State of Marketers: How are marketers feeling, and what can you do about it?

Hello lovely people. Hello lovely Joe. It's really fabulous to see you all here today. Thank you all so so much for taking the time. Hi David, hi Claire, hi Sarah, hi Selena, hi Rachel, hi Dani, Emily, Chloe, Matt, Katie, Gareth, Andy, Ruth and so many more of you. It's so lovely just to hang out for a little bit of time so thank you all so so much for taking the time for being with us today. As you can tell there's a slight bit of informality in James and I's demeanor today, it's way too hot but like we've got a lot of really great things to say and what a fabulous week it's been this week with the release of the Stated Marketers Report. So I just want say a big thank you to to everyone who's engaged with it in whatever way you have. It's been like genuinely one of the best things that we do as the Market Meter as we show up and I hope it helps. I really just hope it helps and so appreciate your lots and lots. Should we let's get going before we start just saying thank you to the sponsors of today's session. So today we're going to be speaking all about the State of Marketers report and what James and I have taken as the key findings from it. As a quick overview is twelve forty eight respondents that we got to the survey, which wasn't sure by any way, but asking marketers not about marketing but how you're doing in marketing roles. And we won't be able to do this sort of stuff without the sponsors and so to start off I just want to say a big thank you to Canva. You all probably know Canva at this point I imagine but what you may not know is that through the Marketing Meetup then you can get a three month free code of Canva Pro. So if you would like to take advantage of that please do. I realise that the thing that I've done is that I've said you could get three months but that will take you to a landing page which will ask you for a code which I haven't thought of correctly put in. So I will make sure that we'll get the code to you although I also see Sarah in the chat. So maybe Sarah, if you're in the chat, wouldn't mind putting the code in, please do. So a big thank you to Canva. And it's Canva that we've built all this in. So every time you see Joe using these slides, we're always using Canva. We're proper fans of Canva because it keeps fools like us who are not particularly good at designing, making keeping things looking really, really fresh. So, yeah, big thanks to them. But also, a massive thank you to Wistia, which we're currently broadcasting from, Frontify, Cambridge Marketing College, Prismic and Planable, we'll talk about those in separate weeks. And there's your code, look at that, Matt's already on it. Great job, Matt. Thank you very much for saving our bacon. Right, without further ado, should we get started speaking about the state of But you know just a big thank you to everyone for being here today, we appreciate you lots and lots. Right, I'm gonna have the chat feature open throughout the duration and the thing that I can ask hopefully for today's session is because it is a little bit more informal, because it is just James and I, please sound off in the chat like any thoughts, comments, whatever let us know if it resonated because like we care deeply about this piece of work and we just want to know if landed with you all. So let's get going with the state of marketers results. The way that we're going work it, we've got a presentation and then we'll have a Q and A afterwards if you have any questions. That's found in the Q and A section. So let's start with a quick story because I think it grounds the report into why we decided to create it in the first instance. And really this starts with my own story. I had started marketing back in twenty fourteen, well I entered the workforce in twenty fourteen. My dirty little secret that I have is that I entered the workforce and I was an SAP consultant, which meant that I was spending my time in SLAU building systems and processes for footsie companies fourteen hours a day in the Holiday Inn trying to bring all their processes together. At the same time as this though, as I was an SAP consultant, I was still finding myself writing about social media. Social media was my gateway drug for marketing in general. And so after about six months of being an SAP consultant, I decided to follow a bit of a passion, something that I actually wanted to do. I got my first job in marketing and it was for a company called Business of Software where we ran conferences, across the world. At BOSS I had an incredible time. I was a solo marketer in a three person company and like I got every bit of joy from marketing. I am I got to understand like the creativity, the experimentation of new stuff, and I got to play around social media. But I also felt every moment of brutality that can come with the marketing industry and the marketing wrong. I sat at Sundays at my desk more anxious than I can begin to explain about what I was doing, unclear, uncertain, without goals, etcetera, etcetera. It was hard. As much as it was brilliant, it was tricky. And that's sort of like the second story of why the Marketing Meetup started. I often speak about my quiet demeanor and sort of not being comfortable in networking spaces but there was just the reality of the hardness of the marketing role in the marketing industry and so we spent a little bit of time running an event in a canteen in Cambridge and it was fab. The last ten years of the Marketing Meetup have been wonderful. I couldn't have been blessed to be surrounded by more wonderful people than the people in this community right now. The people in this chat are some of the best people I've ever met. But one of the things that I've observed over the past ten years is that I'm not saying goodbye Catherine, I promise one of the things I've observed with our marketing reports over the past ten years is that we spend a lot of time with our reports speaking about marketing as a practice, but we don't spend a lot of time speaking about marketers, the fabulous people that make up this industry, the people who work so hard to make great stuff happen. And it's a little bit boggling to me. I don't understand why we don't spend more time caring about each other and trying to elevate one another. And so between our little team, we made a decision and we had a little chat and we said well we should do something about that. If no one is focusing on the marketers, well blue and egg, maybe we should do something about that. And so last year in twenty twenty five, we ran the State of Marketers survey for the first time ever. We had over a thousand respondents and one of the most lovely things was that I heard people come to us and sort of say this has helped me feel seen and this has made me feel better about my role. And that's such a gift. And so we went, woah. We should do that again then. And so we did. And we're like, cool. Let's go and do that. And over the past few months, then we've been, like, building out the state of market survey with, all of you, filling in the survey and letting us know how you're doing. And so that's where we've ended up with with the state of market survey twenty twenty six. It launched on Tuesday, and as I say, it's been a fabulous week. We've had so much response from so many people. I picked out a few people, a few comments that we've got back. I'm not gonna give you time to read all the comments. I'm just gonna go to the next slide. Nor did you give people time to download the QR codes. That's brutal! Don't let them! Yeah, it's giving tumour energy for those of you who are at the Marketing Meetup Conference. We'll pop the link in the chat as well but it's also on our website in the navigation bar up the top. So that's the story about why the State of Marketers survey exists but today's session is all about like reflecting on what we've learned and so we're going to do it in three stages. We're going to share the biggest takeaway, the sort of highlight thing. Second, James and I are then going to tag team on the five stats that jumped out to us that came out of the report and then we'll finish on six things you can do about it before heading into the Q and A. So we know that coming into today's session that like it is a bit more informal, It may not lend itself quite as well to a Q and A but if you have questions we'd be delighted to answer them. So let's get going and let's try and be a bit more serious even though it's a thousand degrees outside. So the big takeaway. Now before I speak about the big takeaway, then I need to let you know about my mindset before I started writing the report, which was I opened up the stats and I went a little bit like this. I shot one eye and then I kind of like started trying to sort of like go through it because I was a little bit fearful. I was a little bit fearful that like the discourse you see on LinkedIn etcetera etcetera is one of sheer negativity and like there's some people pretending, there's lots of people saying things are great but then you actually speak with people and then one on one and people are like blooming heck, I'm finding things quite tricky at the moment and so I thought that coming into analyzing the data that we that that would be mirrored and it would just be a bit of a tough picture. But actually I want to leave you with a bit more of an optimistic picture, a bit more of a balanced picture than just one of sheer negativity. And I want to do that with three statements. So first of all, just like in my story at the beginning, the community has not fallen out out of love with the craft of marketing. And I think that's really important to point out because I speak to so many marketers who love the creativity in our industry, love the opportunity to write great things, create great things, enjoy the craft, and they're here for a reason. Like, we enjoy what we do. That being said, in order to acknowledge the good, then we also need to acknowledge the tough, which is the conditions around what we do have got harder. And so later on we'll speak about stuff like scaffolding, so stuff like pay reviews, AI, technology, etc, etc. These are the conditions that I refer to. But the final statement is really really interesting to me and again we'll speak about this a little bit more a little bit later, which is connection could be an answer. And I know that's quite convenient for a marketing community, but I see the chat. I see people show up to in person events, and now we've got the stats to back up this general principle that the closer people feel to the market to the marketing community, the closer and more optimistic they feel about their role. And I think that's a lovely thing to take and and hopefully a message that is not one of, dire straits, but actually one of balance. And balance is okay if we know where we're starting from. So that's the big takeaway from today's session, but there are five stats that jumped out. As a self professed introvert and someone who doesn't like speaking, I've now spoken for twelve minutes straight. So I'm gonna shut up and let James take the first one. But also I just wanted to acknowledge your comment in in the chat there, Joel, and say thank you very much. I thought that was really kind of you and people like Joel, but everyone in the chat sort of make this play special. So I appreciate it. Thanks Joel. Good stuff. Well let's jump in. The first word, well the first thing that really jumped out in this report for me personally was the words that we're using to describe how we feel about our job and the industry and the work that needs to be done. And it started off with challenged with brackets positively afterwards and so I was quite buoyed by this. I was like oh this is this is good, this is a good place to start. I think there is no getting round the fact that marketing is a challenging job. It's a difficult difficult job. It's got lots of moving parts. It's cognitively quite a quite a strain on yourselves, but it's a really wonderful job. It's very varied. It's very creative. And so I thought, this is really cool. But then we went on to the second, third, fourth, and fifth words, which initially weren't quite so positive. So uncertain, chaotic, stressful and overwhelming. Now I'm sure plenty of you will have felt these words and these feelings in recent times. Joe and I were discussing earlier, why is that? I think you can put a positive spin on this because the industry and the way things evolve isn't particularly predictable. There's always going to be an element of uncertainty. If you think about algorithmic changes, if you think about in the last couple of years with the growth of AI, it's going to feel a little bit chaotic and a little bit uncertain. And I think part of the solution to this is getting comfortable with that. But this uncertainty and this chaos, I think, drives a lot of stress in people. And then the overwhelm thing, I think, is again, you're not doing most of the marketers in the community don't just wear one hat. There are some people that will be a PPC specialist and that will be their job day in day out. But even they will have loads of changes coming on board. A lot of the marketers in our community wear loads of different hats, and I think that's where this feeling of overwhelm can come from. But if you think about it in a positive way, the job is constantly evolving, which is perhaps creating these second, third, fourth, and fifth words. So, yeah, how do you how do you feel about the job, Joe? Well, I resonate with these words and I think on a personal level I struggle with uncertainty. But I think more broadly uncertainty amongst businesses can be quite poisonous for long term marketing. The reason being if you're uncertain about what the future is then you're unlikely to take long term bets which we have all shouted until our blood pressure heightens that we should be doing more brand and I think we all know that kind of thing. The other thing though I think and you've kind of shown this language a little bit with what you're speaking about is that through your CMO mentor, which is a podcast that you and I record, as you well know James, because you are I am there most times. Are exposed to a lot of CMO and senior level marketers. And, until I saw these stats then quite often what would happen is that folks would come in and sort of say there's never been a better time to be in marketing and I'd be like have you checked LinkedIn? Have you read LinkedIn quite recently? Because it doesn't feel that way. But I think what you have just shown through your behavior, you've modeled through your behavior is like the potential of marketing is one to inspire and the potential of marketing is one to change and grow businesses and do all this positive stuff. And so while we're not trying to put a sticking pasta over a lot of these things, I think there is a strength in acknowledging these emotions and these feelings but then trying, trying to do what you've just done which is put that in a positive frame and swim in a pool of uncertainty and say the water feels quite nice rather than, goodness, I don't like this. Yeah, think like that top word uncertain, the fact that it isn't certain to me, it just screams opportunity. Because there's, you just know there's gonna be, and I think those marketers that are really tapped into culture as well know that there's something they don't know what it is, but they know that culturally something is going to happen and it's going to change very soon that they can take advantage of. And I think if you can lean into that uncertainty, then you have the opportunity to create opportunities in that sense. So yeah, interesting words. Interesting words indeed, and while you're speaking I'm also looking at the chat and I just want to say thank you because there was so much richness coming through on all of this and the fact that you're writing in paragraphs is a gorgeous thing because I think that's I think it shows the depth of all of this. Unfortunately we can't read it in paragraphs right now but I think we'll both be checking it as we go and trying to respond. Thank you all very, very much. Let's move on to number two and I can speak while you're checking the comments, James, and see if anything jumps out as well. Yeah. So our second reflection on the report is it's not about being good or bad. And so coming into writing the report I sat down and I kind of had this mental image. This mental image that there would be a group of people, a group of marketers that felt great about the role. And then there would be another group of marketers who felt terrible about the role and they just didn't weren't getting on with it. And, like, I think that was something that I sometimes hold for myself as well where I'm like, oh, I'm having a good day, or I love this. And then other days, I'm like, I hate this. But one of the most interesting things that I think came out of the survey, as far as I'm concerned, is that eighty percent of marketers who ticked that first emotion, positively challenged, also ticked at least one hard feeling. And this was mirrored across the data set, so eighty three percent of people who found the work creative also ticked a negative emotion. So this was on the same question that James was speaking about. And the line that we put in the report was that those can be creative and frazzled often on the same Tuesday and that's not a you thing. And I think that feels important to me. That feels important to me. And the reason it feels important to me is that like my mental model coming into the report was that this good and bad camp existed. That a bunch of people felt great and a bunch of people felt terrible. But actually what I realized was this is both things. This is both things all at once. And in fact, it's not a good camp or a bad camp. Actually, the good and the bad, they just just live in us all, more or less. I mean, if the data's anything to go by, eighty percent of people say that they live in both of these places at the same time all at once. And for me, that just felt reassuring because I have great days. I have terrible days. I have great hours. I have terrible hours. And I'm not gonna choose to find my my relationship with this role anymore, but I'm having a good time or a bad time. I'm just both, and that's kind of okay. And that seems to be the output of this report as well. I think, I think also, so we, for those of you that don't know, by the way, I love Catherine's comment about, does anybody actually quite like a bit of stress at work? I'm kind of in your camp. The pressure is something that really motivates me. Just going back to the point of living in this world of flux, we run some mentorship groups for different types of marketers. Agency owners group that we've had a couple of agency owners groups, and you get this real mix of people, and sometimes they're like, Oh, the wolf is at the door. We haven't got clients coming in. Don't know what to do. How do we get sales? Panic, panic, panic, and you can tell they're having a really bad time. But then with a flick of a switch, you can end up with that same person the following week having landed a massive account, having now thinking about how to recruit people to fulfill the work, and they're off to the races. And I think the job and the industry as a as a whole can switch quite quickly, and that might be, you know, if you take say a marketing manager, a mid level marketing manager in a bigger business having a bad time because they haven't got budget or they've got somebody above them like restricting them in some way, and then all of a sudden some budget is released and they're able to go and do that great work. They go from like this job is awful to again, we're off to the races and so I do find that it is it isn't a flat job. It is very up and down in that sense depending on the conditions that you're you're given. So, yeah, it's it's certainly a stressful one at times. It's both. It's always both. And Jody Jody's actually put, you know, freelance work, it ebbs and flows. It does, you know, and that's that's kind of part of, you know, sometimes feeling like it's good and sometimes feeling like it's not so good. Got it. Next one. Imposter. So this one I kind of love in a slightly sadistic way because I love helping people who have imposter syndrome. And I'd like to start that by saying hello, I'm James self doubt rather than Sunbrook. We all live in this world of questioning ourselves, know, and again you alluded to seeing stuff on LinkedIn where people are, you know, Billy Big Spuds is talking about their wonderful campaign that they've run. And and you think, oh, well, I'm not doing that, or I haven't got the you know? Have I got the skills to be to be doing this? I've lived with that throughout my entire career, and it's kind of okay when you see the statistics because impostor syndrome is felt by forty six percent of people on average in the survey. I don't know whether we said there was, like, nearly thirteen hundred people in the survey. So it's a good statistically sound number. But also some other feelings that come through is frustration that they can't do their best work, and there's pressure to keep up with change. And I'll come on to those next two in a second, but there's a couple more stats that I thought were really, really interesting. So six at the lower end, if, like, your entry level marketing role or your early into your your career in marketing, in the first two years, sixty two percent of people feel impostor syndrome. You are absolutely not on your own. I guess that's kind of because the industry is so broad, there's so many things that you could do in marketing, and people don't tend to just stick to one thing. They find their role in marketing. You're you're gonna feel like you're not sure what you're doing. So that's that's kinda reassuring. But the stat that blew my mind is four out of ten people with sixteen years plus experience in the industry also feel impostor syndrome. And I've had it we've we've had it on your CMO mentor. I've had it in the CMO mentorship groups where people are questioning themselves and doubting themselves when actually they are phenomenal marketers, and they just need that little bit of confidence to to put their ideas forward and to run with risky campaigns. But also, I think it's really useful just to know that there are others out there feeling that. So I put this slide together, which I put a caveat at the bottom. They're just my ideas. They are they are advice. It's my advice, but they are not backed by science or evidence. This is just how, through the mentorship groups, other people have sort of, worked through these kind of things. So the first one being you feel like an impostor. Well, actually, the very first step to feeling I guess, to getting through that impostor syndrome is acknowledging that nobody knows everything. The job is to be constantly learning. Like, you need to if you're gonna be a good marketer, you need to not know everything. You know? If you think you know everything, then you've probably got some questions to ask about yourself. So know that it's always a journey, and then feeling that you can't do your best work. This is a big one that comes up, especially in mid level marketers, we're finding. And one of the ways that I think you can get around that is if you aren't given the budget for something or you've got somebody disagreeing with you that has, you know, the the keys to the the business and you're not able to convince them elsewhere is to is to start to focus on sort of smaller key bits of work that you can be really proud of, that you have autonomy over. So that might be an email campaign. Like, how can you make this the very best email campaign ever if you've got complete control over it? And take joy and, you know, some reward in doing really amazing smaller bits of work if you can't control that strategic level. And then finally, feeling the pressure to keep up with change. This is, again, a real thing. It's something that we're all feeling. But, actually, something I took from Heather Murray, who is AI for NonTechie. She's spoken for us a few times. Absolutely brilliant human being. She has this learning habit, so she will dedicate part of her day every single day to reading and learning about her industry, AI. And I found that really useful. So when I was running a video agency, I started it without really knowing how to use a camera. And so I was like, right. I need to get good at this really quickly before people work out that I'm totally useless. And so I would try and watch some sort of video, like a Peter McKinnon video on how to shoot something each day on YouTube, and I'd take that sort of half an hour. And that learning habit meant that, you know, over a period of time, there's little bits of learning. You start to catch up quite quickly and feel like you're not behind. So that's just my advice. You feel free to throw that in the bin. Sorry Joe, have you got anything to add on this? No, I'm just looking at the chat and feeling quite privileged really that we get to share this with folks like the people in the chat. That's cool, they're a cool bunch. Yeah, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone for supporting each other as well, know, like the we'll be encouraging folks later of course, but like just to let you know that we're around you know and like if you want to chat then like please know that we're always here for you and like whether that's in person or just the things that we do, because it's kind of the whole point. I thought you were going to say drop me an email then, Joe. Was like, don't say that. Mainly because I'm terrible at emails without getting you. Right, let's get on to number four. And that was a big intonation in my voice that I didn't mean to do on purpose, but hey, I guess that probably tells a bit of a story. So let's speak about AI. I think one of like just an interesting stat that is worth bringing to the table in terms of what folks are actually using AI for. At the moment we're you know self reported staff was brainstorming, writing research data analysis strategy. Kind of take that as as you will. Interestingly the use of AI does change dependent on the seniority of the person in the business. Now, I mean, that's an abundantly obvious thing because a more senior person is going to be more likely to use AI for strategy work because that's the work that are there to do. As a more senior person you are going to be working on strategy. As a more junior person you are more likely that the data shows to be using it for writing. But one of the interesting sort of things that isn't in the slides is that actually the folks who are using it for more brainstorming work, strategy work, so the deeper work, as sort of like a sparring partner almost, are the people who are seeing the most value from AI in the workforce. Those folks, often the most junior folks in the industry who are using it for writing etc, their relationship with AI is much less positive than the more senior folks and so I think there's something interesting there about like the depth in which we use AI and how we feel about it as a result. That being said, I think the more interesting observation that we took from the research on AI is the comparison on twenty five to twenty six on how we're feeling about it. And this was one of the most profound shifts because a lot of things stayed quite stable on twenty five to twenty six, but this was like quite wild percentage swings. And so what we're seeing is like we're seeing a lot of people or far fewer people feeling behind on AI. In fact, like you can see that ten percent less people are feeling behind on it but twelve percent more are in the position where they're still figuring it out, and eight percent more are in that position of saving me time. Now the thing that I think this we can take from this is like AI is here. You know, it's a tool that the vast majority of us are using. In fact ninety seven percent of people within the survey results pointed to using AI now as part of it. So there's three percent who aren't, but the ninety seven percent are. But I think one of the most interesting sort of secondary points that comes off the back of this is the stuff that you get when you start reading the qualitative data, the folks giving us quotes. And so this quote came through, which says, despite the incredible help AI has been in making things quicker and easier, there is no less work to be done. And if we just sit on that for a moment, despite the incredible help AI has been in making things quicker and easier, there's no less work to be done. And I I think that's interesting. Right? Because actually what the data shows is that forty six percent of us have said that AI does save us time. And so I can see it in the chat right now that there's there's a series of people saying that that quote that quote is me. And the interesting thing was when you dove into the data just a little bit more, that the people making quotes, like what we've just seen, often still sat in that forty six percent. But actually, what this resulted in was not a comment about AI at all. This was a comment about workload. Because AI might be saving a lot of this time. But if the workload is still too high, then I think we can acknowledge that we are saving time with AI, but we're still not feeling less busy. And James and I were speaking about this earlier and he said something smart, and so I'm going to steal it so I look smarter, Which is like, there is this theory that activity will fill the space that it's given almost. And like, it's almost like a gas, you know, our activity, and you give it a box and it's going to be full. And so just starting to slowly relax my shoulders just a little bit with this concept, a little bit like what James spoke about earlier with the emotions of like riding with a slight sense of overwhelm and a slight sense of overactivity because I'm not sure that will ever go away even if we are using these AI tools every single day. But that's my take. It's actually interpretation rather than fact but I'm interested in yours James. Yeah well it was actually something I clocked in the chat earlier. I think it was Catherine who was talking about the expectation from above. So, those who go, Oh, now you've got AI, you can do three times as much stuff. And I think that could be a problem. So yeah, I think you're right in sort of maybe acknowledging that, you know, we've got we're able to do more, but I don't know whether people are going home later or working weekends more as a result. Are they just cramming more into their days? And is the fact that you can't do I always find from a creative perspective, I'm able to create, say, a video in thirty seconds, something that would have taken me an hour before, Am I doing that deep thoughtful work, or am I just going bang, bang, bang, bang, bang from one thing to the next? And that again can give you a feeling of real sort of chaos. Is my audio right by way because I can hear a bit of feedback? Good. Well, next one is interesting with the the connection score. So we're asking people how connected they feel to to the industry. I'm gonna turn my turn my volume down so I don't get so much feedback. You know, do do you feel connected to the marketing industry specifically? And this feeling of alone sort of came came back. You know, how how supportive do you feel and how optimistic? But there's there's two alones to acknowledge here. The first one is alone in your own head, in your own thoughts. So you might be in a team of people, but actually you find that you're in your own lane and not really feeling very supported. And then there is post COVID a lot of people working at home either in hybrid roles or fully remote roles and that can feel very isolating as well. So we ended up with some really interesting statistics. I put an arrow here saying that that bottom one is the one that stands out, but interestingly, the one at the top right also feels important. You've got a load of folks who, when they are when they feel and rate themselves higher between seven and ten, so a scale of zero to ten, between seven and ten connected to the industry is that forty one percent of them feel more connected and more supported, should I say, by the industry. So this starts to hint at a solution. So if you've got a good connection to the marketing industry, these stats suggest that you are gonna be more optimistic about the work and that you are going to feel more supported. Now whether that is because you feel more seen or whether you can just talk to people about the job and therefore gain more ideas or whatever it may be, there's loads and loads of different ways that you can connect with the industry, from LinkedIn to networking events to joining peer groups, meals, whatever it may be. But this data is proving that connection is a really interesting way of sort of helping you sort of support yourself through tough times. But this is the one that really jumped out to me. So you would expect freelancers to be the least connected. They're working on their own, usually at home. And yet they score the highest, and those on-site marketers, so we're speaking specifically about your your sort of working setup here, the people in Teams on-site feel the least connected. And we were sort of befuddled for a while. We sort of sat there and were like, hang on, how does how does this work? This doesn't seem to to make a whole deal of sense. And what we've realized is that freelancers aren't just waiting for connection to happen. They're going out and they're building their own communities. I think about all the people that helped me at the Birmingham Marketing Meetup, which is next Thursday by the way, and all the help I've got like five people, five or six people that help me every every couple of months run the session. They're all freelancers. They're all investing back into that network, and they all seem really happy and and connected in their in their work. But I can imagine if you're sat on-site, and you might be a solo marketing manager or you might be in a team doing a very, very specific job, is that actually you're not getting input from the wider industry. You might just be doing a single graphic design job or a PPC job, and that feeling of connection to everything wider might be a bit limiting. And I don't know whether that's I mean, that's kind of where you came from, wasn't it, Joe? Like, there's probably other people that are the same. You know, you've got one marketing person in a big organization, but nobody really understands your job as well as you do, and that can feel that can make you feel really alone. Absolutely. And I think one of the interesting things is that quite often when you compare company size to marketing team size, then you can have five hundred people organizations with a marketer or two. And I think often people sort of expect those those organizations to have bunches and bunches of folks who are all supporting each other. But what they actually operate as is a series of smaller companies, you know, and and and if there are only two of you in in a in a sea of five hundred as an example, then of course that would feel lonely. And so I don't know. I I to speak to my emotional reaction to this, I just felt quite proud of freelancers in in this particular situation as well as recognizing it as an opportunity for for other folks and Yeah. There was a there was a lovely quote I heard right around the time of COVID which was build your community before you need it and and this really spoke to that for me I think and and this isn't to have a go at anyone it really really isn't to have a go at anyone so I need to be very clear about that. But so often you'll see people who unfortunately find themselves upon hard times and it's only then that they sort of reach out and sort of say, okay, I'm struggling now. I think the people that really have that support network and are able to put the effort into building that before you need it, think is such a strong thing for you, your career, etcetera, etcetera. And so I'd really encourage folks. Yeah, I've seen it in both the freelancers group and the agency owners group for mentorship they're talking about pipeline of work, and I guess the same would be true for an in house marketing manager thinking about their community that serve is actually being part of them and delivering value and finding ways to build connection. It's like planting seeds, just lots and lots of seeds all over the place hoping that stuff will grow and that you don't need that oak tree right now, we don't need that plant right now, but it'll grow and you know inevitably things will change, we've spoken about this throughout, know you've got a bunch of clients that are doing great work with and then for some reason they will disappear, well what are the things that you planted twelve months ago that actually you can now sort of look back to and having nurtured them, you know, sort of bring them up the funnel sort of thing or down the funnel. Sure. So yeah, those are the smart ones I think, they're investing in it before they need it. Absolutely. Cool, let's see. So we have spoken to five things that jumped out, and like the report itself is six thousand words, forty six pages or something like that, so we haven't captured everything here, but these were five of the things that jumped out to James and I that that we wanted to discuss and like again, a big thank you for the chat because it feels like some of the things we've raised today have resonated, which is really just lovely, really really lovely. So let's try and put some practicality around these things because we've raised a bunch of points but it's nice to put a bow upon some of them with some practical stuff. So the first is a takeaway that I think has sort of been resonant in the chat, for want of a better word, which is that sometimes we can feel like we're going through these problems alone. Like, the challenges that we've surfaced today are things that only you are feeling. A large majority of this exercise has been about saying you are not alone. And I think I will say that again, you are not alone. There are people in this chat. There are hundreds of people that signed on, for the webinar. There are thousands of people that signed up for the Marketing Meetup, and, like, These challenges are challenges that are felt by so many folks. So know that that support network, exists and that if people can help, then we'd like to. The second thing that I'd encourage is a slightly more personal one, but like I don't think you need to resolve to get through these things, know. Don't think a useful refrain as a result of these challenges is to say you need to be a bit more resilient. I don't feel like that is the solution that we have proposed as a result of this and I don't think that's a useful management refrain to come to and say you know what I understand that you're feeling jungled right now, but you know, just be a bit more resilient. I've been there, you know, I've received that feedback and stuff like that, and you know, like, let's just not do that. Collectively, let's just not do that. Number three, look down the ladder. Now this wasn't one of the things that we've discussed today, but I know that a lot of people in the chat are going to be aware of and concerned about what happens to the junior people in the workforce, specifically when it comes to AI because a lot of the stuff that we did back in the day when we were juniors is now currently being automated or taken away or is shaping in a different way to what we have back when we started. Now I don't think that is necessarily like framing that as a negative. I think that's what that's framing it as is like okay cool things are changing we've accepted that in this webinar. But that still puts the responsibility on us as more senior marketers if indeed that is us in our roles to look down the ladder and make sure that we're helping. And I know that that's like a general call to action but if that's the opportunity for you to sit down with your junior person in the organization today and have a chat and sort of say how can I help you, how can I upskill you, how can we make your next three to five years a little bit better and build you in the business, then this is your opportunity to do it? So let's let's look at that. I do accept, once they're at, that there's a focus on juniors and that's part of the conversation right now. You know, seniors are struggling too, of course they are, but it's it's definitely both. Number four, use AI for more than typing. So what we found was that in terms of people's emotions associated to AI, then people got a greater sense of contentness when they used AI for strategy work and for taking the time to use it for things which were deeper into our marketing role. I'm not speaking about automating out our role, but what I'm saying is that the functionality exists use it as that sparring partner to help us do to help us sort of be there as as that sparring partner. So use it for more than typing. The data would show and like of course it's going to be a unique experience that this is where you'll get more satisfaction from AI and the most benefit. Fifth, please don't wait for connection to happen. We've identified that connection is a thing which helps. We're not saying it's the pan seo, it's the thing which will solve all your problems, but what we do know is connection doesn't happen by itself. And we've observed that the folks who make the most effort are the folks who report the highest optimism scores, about their role and the people who feel most supported. That being the case, then there are opportunities to connect and if you don't know what they are, again please reach out because we'll put you in the right direction for sure. Final point. This is a very practical one and we refer to it as scaffolding in the report. These are the most practical things, so we'll come back to this statement in a moment. But we've got this statement that the community has not fallen out of love with marketing, but the conditions around it have got harder and really that's what we're speaking about with scaffolding. We're not speaking about people falling out of love with marketing but what we are speaking about is improving the conditions for marketers. And so the report finishes with a few recommendations. One of the things that we haven't spoken about today, but one in seven marketers have never ever had a pay review. Pay reviews are scaffolding. That's one of the most effective things you can do tomorrow to improve the mood around marketing. It's not so much about increasing the salary. What we're speaking about is putting in the pay reviews to have the conversation. The conversation is enough. Clear priorities are scaffolding. Proper junior development, I'll accept Montserrat's point. Proper junior development, senior development is scaffolding. Good managers in scaffolding, I know that's a big one. Thoughtful use of AI is scaffolding and community is scaffolding. We look after the scaffolding. I think we've acknowledged that people love this job. They enjoy this industry. And there is so much good. There is so much balance, to be found in our roles. But what we can do is improve the conditions around it. So let's wrap up. James, doing body language things. Do you want to jump in before? I just thinking about the whole junior senior thing, and there's a point that I think the focus on helping junior folks when it comes to AI as well. So the thing that AI isn't doing or isn't able to do is have taste. So we can see when AI work, AI slop as people call it, is created and it's a load of rubbish. The prompt is right, but it doesn't have the experience or the taste that goes in there. So for those in senior roles, that's a lever that you can pull. That's an advantage. You've got years and years and years of experience that you can use AI, but only your taste is going to allow the work to be exceptional. The challenge that you have is if you are new into the industry and you haven't developed a taste yet. And so I think as mid level and senior marketers, that's where you can support juniors is by giving them work and tasks and things to do that allows them to develop that taste and to evolve it so that they start to back themselves and give themselves confidence rather than defaulting to AIs making decisions for them or just giving them answers. You need to sort of, it goes right the way back to everybody in the marketing industry where you have to go with your guts on a lot of things. I've trusted my gut throughout my entire career, and when I don't, it always goes wrong. And so I think, yeah, when we talk about AI, yes, it's making things faster and more efficient, and then we can do loads of whizzy things like you're doing them all the time and confusing me, but my taste will be the thing that'll allow me to carry on going. So yeah, that's why we're pointing to the juniors to look out, but also pull that lever if you're in a senior role. Thank you. So we've we've probably spoken for a little bit longer than we intended to, so so let's Sorry, everyone. And we're turning to three statements that we made at the beginning of today's session. And hopefully three statements that are reflected in the report, in the chat, in your day to day work. Which is, I need to correct this last one. The community has not fallen out of love with marketing. The conditions around it have got harder in the last twelve months. And ignore that last statement on your slide, and instead think to another, which is that connection can be part of the answer. We didn't start today's session by thinking that, like, this would be a how to session. We didn't think it'd be a how to do marketing. But what we did want to do is sort of leave you in a place of knowing, making you feel seen and knowing that you're not alone and hopefully with that last section giving you something practical to do if indeed that's what you wanted from today's session. So thank you so much. It's the privilege of a lifetime to share this with all of you, and I appreciate all the chat that's been going on as well. And thank you as well, James, because, like, I love sharing this experience with you. Yeah, absolutely. And it's like what we should do now is reveal that this entire thing was a huge pitch for our in person events. No, it's not. It's not. It's just it is coincidental that that it is, you know, what we do is run two fifty events around the world and you probably got one locally to you unless you're, you know, tuning in from Zimbabwe, maybe have one there soon. But the point is that like, I don't always look forward to the networking events, I've got one next week. I always have this like slight feeling of dread beforehand even though I'm hosting it. Wow, I don't want to do this, want to go out and meet people and I'm not really feeling the moonlight. Every single time I come back and I've got fresh ideas and fresh perspectives and I've met somebody new who's given me a little bit of inspiration. It's something that if you are feeling the pressure of the job, just going having a bit of pizza and some drinks at just a local event for a couple of quiz, you'll probably come away feeling lighter in the shoulders. Oh look at that, and there's the call to action just there in the chat. Oh well, I thought you'd put events. No, no, no, I just put a link to the State of Masters report in the chat. There's a couple of open questions, James, if you fancy saying Oh cool, yeah, yeah, I didn't see those. Well, you far away because I haven't got to them yet. Of course. So first things first. This is actually about something we're doing at TMM, which will partly resolve some of the the connection stuff or at least provide an opportunity to. So the question says, hi guys, you sent the mentorship questionnaire which I filled in. Are you going ahead with the initiative? As I haven't heard much since. So like, sorry you haven't heard more, but James do you want to speak about the mentorship and what we're doing with that? Yeah, definitely. We've got a slightly clunky system at the moment where we're trying to make sure We run mentorship groups in groups of six who are exactly the same role, then we're plonking them all together and running a cohort and facilitating cohorts. We've opened it up to, I think, six different types of marketers, from CMOs to freelancers to agency owners, and people have been applying and going in. We've been doing the matching process, and then when we've got enough, we're then asking people to pay, so it's not a crazy amount, but it's three months worth of mentorship. The challenge we've got is you'll send the payment link to ten, fifteen people, and then it gets lost in the mail, or then they don't sign up. So we've got this kind of clunky system at the moment, we're working on. But in short, yes, we are going to be running more cohorts. So do keep, if you haven't applied, we have, you know, make sure that if you haven't seen them, go and have a look and you can apply. You don't necessarily have to join, but we can, we'll be in touch with anybody that's on that list at the moment. There's a lot of you, Sure. But they're super valuable. Sure. Right. Let's take one from Baz. So Baz quite rightly asks a couple of questions. Do marketers of any level feel like they can ask for support or feel like by asking for support puts them in a degree of negative crosshairs? Is this also why many haven't asked to pay reviews too? So I I think there was a part of the chat earlier which echoed, this question, which was like, you know, like, feeling like it's a tough thing to do and and it completely resonate. I guess if I was to offer any advice, which I fairly infrequently do, the first thing I would do is take a step back and sort of maybe seek advice and kinship and support outside of the business to start off with. It may help starting to build that muscle just to touch. Again, inevitably I point to TMM to do that, but there's plenty of other communities and spaces to do that. Where you can sort of find kinship and peers advice from other folks in the day, maybe through mentorship, maybe through in person events, etcetera, etcetera. I think in terms of like then doing the internal ask, then I can just offer support and like sort of say, yeah, like I can see how that would feel. There was chat chat comments earlier on who were sort of saying you know like being fearful of rocking the boat too much for losing the job they have, never mind getting the new job. And like it's very fair and so to feel those things again to add to a sense of feeling seen rather than a sense of a solution, and I think that's a really live thing, and like I'd be interested in folks sort of speaking about it in the chat, but also way more. Yeah, I have a, like when it comes to things like pay reviews, I'm gonna I'm gonna be a hypocrite here because I don't think I've ever actually asked for one. Because it does feel like a nerve wracking thing to do. But having been on the other side where people have said done I've I've grown in my role. I've done more. I'd like to talk to you about salaries, worst they're gonna say is I'm sorry, no, the business can't do that at the moment or I don't agree or but you're not going to be looked at negatively as an individual. If anything, I really respect those people that have come to ask for pay reviews because they're backing themselves and they usually come with like this is the extra value that I'm demonstrating. So it might feel like a really scary thing but you know, nine times out of ten, you know, these things can pay off for you. So yeah, go for it, is what I'd say. TMM topic, webinar topic, asking for a pay rise, there you go. We'll take this last one. Well, we've got Faye in the chat, who's asking if it's coming home. So, I'd say to Faye, have you seen Franz play? They're very good, but let's be optimistic. So let's go to this last question, from, Joel, who says someone in the chat mentioned that we should be better at educating our colleagues about how marketing works, paraphrasing. And I also mentioned in the chat the importance of internal marketing. What are some ways you found that to work well? So I'll offer up an anecdote more than anything which is about eighteen months ago we ran a six week webinar series asking various folks from different departments to come and speak to us as marketers about what they would love to see from marketers. So we've got finance, we've got legal, we've got a CEO etc to tell us what they wanted from marketing. And the number one thing that they wanted from marketing was a chat. And I know that it sounds like the most basic advice in the world, but I think sometimes when we sit at our desks, we allow ourselves to be a little bit siloed, and particularly when we're working remotely. And every one of the people that I spoke to in in those six weeks will like, just come speak to us, understand my world, and I'll help, and I'm very open to understanding yours. Again, basic advice, but I feel like it's it's a really important thing. The second point I'll make on that is, like, treat it as a marketing campaign in itself. You know, we are marketers. Understand the audience, find a messaging that relates, and then go for it in that way. And the reason why that's important is there'll be individual priorities, character traits, etcetera, that all seem relevant. Yeah. Any any from you James before we wrap Yeah. I I think it's one of those things where it's a two way thing. It's not marketing educating the other departments. I think the responsibility lies on the marketer's shoulders to understand those other departments as well. So as you've said, if you do have a team that has an office, go and sit with the person in operations and finance and sales and accounts, and just do the exploratory work, find out how their world works, what matters to them, and that'll allow you to build the language around how to explain your job better back to them as opposed to going to finance and just talking marketing speak. You know, you start to understand their world and then you can go, ah, this is how it's gonna help you. Yeah, would Cups of tea. There's your answer. Go and have cups of tea at marketing events and cups of tea with your tea. The world will all be solved. I love it. And way to wrap up. That's the way to wrap up. So thank you everyone for this time. The chat's been wonderful today, so thank you all for being just phenomenal. We're more grateful every day for this community, so thank you all so much for showing up. If there's anything more that we can do for you, then please know we're always around. Yeah. And yeah, if there's anything more, let us know. I think we'll leave it at that. We'll be back next Tuesday with another webinar, not with us, I mean, we'll be hosting, but not with us presenting. So thank you everyone, and we'll see you very soon. See you guys.