I met a client for a coffee recently for a bit of catch-up between projects. And she had a surprising bit of feedback for me. Once our coffees had arrived and we’d exchanged small talk, she told me I was unlike any other marketing person they’d ever worked with.
Initially, I wasn’t sure how to take this. “Do you mean in a good way?” I asked. She explained that in the project we’d been working on, she and her colleagues had been impressed and surprised by the way I’d approached the brief, setting a strategy but also acting much more like a facilitator to boost collaboration across teams compared to other marketers and agencies she’d worked with previously.
Strategy and project management through facilitation
On reflection, this was a brilliant piece of feedback that sums up my approach and practice.
My learnings from running integrated campaigns in the arts and heritage sector, then leading national awareness weeks for three years in a row at Parkinson’s UK, meant I expanded my skills from traditional campaign management to broader project management, picking up agile methods to form a collaborative approach.
Awareness weeks were a big, yearly event for the charity, and it covered a central awareness campaign, as well as coming up with ways for everyone across the charity to get involved — local support groups, volunteers, fundraisers, the policy and research teams, staff and anyone who was connected to the charity and felt part of the Parkinson’s community.
It taught me a lot about the power of setting, tending to people’s needs, and facilitating ways to get involved while having a clear, defined campaign aim and narrative. It was definitely trial by fire — I made many mistakes in my first two years — but I also knew I had the backing of my team, colleagues and peers across the organisation.
I learnt to put my ego aside, listen more, learn from my mistakes and develop strong facilitation and project management skills. Valuable learnings were made along the way too. I learned to value asking the right people for help and inviting them in to ensure the campaign had people with the right skills and expertise to deliver.
On reflection, my role was more of a project manager than someone solely responsible for delivering a marketing campaign, and this experience has had a strong implication for how I work, how I approach marketing strategies and how I work with clients to deliver campaigns.
Shared purpose
With nearly twenty years of experience working in-house at different-sized organisations, I’ve learnt the importance of focusing on building strategy first and facilitating a project team to deliver a campaign or project brief.
This was the approach I could bring to my client's recent project, helping raise more than £170k over target across a three-month period. By setting the strategy, agreeing on the deliverables and then holding space through weekly check-ins, Basecamp and moving at pace, we were able to deliver this income and introduce new processes and ways of working.
This all came from the project team, but a shared purpose and holding space for them to deliver with accountability made a huge difference to the organisation.
And finally, a confession — I’m not a marketeer.
Although I’ve delivered hundreds of campaigns, from integrated outdoor with large budgets to reactive social media campaigns with scant resources other than time, I don’t consider myself a marketer.
During the coffee chat, my client was surprised to hear that my career plan was to be an Exhibitions Project Manager, working behind the scenes to get exhibitions and displays in a museum setting live for the public to enjoy.
Like all great plans, this didn’t quite happen, and early on in my career found myself working as Communications Coordinator at Royal Museums Greenwich.
Umpteen years on, I’ve worked at several national museums and galleries and health and voluntary charities.
I’ve never worked at a slick agency, and I didn’t study marketing at university (although I have a CIM diploma, plus lots of training and experience). But I do have a passion for people's stories and the power that people and culture play in making stronger communities in civic society. That’s why I started in social history museums and then shifted to marketing in the charity sector. So that's my background and explains why my approach focuses on purpose and people first.
And that’s why my client keeps working with me. Because I’m a purpose-driven marketing consultant with an approach that is unlike any other marketing person they’ve ever worked with.
Comments