What you need to know:

• A little over 12 months on from launching its Competency Framework, the Australian Marketing Institute has taken the wrappers off its complementary Competency Assessment Tool to help marketing professionals rate their expertise around a raft of marketing, business and people skills.
• The tool, which can be used by individual members or teams, uses a globally aligned job title-based structure to help users and leaders build out personalised learning and development pathways against the AMI’s Competency Framework.
• As part of an annual review of its Competency Framework and the 25 original competencies it developed and uses for skills assessment and proficiency, the association has also now launched eight digital sub-competencies including AI.
• Among the first brands to sign on to use the AMI’s Competency Assessment Tool across their teams are Freedom Furniture, Wesfarmers Health and Chartered Accountants.
• While it’s impossible to be great at it all, AMI CEO, Bronwyn Heys, says being “bench ready” as a marketer requires professionals to go beyond being “one-trick ponies” and build a broader breadth of skills under their belt.
• Heys also stresses the criticality of CMOs and leaders encouraging growth mindsets and continuous learning as new tools like AI reshape marketing strategy and execution once more.

It’s not the first time AMI CEO, Bronwyn Heys, has warned marketers to be careful about becoming one-trick ponies, and it certainly won’t be the last.

Being “bench ready” as a marketer is about building a breadth of skills, according to the association leader and fractional CMO. And given how rapidly the skills required in marketing are changing at every level, being proactive about your career development is a must if you’re going to continuously learn and adapt as tools such as AI reshape marketing once more.

The remarks to Mi3 came as the AMI launches its Competency Assessment Tool, a new member offering for both individuals and corporates designed to help marketing teams figure out where their skills may be lagging against globally recognised job titles. Its debut this week comes just over 12 months after AMI took the wrappers off its Competency Framework, aimed at assisting marketers to gain visibility of, and improve their proficiency in, a sweeping set of skills and capabilities necessary for the job. The competencies don’t just reference technical marketing aptitude, but also business and people know-how. They’re then mapped to more than 100 specific marketing courses.

“I see this basically as a really powerful career development enabler for people – it’s about assessing your skills, actively shaping marketing teams and your marketing career for the future,” Heys says as her “elevator pitch” for the Competency Assessment Tool. “It’s about being bench ready. Because I know those marketers who are adaptable and have the right attitude [about learning] are going to be the ones to are going to get promoted and move on in the years to come – and not just be pigeonholed. They’ll be ones who’ve demonstrated they have that ability to flex.”

As Heys told Mi3 in the lead-up to launching the Competency Framework last year, while it’s unrealistic to think modern marketers are going to be highly proficient in such a huge array of skills, it’s critical marketers also avoid falling into the trap of becoming too specialist or narrow. Failing to proactively build your own career and learning development pathway means running an almighty risk of losing your ability to flourish as a marketer in a world where the whole undertaking of marketing keeps changing.  

“We launched the Competency Framework because we believe marketers need to build great brands and also have exceptional careers. And we believe to be able to that, they need to be proficient and relevant in marketing to achieve on both of those fronts,” Heys says. “Given the rapid rate of change in marketing and the fact that it will accelerate even more in 2025, there is a real need for every level to ensure they remain proficient and skilled up; that you can identify gaps and upskill. This is really about bridging the gap between your knowledge and your capability.”

Anecdotally, Heys says the highest demand for AMI’s courses right now – and an indication of where skills gaps are most prevalent – include commerciality and better communicating in the language of the business, plus AI.

“I can tell you, with AI, they’re knocking down the doors – everyone at every level, in every organisation, is wanting to talk to us about that,” Heys comments. “I would also say the other piece where there has definitely been a lot of interest but also recognition in terms of gaps is around commerciality… plus not being a one-trick pony, and not being just one thing in marketing.

“What I’m hearing from recruiters is they’re seeing people coming through for CMO jobs and they’re mainly performance marketers – they don’t have brand, or insights, they don’t have anything else. I don’t have a specific data point on these, but these are qualitative points which tell me there is a real need to continue to ensure that if you are going to go further in your career, you’re going to have to be more than one thing and you’re going to have to make sure you’ve got a mix of performance, brand, commerciality – and by the way, you’re going to have to have AI too. And that’s not just about using AI. It’s more strategically about how it’s going to actually transform problem solving.”

Competency evolution and review

Originally, AMI’s 25 competencies included five core marketing competencies – insights, customer experience, strategy, brand and digital – as well as a raft of other business and people competencies such as commercial acumen, planning, collaboration, resilience and sustainability. Coinciding with the debut of the new Assessment Tool and as part of an annual competency review, AMI has now introduced eight additional digital sub competencies: Search engine optimisation, performance marketing, social media marketing, ecommerce, CX and customer journey, website and app management, marketing automation and the all-important AI. Some of these were previously represented through other broader competencies but have now been beefed up into their own focus areas.

Having the complementary Competency Assessment Tool means generating personalised insights and development pathways for both individuals and teams, says Heys – something she believes is as much an investment in talent as it is in the future of your brand.

“It should be about lifelong learning – we should all have a career plan and a development path, because it’s up to ourselves to manage that and ensure we’re continuing to grow,” she says.

Heys isn’t just talking client-side marketing teams either. “I really do think this is relevant for agencies and account service, because they can actually understand what marketers do in their jobs and can work out how to create better solutions that support them beyond communications,” she adds.

How the AMI Competency Assessment Tool works

Based on globally recognised job titles – rather than industry or category specific criteria – the AMI’s Assessment Tool enables the user to assess themselves across all competencies using a sliding 1-5 scale in terms of proficiency. It can also be used by a team so peers and staff members, leaders and partners can additionally assess a person’s proficiency. These scores are then plotted on spider graphs and shared via numeric percentages to demonstrate any gaps or distinctions between views on a person’s aptitude in each area. Skills not applicable to a specific industry sector can be left unmarked.

AMI can also see an opportunity for the tool to help with benchmarking against the broader profession – both other organisations locally, but also as a way to suss out the level of skills expertise needed and in what areas to progress or switch their career path internationally. To do this, the Competency Assessment Tool plugs into global job titles and been developed in conjunction with marketing associations in Ireland, Europe and the US. The AMI’s competencies were informed by 50 interviews with CMOs across all industry categories.

“You could go in and say what are the skills I actually need to have to be a chief marketing officer, and have I got those skills versus what is expected across the industry as well,” says Heys. “It’s also useful if you’re wanting to go into a different career or may be between careers, by helping you take your skills and reinventing yourself, assessing and reassessing against that. It’ll come out and say here are your strengths and here are your opportunities.”

Freedom Furniture is one of the first brands to sign up to use the AMI’s Competency Assessment Tool at a team level, along with Wesfarmers Health and Chartered Accountants.

“If the launch of the AMI Marketers’ Competency Framework reset the bar on driving your own professional development, then the launch of the Online Assessment Tool is like getting your own personal trainer that will stick by your side, point out your opportunities and with the ability to get peer feedback, point out some of your blind spots,” Freedom GM of marketing and franchisees, Jason Piggott said. “No matter where you are on your professional journey, this tool is a licence to operate and will guide your development discussions, connect you with the AMI courses and seminars to build this muscle, and ultimately drive your career further, faster.”

Setting the tone for development and growth

One of the concerns employees commonly have against skills assessment tools more broadly is the fear of repercussions should they fess up to not having requisite skills proficiency or score lower than expected in particular areas. While individual scoring is confidential, Heys believes it’s up to leaders to ensure these exercises are put in a constructive light when used for team talent development.

“I would always say the leader should set the tone about encouraging a growth mindset in the team and the fact that we’re lifelong learners,” she says. “If I was the leader of the team, I would be saying, there’s no way I’m an expert in all of these – I would be using my own assessment as a demonstration with total transparency. It takes a level of vulnerability from the leader to show that actually, we aren’t all a five on everything, and to build that psychological safety and trust around the process.

“In my experience as a CMO, those people who always came to me expressing where they had opportunities were also the people who actually got those opportunities and ended up growing and being promoted.”

As to where the Competency Framework goes next, Heys indicate more people competencies are in her sights, particularly with the growth of AI.

“Creativity is going to just continue to be really important; the ability to problem solve is still going to be really, really important,” she says. “Some of the competencies will get automated over time, and that means we’re going to have to build a lot more human-centred skill in there.”