationship with the customer and so you can't always be selling the customer 247 if you're trying to build a long term relationship with them. So there's a time and a place for performance marketing and there's a time and a place for brand engagement type thing.
Speaker A: Yeah. And just to build on what you just said, the other thing that we lose as an industry is thinking about it that way and departments is not how the customer is experiencing it. Right. And so it just loses sight of the customer and the journey and like how should you be engaging with them at every step? And I think that's a really important point is it should always center around the customer and the problem that you're trying to solve versus the discipline.
Speaker C: You've worked on some pretty iconic brand campaigns in your time and you spent your career proving out that the creativity can drive measurable business outcomes. How do you think marketing leaders should be reframing that conversation so that brand and performance performance aren't competing for dollars and it's more seen as an integrated program?
Speaker A: Right. Yeah, that's a great question and one that, uh, I would say has been a really important learning and lesson for me at. Indeed. And I was just thinking back as you're asking that question on one of the probably most pivotal moments for me in my career where I was in a board meeting and I was presenting the results from a great campaign we had done. And I think it was around the super bowl and it was very well received, grew our brand consideration, we of course had won awards, we saw traffic to the side and I'm talking about all of this. And our CFO at the time said, well, Jennifer, what does a few points in brand consideration mean to our bottom line, how did that really drive revenue? And it really changed the way. As uncomfortable of a moment as that was for me personally, thinking about it still kind of makes me queasy. It really challenged me and I thought if I'm going to invest money on our behalf like that, I have to really be able to explain what it did to our revenue. And we started as a result of that question a ah, brand science function, or I started a brand science function that really focused on how do we connect what we're seeing from a brand metric perspective and the impact from the creative to revenue for the business. And so we implemented media mix modeling, incremental experimentation and like triangulating everything. And I think it's required. I think we can't expect people to want to invest if we can't explain what it's doing for the business. And that was a kind of a lesson.
Speaker C: I learned a bit of an aha moment of oh yes, that would be important. I was going to ask you a follow up there on are there any other points in your career similar to that where you've thought I started out thinking this was the thing and um, that you've changed your mind on dramatically throughout the course of your career?
Speaker A: Yeah, I think that would be a big one. Is that brand isn't measurable from a business impact perspective. That would be a big one. We've all said early in our careers, you know, and kind of gotten upset that people expect us to be able to measure brand in the same way. So that'd be a big one. I think another one would be as you grow in your career, realizing that half of your job is one educating on why it's important to go, for example, in my world, build a brand or in marketing because you have to bring everybody along with you. One of the things that I think a lot about and talk a lot about is that brand does not live within my team. It is a discipline, meaning there's expertise. Sure, when it comes to how you're positioning and talking about your brand. But brand is everything we do. It's how we show up from a, uh, customer service perspective. It's our product first and foremost. How are people experiencing it? So I think going from early in your career thinking, oh, I'm responsible for building our brand was something that I thought to really understanding and knowing and championing that in order to build your brand, every single person in the company has to feel it, understand it and deliver on it because it's a whole system as well, yeah.
Speaker C: And also know where they fit into that brand commerce. It was so interesting. You say that one of the podcast guests we had on in Cannes was talking about from a QSR perspective, we can do the most iconic campaigns with the biggest stars and all of the things, but what it comes down to is when someone comes into your store and they buy something, like they buy a burger and it's cold, what's the thing they're going to remember? It isn't your iconic campaign. It's the bad service they got when they came into the franchise. So it's not just one thing, it's the entire customer experience that you're thinking about. And like you said, brand awareness and brand favorability isn't just on what marketing is doing. It's on the whole organization.
Speaker A: And it's so important. It's so important. And it's also taught me as a leader, I have to spend just as much time, if not more working cross functionally across the enterprise versus early in my career, I just spent the majority of my time with my own team. And, um. So it's all connected, right?
Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. We touched on this earlier. Indeed's mission is incredibly personal for people and incredibly human. Basically putting people in jobs, one of the most important functions you can operate in for an individual. But you're also recognized as one of the Adweek's AI trailblazers at the moment. Right. So how do you think about that? This is a really hot topic for most marketers at the moment is figuring out what is the right use of AI with human in the loop to stop that feeling very automatronic and make it still feel like you're talking to a person, but using the technology in a smart way to enable your business. So how are you thinking about the relationship between AI and human creativity? And do you see AI as a genuine competitive advantage for your business today? And where do you think other marketers should be thinking about or like careful in their use of AI to keep the human element front of mind?
Speaker A: Yeah, great questions. First of all, the AI trailblazer, I guess as a marketer and as a leader, I am always focused on the human elements and the insights and the instincts and creativity. So I think the fact that I ended up, ah, being the person to raise my hand and say I want to lead AI transformation across marketing might have been a surprise to people. So I wanted to talk a little bit more about where that came from. You know, we at Indeed have a economist team, the hiring lab. And I had seen that our Research showing that marketing was going to be one of the disciplines that was going to be the most impacted by generative AI. And so part of it at first was driven by trying to understand that more as well as just wanting to make sure we all stayed relevant in our careers and we could stay competitive. So I sort of leaned into it from that perspective and it's true. At first I remember talking about it and you could just see like fear. And I think we've really gotten somewhat past that and now people are starting to understand the benefits and seeing it as an opportunity to honestly add to the creativity. And I know everybody talks about the efficiency that it creates and it's true, it does. And we are using it in ways to create efficiencies. But I think one of the examples I want to share where it actually has amplified creativity using it. We recently launched a new campaign in Germany and it was about showing how despite all of your barriers and how hard it is to get a job, you know, indeed can make it a little bit easier by helping you get seen and connect. And so the concepts came in and it was like there were medieval castles involved and hundreds and hundreds of extras or people in the background fighting and things like that. And so we're like, we can't afford that in Germany. And the team really looked at, is there a solution to this where we can use AI to create the backgrounds and the animation and then use humans for the acting part? Of course, because we didn't want to use AI for that. And so anyway, we were able to do this amazing, amazing campaign and production within our budget using gen AI. But it was our teams and the agency that came up with the big ideas and the concepts. But it truly helped us be able to bring it to life. We would have never been able to do that before. So I guess I look at it as it truly can be a tool that also amplifies your creativity, not just driving efficiency. You just have to really, I think, be open to that. There's always, in my opinion, going to be a need for the empathy, the insight, the human's ability to feel what creative looks and feels like and make those calls. And I think those that can see how they can also take that and use AI to produce something that they might not have been able to or use it to challenge their thinking, see something they might not have seen. I mean, for me, that is how I think about and use it.
Speaker C: Well, it's also predictive analytics, like the now the predictive analytics capabilities that would have been really Tough even a couple of years ago now is it's real. You can use synthetic data for, uh, testing and innovation to go well, we think this might be true. Let's give it a try and see how we go. It touched on something there as well. I agree with you in that a lot of what we see is people talking about efficiencies rather than what does that efficiency enable you to do. Because the end goal is actually speed. Because if you can react in real time with all of the data signals that you have and you've got an easy way to be able to make a decision and move, that's the real thing that AI is enabling you to do that. It's just making it faster. Some of those mundane processes that you've been doing manually for years, being able to automate that stuff to allow people to step back and do the creative stuff, that's really why you want it in marketing.
Speaker A: I completely agree. And you just made m me think of another good use of it is I think to get to those big creative ideas, you have to spend a lot of time really understanding the problem you're trying to solve and triangulating data between the problem you're solving for your customers. What are the pain points, problems that you're solving obviously for the business and really go deep into understanding that. And we still have people doing research and strategists and I think that's important. But using it to help triangulate and again keep sharpening the insights and really understanding the problem, I think actually leads to better creative and better work. So I mean we're all on this journey together trying to really decide what do we think about it, is it going to take our jobs. But I tend to believe there is a role for it and way of it making actually the work better. Still, having the human in the jobs in our campaign right now is jobs need people. And I truly believe that jobs do need people. And so I think it's about just using it to amplify within the work that we do. Where can you use it to actually make things better? Better and then embracing that and building on top of it. That's the way I think about it.
Speaker C: How are you involved in the creative process today like you just talked about a little bit there, a great example of how you kind of evolved it with the agency. How do you know when the idea is truly a breakthrough?
Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great question. You know something I've also always in my career said, oh, it's really hard because creative, subjective, right and everybody has an opinion, everybody has an opinion about whether creative is good or not.
Speaker C: So.
Speaker A: So when I think about where I spend my time within the creative process, a lot of time it truly does start with making sure we all understand and agree on the problem that we're solving. I think sometimes there's a rush to get to the creative solution or the campaign without truly like spending enough time on it. And so I tend to get really involved in the upfront debrief or the problem that you're trying to solve, making sure we're all aligned on that. And then in terms of the creative idea, how you know, I think if you're clear on the problem, you know your customer, you know your brand, and you can connect dots. And then it's like I look at how does it make me feel? Did it make me feel something? Because I think great creative should make you feel something, whether you're wanting to cry or heartwarming or you're laughing. So I think if all of those things you can connect the dots between the problem m you're solving, the pain points, you know, your customers feeling, having an understanding and awareness of culture and where it fits in. And then you feel something. To me, that is how I personally look at something and usually feel pretty strongly about what something's going to work. And then of course we do testing and all of that to look at is our instinct and intuition. Is there any watch outs that we need to have? But I also like to look at research as something to help add or develop something further.
Speaker C: You touched on something really important there, I think, especially around the testing, because I'm sure you've had this in your career. We certainly see it with our clients where that, as you say, everyone's got an opinion. And sometimes you've reached that point in the creative process where you've got a bit of a stalemate, where you've got a couple of key stakeholders who are just not down for the idea.
Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker C: Having a good testing framework to be able to go, okay, we'll do a couple of variations and then we'll test and we'll see which one outputs. Is that how you are handling that type of situation where there's not a clear path and you can't quite get to the final idea. Do you use a testing framework to get to the right approach?
Speaker A: We actually test everything. Another lesson for me early on is not to make it a reactive thing because there's always going to be someone in the room who questions it, especially when you work At a large company like I do, that's very matrix. And when we invest a lot of money in building our brand and in marketing and so a lot of these big campaigns, I mean they could go to the board level. So I learned pretty early on to come to the table with my recommendation. My point of view based on first insight and a, uh, clear articulation of the problem, and then also having both quantitative and qualitative testing. At first I relied a lot on qualitative and I realized especially at a data driven company like, indeed, it was like, that's great that 50 people said this, but we need numbers. We do both. And then I think it's about again looking at if it's an idea you really believe in and your team and everybody really is filling it, it's how do we then take this and maybe improve upon it if we saw the numbers weren't as great as we thought they were going to be? And what can we take and learn from this? And sometimes it might be, you just haven't convinced me it's a great idea, but you haven't convinced me as a consumer that indeed can solve the problem. And so you might just need to add in a little bit more around that.
Speaker C: In that same vein. The appetite for innovation is different in different organizations, but everyone wants to innovate up until the point when a marketing campaign fails. And we have a lot of our senior CMOs will say failure is essential in marketing in the sense that if you don't know what doesn't work, how do you know what does work? And not every campaign you run is going to be raging success. It might be an okay campaign, but you learned something from it then. It was a valuable exercise to go through. Now, obviously you don't want to spend $2 million on the learning bit, but you might want to run like a smaller scale innovation to test out new ideas. How do you think about that in your role at the moment? And how much of a challenge has that been for you in your career to get the organizations you've worked for to invest in some level of innovation where you're kind of out over your skis, you're going to give it a try. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
Speaker A: I would say that indeed it's expected. We are expected, that we're always trying to innovate and find new ways of doing things and encouraged to share failures. And that is important. And it's hard, right? Because who likes to stand in front of room and say, I believed in this thing yes, yes. And sharing it broadly, like that's something that we all talk about is we need to tell everybody we felt this thing so that they don't go and try it and. Or they build on what we already learned. And so I would say one, it is about just how you build a culture where that is okay, and you're out there talking about it and it's hard to do, especially at first. And then what I find though, to be even harder than that is because I feel like we have the culture and it's an expectation making sure you're structured for it and you're protecting budget. It's really easy when you have something that's working. You want to put more money behind the thing that's working because you see the impact from it. And so I find it hard sometimes to protect like a budget because also if you don't know what it's going to be allocated to, it's easy to go. We'll just take a little bit from that budget. And so I think the more important thing might be just to like, make sure you have a structure and you're protecting a budget to do it.
Speaker C: Marketing is obviously moving at breakneck speed now, faster than it ever has with the way consumers are buying and the way they're interacting, the consumer behavior generally, how they're expecting you to react to them in real time. M, you've got new tech, new channels, increasing pressure to demonstrate ROI at every level. How do you as a leader create a culture where the teams do feel confident with the experimentation while still delivering a pretty ambitious business goal, set of business goal and agenda?
Speaker A: Again, I think for us it's both. I don't see one getting in the way of the other, but that's why I go back to having the structure set up for it, especially these days. As you were saying, if we just rest on our laurels and we're like, oh, we know this works. We're just going to keep doing it. We will get behind. And so to me, I don't think there's an issue with people like worrying about experimenting for that reason. But we also have a structure in place. Like when we share our plans, they're always a part of it. And here's what we're experimenting with. Here's a test that we're running, here's something that we're trying. Here's the budget we're spending. And so, I don't know, I guess for me it really has to be part of your process so that it is clear to Everybody that there's no issue with us, uh, spending a little money. And it might not go the way you think, because there's an expectation of that and it's been set aside for learning.
Speaker C: What do you look for when you're hiring marketers today? Like, obviously, the core foundations of marketing, in my opinion, haven't changed. What's changed is the capabilities and skills around that. With every new development, every new tech channel, et cetera, some of you've got to learn something new. What do you look for in a marketer now that you think is the most important thing when you're hiring into a team that is pushing on innovation?
Speaker A: This has been true my entire career, and it's amplified now. And that is curiosity and then fire in your belly. You've got to always be looking for what is next. And you can't wait for somebody to, like, tell you. Right. And problem solving. And so I would say that's been true my whole career. I've always, like, felt that way, but I think now it's even that much more important because a lot of times leaders are still figuring it out too. Things are coming at us so quickly. And so you need a team of people who are also leaning forward and bringing. I mean, I have people on my team that I can't wait to talk to because they're gonna teach me something new that they have just learned because they went off on their own. I'm like, wow, I didn't know you could do that.
Speaker C: Yeah, I think marketing's never been more of a team sport than now because it's not possible for you to be across absolutely everything that's coming at you all the time. So almost having a plan to have people focus in specific areas and bring that knowledge back to the team is like, that's where we see the most success for, uh, a lot of marketing teams is where it's like, full court press. Okay, I'm gonna be over here doing this. I'm over here doing. We're all going to get together and try and share knowledge, because honestly, the pace now is like nothing I've ever seen before.
Speaker A: It's a great point we have at indeed AI Innovation Awards. We've started across the whole company and then also in marketing and AI showcases. And it's for that reason we have structure around, like, learning AI, but where we found we were learning the most is people would just come and say, hey, I was messing around with cloud code. And I learned I could go and do this, I could produce some videos. So, yes, Having a structure in place where people can come and share is probably one of the quicker ways to learn. It is a team support.
Speaker C: Yeah. Also I was going to say we have the same thing ourselves of uh, trying to get adoption both for ourselves internally but also for our clients is stop talking about it, get your hands on it, because you're not going to actually get anywhere until you start experimenting and using in a real world scenario. Because that's when you get people really engaged with it. Right. That's when you get the true adoption.
Speaker A: That's right.
Speaker C: So I was going to ask you a more generalist question about if we're having this conversation three years from now, what do you hope will have changed in the industry? Not just for indeed, but just generally the marketing industry as a whole. And what gives you the most optimism about where marketing's headed next?
Speaker A: I hope, and I guess from my perspective, I mentioned the hiring lab data that did show and continues to show that our industry will change in terms of how we use our skills. And so in a few years time, what I hope to see is that we have moved past any fear that AI is going to take our jobs. We have learned how to use it in the right ways, that only amplifies what we do well and of course creates efficiencies, helping do things that maybe we don't want to do to really free us up and that it truly just makes what we do in marketing that much more impactful, that much more enjoyable. I believe it can happen. You know, you ask why I'm optimistic about it. I do think people who tend to gravitate towards marketing as a field is they are curious, they're problem solvers, they're creative, they're tenacious. And I spend a lot of time with marketing leaders talking about this topic and I feel like everybody is looking at how do I use it for good, to make things better. So I want to believe that as an industry we will get there and we'll be in a better place in a few years.
Speaker C: You're in such an interesting spot, Jennifer. Knowing what you know, you've got access to all kinds of analytics on job data right now. So this question is particularly poignant for you, is around the like, in your opinion, what are the most important attributes and skills of a senior marketer for tomorrow? Because you're seeing it in real time, how the job specs are changing, how the different skill sets are getting ranked and rated, and which candidates are popping in that scenario. What's your take on that?
Speaker A: It's Just some recent data that I've seen that is really interesting is how marketing is now also seen as a skill set across other departments like product, not just product marketing, but marketing skills within different departments and sales and client success. And so to me, I think that's kind of interesting. And it also shows that AI, I think, is leading to more of a blending of roles. And so I think one, from a senior marketer perspective, you really do have to be able to influence across the enterprise, collaborate, understand how things connect. And so I think you just have to be someone who's curious and willing to go and understand the entire enterprise, how it all works together and be able to connect dots in that way. I'm going back to kind of soft skills because I really believe that is what's important. You have to be able to connect the dots and collaborate.
Speaker C: I think being a good storyteller, because most marketers are good storytellers, and that's a skill that everybody needs in their job, right?
Speaker A: You are absolutely right. And that should be probably towards the top is the storytelling and ability to communicate. Because to your point, to get everybody on board, you've got to be able to communicate and influence and help people understand their role within, uh, a bigger marketing and brand building system.
Speaker C: I always find it fascinating. People talk about comms like it's its own separate department in market. That's the job.
Speaker A: Okay, I know, yes, everybody has to do it.
Speaker C: Now, being as experienced in marketing as you are, what would be the one piece of advice you would give to marketers who want to build brands that both create cultural impact but also are, uh, measurable? What's your advice to the marketers out there listening today?
Speaker A: You know, I probably have a thing going here, but I think we create a lot of false choices like brand and performance and the culture versus business impact. And I don't think about it that way. It really is to me, you have to understand what's going on in culture. You have to understand what problem your business solves in the world, and for that it creates impact. So I look at it as, you just have to connect the dots between all of those things.
Speaker C: Awesome. And then we always ask this at the end of a podcast recording to all of our guests, which is being vulnerable for a minute. What are the things you're still working on, um, yourself to be a better marketer? What are the areas you want to improve in?
Speaker A: I am working on what I'd mentioned earlier that I think is increasing in importance and that is working across the company and freeing Time up. It's really hard. I lead six teams, over a hundred people, global team. And it's so easy to spend all of your time with your team and even just within marketing. Right. And so I am working on how to make sure my team feels completely empowered to make a lot of the decisions without involving me. And freeing up at least 50% of my time to connect more with people outside of marketing. You know, product and sales and client success and finance. Because I think that's where I can create better impact for. Indeed. And even help my team by doing that. It's a balance every single week. I'm like, okay, where am I spending my time? But that is what I'm working on.
Speaker C: I was going to say you just touched on one of the biggest challenges I think of the modern marketing age is that's critical, like getting the decisioning point to the person who's doing the actual work. Because if you want to move at speed, if you haven't delegated the decision making to the person who's doing the work, then you can lose weeks in internal debate about whether or not you want to do something. Uh, I find that a fascinating space to be in now because what used to be like a 16 week planning cycle for media and the sign off process, et cetera, now people like, the moment is gone. If I'm waiting for 16 weeks, I can't wait that long. Someone has to make a decision now. Like, it's a really fascinating spot to be in. Right?
Speaker A: It is true. It is necessary now. It is necessary to basically get the
Speaker C: delegation right so that people can move quickly. Because I mean, the expectation now to respond to cultural moments literally within 24 to 48 hours, it's like, it's there. So it's uh, a challenge for all marketers, right. Being able to get to that right level of framework and operating model where people have got safety within a framework to make a call and make it quickly.
Speaker A: And I think that's what it comes down to is having that framework because you're right socially, big companies, right. Culturally, being able to act in the moment. Um, you see a trend on social, there's legal, there's all these different steps that we used to have to take and now you still do. But we spent more time figuring out the framework so that everybody knows like it's approved. As long as we don't violate any
Speaker C: of these, as long as pieces are true, you can do it.
Speaker A: Yeah. Then you can run with it. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker C: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. Jess, it's been a great chat and we loved having you on and thanks for giving us your time.
Speaker A: Thank you so much. I enjoyed it as well.
Speaker C: Thank you.
Speaker B: Thanks for listening to Time for a Reset. If you got something out of today's episode, share it with a colleague or drop us a review for more sharp thinking and practical tools to help you lead modern marketing. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time, hit the reset button and get change over the line.
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