The world of media and marketing changes at pace, and this is felt deeply in the digital space. The rapid evolution of technology, innovation and AI is building momentum. As an industry that requires continual upskilling and learning, it’s important to keep sight of what knowledge and skills will drive success. Equipping your business with digitally skilled talent is and will continue to be, essential for growth. However, a singular focus on these skill sets won’t achieve your marketing and business objectives alone, and siloing your teams will hamstring potential. So, what can your business do to prepare your people to deliver effective marketing today, tomorrow and beyond?
How I-shaped talent can elevate your business
Marketing teams and agencies are broadly built and structured by function. Often, the objective for individuals is to learn everything about their craft until they’re considered specialists. This is common in digital practices as these roles often require advanced technical skills and niche knowledge. All of this is important. However, this singular approach to talent development runs the risk of creating chasms of knowledge within teams. You need I-shaped talent.
While ordinarily digitally skilled individuals are expected to perform particular functions, businesses are limiting their potential by keeping specialists too focused. We’ve learnt that by upskilling our digital specialists with a deeper breadth of skills and knowledge, they combine their specialist skills harmoniously with the core knowledge of marketing and other disciplines, bringing unique perspectives that contribute to exceptional work.
How to create I-shaped talent
The top of your ‘I’ represents breadth. The first layer is a spectrum of marketing knowledge, skills and principles. In our digital world, the next layer is representative of disciplines, from SEO to programmatic to dynamic creative optimisation. No matter what your teams’ core specialisms are, it’s important they understand and upskill in as many, if not all areas. Why? Because breadth breeds collaboration.
The vertical of the I is the depth of the individual’s core expertise. This could be any digital discipline. Just as breadth breeds collaboration, depth strengthens individual contributions.
The foundation is data literacy. This is a non-negotiable, no matter the role. Measurement sits at the heart of everything we do; it informs strategies and business decisions. Ensure your full talent base is data-literate and practiced in the right tools and methodologies.
One step further
Imagine your ‘I’ is in a circle; this represents business acumen.
The ultimate goal of your media and marketing teams is to contribute to the delivery of business objectives, not just marketing objectives. It’s crucial your people understand your business and brand inside out; your business model, financial ambitions, competition, category and market. Make time to provide your teams and agencies with the context and information they need to fully understand your business. Transparency, consistency and clarity will accelerate growth even further.
The vastness of tech and rate of change in the digital sphere is decelerating the need for specialisms as we’ve known them. Automation and AI are alleviating time spent in the manual, monotonous tasks of the digital world, allowing us to broaden our horizons, and enhance adjacent skills that contribute to success, including stakeholder management, project management and people skills.
Help your specialists become the best versions of themselves by providing a framework that codifies the broadness and depth of skillsets needed, something we’ve established at GroupM with tremendous success. Our team diligently mapped skills and competencies against specialisms and built clear career paths enabling our people to accomplish breadth and depth.
We’ve all heard people say, ‘I’m not sure that’s part of my role’, or ‘this isn’t quite my area of expertise’. If you want to stay a step ahead, you need your people equipped with as many skills and as much knowledge as possible.
Transform your talent into I-shaped marketers, and remember, breadth breeds collaboration; depth strengthens contribution. As we enter an era of cross-channel media, breadth of knowledge will equip your people to better understand the big picture and drive true business results.
By Hicham Auajjar, Chief Products and Services Officer, GroupM MENA.
