Painting the New Leadership Portrait

Read more about Painting the New Leadership Portrait

Painting the New Leadership Portrait

5 min read

Women’s History Month revolves around commemorating and celebrating women’s vital role in shaping our history, culture and society. It’s also a time and extra push to reflect on how we are currently creating space for future generations of females to thrive. A crucial part of this is to make way for more women in leadership positions. Not only does research show that this helps increase profitability, as Workplace states that “companies in the top 25% for gender diversity on their executive teams are 25% more likely to have above-average profitability,” but also that it fosters a more inclusive workplace which attracts diverse talent.

While businesses around the world are making progress on appointing more women to leadership positions, it’s high time we ramp up the pace. So, I was delighted to participate in S4Capital’s Women Leadership Program, a six-month virtual course designed in collaboration with UC Berkeley’s School of Business and led by the acclaimed Dr. Homa Bahrami. Open to female leaders within Media.Monks to help them reach the next level of leadership, the program touches on a range of topics such as Inclusive Leadership, Strategic Thinking and Innovation. Through this experience, I’ve had the opportunity to pick the brains of esteemed business scholars and fellow female leaders in defining what modern leadership looks like. In my view, we live in an ever-evolving, hyperconnected world today where talent, clients and consumers alike no longer wish, but demand to see the diversity of the global population reflected in their leaders. So, which new colours should we add to repaint the leadership picture?

Strengthening Female Leaders to Drive Gender Equity

In line with our mission to change who does the work, realizing gender equity is a top priority. However, while only hiring more women is not going to cut it, appointing them to senior leadership positions can. In light of this, S4Capital’s Women Leadership Program focused on how we can change the company and spur innovation. “It was amazing to see the diversity in perspectives when women in different roles come together and discuss the challenges we all face in everyday life,” says Helena Curado, VP of Business Consulting in Latin America. Moreover, the program seeks to build bridges between women in different capabilities and strata of the organization to foster a tight-knit internal network. For many, this has left a very positive mark on both their professional and personal development.

“Through the program, the insights garnered from our global force of female leaders allowed me to see things differently, impacting my goals in ways that were previously not obvious to me,” says Erika Lang, SVP Group Account Director in New York. “The energy harnessed through our collective gathering has powered me up.” As positive leadership sparks positive change, equipping female leaders with a supportive, inspiring network can go a long way in realizing gender equity - and determining who will succeed them in senior leadership positions.

Leading The Way With Diversity and Inclusion

The global pandemic has drastically changed business as usual, forcing companies to completely rethink their organization. The transition to working from home has shown that people can retain their levels of productivity, wherever they are. With geo-distributed teams becoming the new norm, leaders will be challenged by time zones, cultural differences, and difficulties with nurturing relationships through virtual communication. While this certainly presents new challenges around culture-building, quality control, and effective communication, it also creates opportunities for leaders to put more effort into building trust, encouraging collaboration and fostering a safe professional environment.

Hybrid work offers possibilities to be more inclusive of teams that need less stimuli to focus, revealing the need for new leaders who are willing to accommodate the neurodiversity of their teams and foster an inclusive environment where everyone can thrive. Moreover, strengthening DE&I has evolved into a top priority for companies, clients and consumers, as leaders recognize that establishing a diverse workforce is essential for your success, especially in terms of the talent and clients you attract.

Monk Thoughts Culture fuels results. An environment of inclusivity and enablement is how we must show up for our employees and this not only benefits individual growth, but company growth.

Erika Lang

SVP, Group Account Director

Design That Delivers Scale

With our world always in flux, it’s important to keep pace. To be an effective leader in a changing world means continuously designing yourself out of your current position and handing over the reins to emerging leaders when a new challenge comes knocking. Especially in hyper-growth environments such as the digital media industry, scale is the buzzword that never goes out of style.

Monk Thoughts The digital era has made business much more complex and granular, so to make an impact, leaders have to listen and co-create much more to make sure they are involving all the different angles that are needed to reach success.

Helena Curado

VP of Business Consulting in Latin America

As we scale, we need to nurture a culture that enables growth and employ a “coaching” leadership style in building our new generation of leaders. Studies show that women are skilled at strengthening team processes, collaboration and performance because of their ability to listen to different voices and guide by coaching, thereby capitalizing on the team’s combined skills and knowledge while uncovering where and what expertise is needed to scale the business.

If Not a Victory, Then Always an Important Lesson

Sharing the Women Leadership Program experience with fellow female leaders has re-emphasized to me that it’s no sin to fail, so long as we celebrate our successes and always heed the lessons of failure. Our role as leaders is to provide feedback, training and mentorship to the next generation of leaders. It’s important that we let our teams experiment, and if they fail, try again. On top of that, our job is to encourage initiative, inspire learning moments, and stimulate a broader understanding of the problems, consequences and significance of failures. Above all, I trust our budding leaders will remember the lessons they learn throughout their journey.

Effective leadership is always going to be dynamic. There’s not just one style that works for every leader, team or even situation. In other words, leaders need to be adaptable. “Across sectors and industries, leadership can only be future-proofed by leaders' ability to evolve, adapt and embrace the unknown,” says Malin Hanås, Creative Director in London. “It's truly a necessity to never stand still,” Curado adds.

At Media.Monks, we’ve developed a brand that is flexible and built with the intent to empower our people to make it their own. Though we as leaders all share the desire to fuel our team’s self-confidence, effectiveness and productivity, our daily fire drills are different. Still, there’s one thing we have in common: we’re not just here to change the work and what it can do, but especially who does the work. Let’s repaint the leadership portrait to create a more diverse, equitable and inclusive picture—all together.

Our senior leaders draw from their experience with the S4 Women Leadership Program and discuss which colors we can add to repaint the leadership picture. Our senior leaders draw from their experience with the S4 Women Leadership Program and discuss which colors we can add to repaint the leadership picture. diverse workplace S4 Capital business leadership diversity and inclusion

In-House Agency Leaders Stress the Importance of Strategic Chemistry

Read more about In-House Agency Leaders Stress the Importance of Strategic Chemistry

In-House Agency Leaders Stress the Importance of Strategic Chemistry

4 min read

That 78% of businesses have taken their marketing efforts in-house doesn’t mean it’s time to shutter up the windows and work by one’s lonesome. The latest trend in advertising is set to change the way businesses work and collaborate creatively.

The IHAF SHIFT Conference recently brought internal agencies together to celebrate their victories and discuss the biggest challenges they faced in the past year. The organization is dedicated to supporting in-house agencies through content, tools, and networking opportunities, and its roster includes members like Bloomberg, McDonald’s, Verizon and more.

Rather than rely solely on external agencies to conceptualize and deliver marketing materials and campaigns, these businesses have taken those responsibilities back within the organization. It sometimes feels like everyone is going in-house: according to an Association of National Advertisers report, 78% of polled businesses said they had some operations in-house. In addition to that, 90% of respondents with in-house operations said they saw an increase in in-house workload over the past year. There are many reasons why a business might take their marketing and media production internal, though every brand wants something different: lowered costs, faster turnaround times or to simply increase their marketing expertise.

In-house agencies aren’t just growing in numbers, though. They’re also growing in size, which means many find themselves tied to business-level results that were previously outside of their scope. This means cross-organization collaboration is more important now than ever: in this unprecedented territory of marketing, there’s safety in numbers.

Finding the Need with All Stakeholders

According to Teresa Herd, VP and Global Creative Director at Intel, many in-house agencies face several challenges from the inside. The problem isn’t just competition against other companies or external agencies, but rather the culture, strategy and infrastructure of the agencies themselves.

One of the biggest issues Herd says many in-house agencies grapple with? “I spoke to VPs of marketing at a large company who said they now have to pitch for every project they do,” she wrote over at AdAge. The problem, she mentioned at the conference, is that good chemistry between internal creative teams and the C-suite is essential for success. She attributes the achievements of Agency Inside, Intel’s own creative team, to its leadership’s willingness to take the time to define the business needs, then building the agency to support those specifically. The alternative is to go internal simply to save money or time without exploring what, exactly, the internal team will do and why.

In addition to understanding what the business needs, you must take a hard look at what it can do. What tasks are you equipped to accomplish? Agency Inside is a best-case scenario for an internal agency because it’s closely tied to Intel’s business strategy. But aligning with business goals doesn’t need to mean wearing all the hats in a project; while in-house agencies can own the creative concept and strategy, external agencies or production partners are available to help execute them. When you notice gaps in your resources or talent base, it’s time to consider specialized external partnerships that can meet those needs and help you realize your vision.

Restructuring to Execute the Need

While Herd discussed the importance of chemistry between creative teams and C-suite, Georgetown University Faculty Director Wendy Zajack went into more detail about how to revamp a business so their departments work together like a well-oiled machine. The best way to get all the cogs turning in harmony is to share skills and techniques in response to boundary-disrupting. For example, marketing and IT teams must come together to provide a better user experience by sharing objectives—perhaps even with team overlap. This is easier said than done: how do you create such cohesion between departments?

Monk Thoughts Technology is rapidly erasing these lines and redrawing the industry map.

Wendy Zajack

Faculty Director & Professor of Integrated Marketing Communications, Georgetown University

The answer may lie in freeing data from silos. Limited in benefit when hoarded away, a freer data strategy has the potential to inform holistic business strategies that inform daily responsibilities across all departments in the company. To achieve this, businesses must first define where analytics can make the biggest impact, then prioritize use cases for that data. They might support more use cases when resources allow over time, but it’s important not to lose focus on where it’s most needed in the beginning. This process relies on team members who can “translate” this data and their uses between departments—like finding the overlaps between marketing and IT objectives mentioned above. Zajack says it’s increasingly important for organizations to use such innovative methods to “communicate in an increasingly crowded business environment.”

Collaborative Efforts Have a Huge Payoff

What does it look like when an internal agency uses their data more effectively? One example provided at the SHIFT conference was Avocados From Mexico, whose Super Bowl ad spot made in collaboration with GSD&M became one of the most talked-about campaigns of the year. While guacamole makes for a popular snack ingredient for the game, Avocados From Mexico noticed sales drop afterwards—and noted that Super Bowl ads alone aren’t that effective with loyalty or brand recall.

“The Super Bowl is an underrated opportunity,” Alvaro Luque, President of Avocados From Mexico, told the IHAF audience, perhaps turning heads. He elaborated: “If you see that as an ad, it will never pay off. But if you see this as an excuse to create a two-week campaign for the company, there’s no way you can do that and be that successful investing those dollars compared to the Super Bowl.” The sustained campaign was an effective response to slumping post-game sales. Compared to five years ago when the business had no digital marketing presence, Avocados From Mexico gained 14 billion additional brand impressions per year and increased Mexican imports by 73%.

“Here we’re seeing that the market is especially eager to create digital extensions of their campaigns,” said Louis Moncouyoux, Creative Director at the MediaMonks Mexico City office. “We’re working to educate and translate our global insights to them quickly, because campaigns are most effective when built comprehensively.”

Monk Thoughts In other words, the most successful elevated experiences are coming from campaigns articulated across brand touch points.

Louis Moncouyoux

Creative Director, MediaMonks

Building such campaigns is exciting, though agencies without the self-awareness discussed by Herd or the agility championed by Zajack might struggle to pull off such a big win. This is why it’s so important for businesses to get a handle on what they and their audiences need, how prepared they are to meet it and who to turn to when filling in all the gaps. This level of chemistry between departments and partners makes all the difference between campaigns that explode with a bang versus those that just fizzle out.

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In-house agencies are growing, which means taking on responsibilities beyond their usual scope. Key takeaways from the IHAF SHIFT conference include how in-house agencies can collaborate with business leadership and external partners. In-House Agency Leaders Stress the Importance of Strategic Chemistry As in-house agencies grow and take on new responsibilities, inter-organizational collaboration is more important now than ever.
IHAF IHAF SHIFT IHAF awards agency collaboration in-house agency in-house agencies business leadership

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