The marketing industry has, and will always be, one that is constantly evolving. As technology advances, careers and role responsibilities adapt to keep pace with customers’ needs. However, some more recent developments have marketers paying extra close attention.

As ANZ’s executive manager of marketing strategy and capability, Kate Young acts as the bank’s marketing futurist. Young has a remit for understanding growing marketing trends and future skills, closely watching emerging technologies, industry shifts and the two words that persistently dominate the conversation: artificial intelligence (AI).

Change is a constant

In my more than 25-year career in marketing roles across finance, retail, property, hospitality and tourism, I’ve seen the transformation of marketers and marketing in real time. What has remained clear to me, is that despite many great technological advances, new data insights and content channels, a marketing function’s success is reliant on its people.

It’s evident to anyone that the marketing industry – and every industry – is facing an unprecedented level of technological and ideological change. But to truly understand the needs of customers and how they interact with brands to deliver strong commercial outcomes, it is vital for an organisation to look beyond the efficiencies of technology and develop a team of marketers who are constantly learning, customer-focused and tooled with modern skills and abilities.

Learn, apply, then learn again

New technology is incredibly exciting, especially at ANZ, where we pride ourselves on being at the forefront of innovation and possibility. However, our vision is bolder than this and relies on technology and people working in collaboration, complementing and improving each other.

For our marketers, this means maintaining an optimal level of performance across key areas that are relative to the needs of our customers and the industry. To achieve this, ANZ positions long-term career development as the cornerstone of success and seeks to retain and attract talent through fulfilling employee experiences and growth opportunities.

New technology has allowed us to support marketers like never before – implementing personalised and systemised roadmaps for toolsets, skillsets and mindsets that support an all-encompassing capability uplift.

As our marketers advance their careers, they contribute by applying enhanced skills and solving complex business challenges. This ongoing learning and application of learning creates a continuous cycle that ensures ANZ stays competitive and adaptable to changing market dynamics.

In the case of AI, this has not meant reducing the responsibilities of our marketers but instead upskilling them with expertise – such as AI auditing for algorithm bias by looking at three key differentiating factors: empathy, creativity and ethics. These three areas are of crucial importance in the task of connecting with our customers and are areas that technology famously fails to comprehend.

Despite AI having a conversational monopoly when discussing new technology, it is vital to understand that it is merely one tool in a suite of emerging tools that will influence the industry. The need for marketers to understand this further demonstrated to us the importance of creating a modern and evolving learning and development (L&D) program.

The importance of always learning

It’s ANZ’s ‘always learning’ approach to marketing that fuelled the creation and continuous evolution of its state-of-the-art L&D programs, Marketing Masters. The ambitious initiative commenced in 2019 where I led the design of the program with a team of some of the best minds in marketing to foster innovation, upskilling and reskilling with the bank’s marketers.

Our strategy is anchored in a capability network that utilises global best practices and emerging industry trends. This framework consists of 21 core customer-centric capabilities – each defined across three ‘Levels of Mastery’, detailing performance expectations and role requirements. It encourages marketers to assess their skills and create personalised learning plans with their leaders.

By continuously developing the abilities of our marketers, it has enhanced our marketing function beyond what we initially deemed possible and far beyond the current capabilities of technology, were it to attempt to ingest the roles of our marketers and operate independently.

Making our marketers masters

Since its inception, Marketing Masters has constantly matured and reinvented itself to be relevant to the market and our marketers. This has involved a plethora of learning opportunities, in the form of unparalleled mentorships, training sessions and multi-day summits, seminars and business projects.

But Marketing Masters is far more than just classroom learning. Running alongside their personalised capability uplift roadmap, the program is a two-speed strategy that champions training and on-the-job coaching that integrates with real-life business projects. This process makes learning directly applicable and impactful – accelerating organisational development and enhancing project outcomes.

In FY25 Marketing Masters will continue to grow and expand, pivoting to provide marketers greater accessibility to the program, sharing blueprints and playbooks for thinking and output, streamlining our tools and processes and setting a clear purpose for marketing and capability uplift at ANZ.

The new industry standard

As ANZ’s Marketing Masters has developed, it has made waves across the industry and garnered significant attention on a national and international scale.

In August of 2024, ANZ and the Marketing Masters team were awarded the Best Learning & Development award in Campaign Asia-Pacific’s Best Places to Work 2024. The Australia Pacific-wide competition celebrates organisations who empower their employees and awarded ANZ for a development program that cultivated a learning culture and provided an environment that promoted growth, engagement and professional development.

Additionally, coursework from various learning modules within the Marketing Masters program has received Australian Marketing Institute (AMI) industry accreditation – validating its robust and industry-leading curriculum. Many employers run internal training, but having AMI’s accreditation demonstrates the high-calibre of training and encourages further participation by garnering recognition within the bank and on an industry-wide level.

The result of putting people first

ANZ’s Marketing division has been able to track dramatic positive shifts internally through the implementation of our learning and development initiatives.

Since introducing Marketing Masters to ANZ, engagement with the program has risen to 96 percent and has consequently delivered a huge lift in efficiencies and results across the business. The 2023 employee satisfaction survey showed a 21 percent incremental uplift in staff feeling they had access to growth opportunities since the launch in 2019.

Similarly, we saw an incremental uplift of 29 percent in staff who felt “someone in the organisation has an interest in their growth”. This satisfaction is mirrored by nearly all of ANZ’s marketers using the self-assessment tools and growth development plans that are personalised for their professional journey.

These results demonstrate the profound effect of businesses igniting their marketer’s aspirations and developing their abilities. These new found capabilities provided and continue to provide substantial personal career growth, optimising ANZ’s marketing function, keeping it agile and commercially minded in a way that ultimately deepens customer relations, reduces costs and contributes to improved business outcomes.

Additionally, this impact drastically increases the reputation of the bank as a whole and our ability to attract and retain elite marketing talent.

Here, now and the future

One of the biggest contemporary challenges we have faced is designing new programs for rapidly emerging technology. Keeping up with the pace of evolution is difficult. Newly implemented programs are quickly becoming out of date as the technology continues to evolve, meaning the skills our marketers learnt yesterday may no longer be applicable.

In this lies the genius and impenetrability of Marketing Masters and ANZ’s commitment to always learning. While leaps in technology determine the toolsets our marketers will need, our L&D programs are actively meeting them in the middle – meaning our team will fully understand the technology, how they can apply it and most importantly, how they can position themselves alongside it.

But regardless, the fundamentals of marketing remain the same and lay the foundations for success. The ability to connect with people, tell stories and understand important insights remain at the core of good marketers. Adapting these skills to the latest technologies, channels and opportunities is key to delivering impactful campaigns and being a growth driver for your organisation now and well into the future.

Kate Young is the ANZ executive manager of marketing strategy and capability. She has more than 20 years of experience in large, complex organisations spanning B2B, B2B2C and B2C markets across multiple industries. Young spearheads ANZ’s Marketing Masters, a constantly evolving industry-first talent program that has been built to ensure their marketers are continually armed with unique skills to flourish in the new era of modern marketing.

Also, delve behind-the-scenes of ANZ’s ‘DoppelFalcons’ campaign with those that created it.

Contributor: Kate Young – ANZ, Executive Manager – Marketing Strategy & Capability

Learn more about the AMI Accreditation & Endorsement: https://ami.org.au/training/accreditation-and-endorsement/