Five big benefits to big business marketing

Reflecting back over my time marketing at O2 (and now Virgin Media O2), working within a huge brand and large organisation has given me more than just brand awareness to leverage in market when it comes to marketing advantages. I was very conscious coming in that I would be working for a large corporate and that can come with a negative connotation – particularly in an industry like marketing, but my experience on the whole has been really positive.

As the largest and most established business I’ve worked for in my marketing career it was quite a transition, and from my time in the business I’ve uncovered layers of complexity and consideration I’d never experienced before, but also a richness or expertise and support that surprised me. There have been a few areas in particular where I’ve experienced considerable benefit from marketing in such a large organisation:

1.?????A platform to do more

Being part of a large organisation, particularly one where a key value is being bold/brave gives license (particularly in the marketing world) to try out more approaches, test and learn, and prioritise innovation (although an interesting contrast to some of the well-established processes at times). Marketing budgets are often sufficient for portioning a percentage to testing without huge risk to your results and there are lots of learnings around the wider business to benefit from when it comes to channel and approach testing, so you don’t need to do all the hard yards yourself.

I’ve seen the benefit of entire teams dedicated to customer innovation, and that as a marketing tool is so valuable in enabling us to walk the talk when it comes to true-strategic partnership around innovation with customers and prospects. Also a brilliant source of insight and wonderful content to fuel our assets and channels.

Then from a personal perspective the business gives us time and often resources to support charitable endeavours as well as learning and development. Prioritising doing good in the community is even part of objectives and yearly reviews, which makes taking part in these activities really easy and supported. And there are ample learning and development opportunities at our fingertips in the form of online learning resources, internal and external speakers, workshops, dedicated periods in the year where everyone makes the effort to share and contribute to learning and PDPs, leading to more skilled marketeers and better quality work.

You can do more in a large organisation in my experience because there’s more to do more with.

2.?????Learning from the best

I always think besides ‘on the job’ learning, (my definition: being thrown into the deep end and finding your way through it), learning from the example of mentors and senior leaders within the business is the next best way to grow. With the wide range of skilled leaders in a large organisation – you have great access to some of the best in the industry to learn from and this helps improve your own performance matching up to these talents (you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with after all). That’s not only learning from the example set by your own department/marketing leaders, but getting access to senior leaders from cross-functional teams, getting plenty of exposure to sales, product, commercial, operations etc that can offer varying perspectives and leadership/business styles to learn from and feed into your marketing.

Also a lovely observation I’ve realised; within large organisations you have the structure and frameworks to give more junior members of the team exposure to these senior leaders. For example I’ve seen our grads given access to mentoring, reverse-mentoring, skip-level feedback, development weeks, presenting opportunities – all common-place inside a large organisation, and not just exclusive to grads. In fact I’d benefited from a 121 mentoring session with the MD as part of the ‘Development week’ programme of activities which I took a lot away from. Having these kinds of opportunities really makes a difference.

3.?????Team play is the only way

At first the task of delivering anything in such large, complex organisation was overwhelming and a source of great frustration, especially when I was yet to learn the processes, teams and players that can help. But as I grew more familiar with the structure; I realised having everyone pulling in the same way, and bringing their expertise and experience to the table, from product, to brand, to marketing ops, to legal was a great asset. Yes, that requires a strong handle on project and stakeholder management, as well as intrapersonal and negotiation skills, but with a sizable project group comes great support, variety of ideas and specialists within the business that have your back. My advice here is to make sure that you’re clear on responsibilities, handover points and managing expectations well for where you need the input from the wider team vs where you can make decisions on your own to avoid managing by committee.

The expertise in a large organisation around things like data protection, governance and legal considerations are also hugely valuable at keeping us out of hot water when it comes to sensitive issues of data gathering and management that are prominent in demand generation and precision targeting of campaigns. Whilst the extra layer of review and approval tends to impact timings the most, and can often disrupt some of the creative process, the confidence that comes from having a ‘legal marketing’ or ‘legal data’ team stamp of approval on your communications is reassuring.

In my view to run the most successful activity, marketing or otherwise you need to build allies.

It may sound obvious, but taking the time to help your colleagues, go the extra mile and add value wherever you can and taking the time to build those relationships will really help you so much when it comes to the time when you need a favour. And in marketing you’re often faced with time pressures, challenging conversations and resource asks – so building your bank of favours and good-will is a lifesaver.

4.?????Negotiation power

It may sound a little cold, but the negotiation strength you can leverage as part of a large organisation is very helpful. This helps in a lot of functions I’m sure, but from a marketing perspective particularly looking at suppliers, partner and media. We can achieve much higher levels of media efficiency, for example, buying in the scale that a large organisation can deploy (particularly one with a consumer arm). We also benefit from the support of some of the best agencies and creatives around, keen to work on our high profile brand, leveraging decent-sized marketing budgets as well the internal resources expertise and insight we’re able to connect to within a large organisation.

Also when launching new initiatives you’re never short of interested parties to get involved, be that partners, suppliers or customers. The weight of the brand and organisation size bring a sense of security and confidence to pave the way to doing more interesting things like collaborations, innovative formats and involvement in customer events/activities. Our media and social partners often help facilitate channel testing with signing us up to Betas and trials to further support our testing initiatives.

Also rather helpfully (okay sometimes annoyingly and persistently) I’m inundated with potential suppliers keen to partner with the business to test new martech/solutions/data/innovations etc. That makes my job very easy when looking to stretch and improve the way we currently do things, it all lands in my inbox with minimal prompting for me to take my pick. Now launching any of those initiatives often take a considerable amount of work, but as we all know, taking the first step is the hardest, momentum often helps you with the rest.

5.?????Process rigour:

Sometimes seen as a challenge, a large organisation has a wealth of process, structure and templates for all different areas to help bring order to the chaos which is actually invaluable in managing what is an uncertain and ever-changing industry. The normalising of processes, tools and systems is invaluable for delivering at scale (although admittedly not always as quick as I’d like but a good deal quicker than wading through the chaos of no process at all).

Also with the high volume of data we have as a result of some of the above processes, as well as the scale of the organisation, we can often make meaningful judgements and insights from the data. We have a large enough sample size and validity for our conclusions – which is helpful for steering the ship and our marketing plans.

And the focus on reporting, commercials and the necessity of communication means that in marketing (as a notoriously challenging area to pin down ROI) you’re more driven to fill some of those gaps. Working harder to uncover attribution, ROMI and build in the measures and reporting to bring these metrics to life to help the wider business understand the value of marketing by speaking more of the language of sales and commercials. The trick is balancing expectations.

It’s not always possible to 100% attribute in marketing, there are always grey areas, but the drive to find indicators to help fill the gaps in my view is invaluable in communicating the true value of marketing.

In summary

Working in a large organisation might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it does offer real value to ambitious entrepreneurial marketers who if they’re considerate in their efforts, understand the nuances of the internal stakeholders, and can work with the processes (as well as know how/when to navigate around them) can experience real success, growth and achievement. It’s certainly helped me grow significantly in the nearly three years I’ve been part of the team, and has given me lots of lessons and considerations that I’ll be taking with me for many years ahead.

My time at Virgin Media O2 Business is drawing to a close as I take on my next adventure so if you think the above environment is just what you’re looking for in your next move, have B2B marketing and leadership experience and a healthy dose of ambition, please reach out.?