Ali Reed is a CEO on a mission. Less than a year after stepping up from her role as managing director at rival Essence to lead PHD, she’s not just focused on helping her business and her clients to navigate the pandemic. She’s consciously steering towards a different vision of what agencies like hers are for. 
“My mission is valued growth for all,” she says. “How can we meet the need for commercial growth in a way that grows the pie for everyone? How can we work with clients, partners and our people to drive valued growth where profit is just one outcome, not the end goal? I know that if I get that right, it not only generates brilliant campaigns for our clients, but also a motivating reason to come to work every day and bring your A-game.”
Marketing as the change management department
For Reed, the future for agencies can’t be built on squeezing more productivity out of people in order to perform a narrow role more profitably. Nor should that be the main application of the data that the digital transformation of marketing puts in their hands. The real opportunity is to use this moment to expand the scope of what agencies and their marketing clients can do.
“More than any other department in the organisation, marketing owns the data, predictions and market trend analysis – and the shift to digital has pushed it into the spotlight,” she says. “CMOs will consult with the rest of the business to define not just the direction of marketing, but the direction of product and service delivery. They can predict change, and they can use that to step further into the operations of the business as a whole and drive it forward. Agencies need to understand this shift to better support their clients.”
If marketing has more licence to grow the pie in this way, then it’s partly due to an increased appreciation of the value of marketing spend. Agencies like PHD have had to answer challenging questions when client budgets come under pressure – but their ability to answer those questions has been greater than ever.
Rising to the challenge of uncertainty
“There’s a requirement for faster thinking and to support that we’re witnessing far better uses of more sources of data than ever before,” says Reed. “Uncertainty is an excellent constraint. I doubt we’d have as many excellent sources of data if the world were more predictable.”
Those new data sources aren’t just enabling faster thinking – they’re also informing strategy, providing the clarity that true agility depends on, and ensuring buy-in from the rest of the business. “Budgets overall are under more scrutiny, as you’d expect,” says Reed. “We’re seeing a lot more work being done to unlock budget during the pre-brief stage, but that work is actually having a positive effect reiterating the value of marketing back to the business. One lasting impact from the pandemic seems to be the importance that finance directors now place on marketing and media spend – and the greater recognition of marketing’s value in the C-suite.”
A bigger view of inclusion
A more data-driven approach to business and marketing strategy expands the role of an agency. Just as crucial to Reed, though, is the impact that data can have on the execution of that role. This is particularly true of the need to deliver genuinely inclusive marketing campaigns.
“As an industry we can be myopic, running in one direction to be ‘inclusive’, but overlooking core sectors of society,” she says. “Better data can help to identify where our biases exist and deliver marketing practices that are as inclusive as possible. This goes beyond creative. We’re being asked to make sure our media plans are socially inclusive from a targeting POV, checking our algorithms are not optimising ROI towards one sector of society at the expense of another.”
In this, as in so many areas, Reed has a clear-eyed view of the need to use data purposefully, if it’s to unlock potential rather than obscure it. A wider view of audiences and possibilities has a big role to play in growing the pie for all.
For more insights from visionary Marketing Leaders check out LinkedIn’s CMO Corner.
