What you need to know:

• Marketing risks becoming undermined by a widening capability chasm with marketers in narrow swim-lanes – think either brand, demand generation or CX – at best narrowing their career options and at worst facing obsolescence.
• To bridge the gap, the AMI is coming to market with a full funnel capability push in a bid to build best in class marketers – that are universally recognised as such – while driving uptake of its own Certified Practising Marketer (CPM) accreditation program via a new Competency Framework.
• Only marketers with a decade of experience under their belts can become a CPM, second only to the peak accreditation of AMI Fellow. But there a range of programs to get there – with the AMI launching a slew of new initiatives in the 2024 – and the new framework is a good place to start.
• AMI CEO Bronwyn Powell ultimately wants certified marketers to be held in the same regard as other accredited professions, such as engineering, accounting or medicine.
• But as well as upskilling, she urges marketers to get out of their categories to broaden their capability and thinking.
• The likes of Sweta Mehra, ANZ’s former CMO turned head of Everyday Banking, agrees on both counts (ANZ is aligned with the AMI’s accreditation program), as does Lion’s Chief Growth Officer Anubha Sahasrabuddhe.

Marketers risk painting themselves into a career corner. Too many are too narrow in their skillsets, warns AMI CEO Bronwyn Powell – and the rush for digital capability is widening core disciplinary holes. She’s urging marketers to upskill, jump between verticals and roles and go broader, better equipping themselves to drive growth both for their businesses and their own professional future.

Powell has walked the talk. A former global marketing chief at KFC, she’s also led marketing and innovation at the likes of Mars, Coca-Cola Amatil, 20^th Century Fox, George Weston Foods and long list of others.

Taking the helm at the AMI last year, she’s now coming to market with a full funnel capability push in a bid to build best in class marketers – that are universally recognised as such – while driving uptake of its own Certified Practising Marketer (CPM) accreditation program via a new Competency Framework.

The framework, which helps markers first asses their skills and then develop them, is the upshot of conversations with 50 CMOs locally as well as collaboration with the Irish Marketing Association, UK Chartered Institute of Marketing, and the European Marketing Association.

Available to members from next month, it outlines 25 competencies to drive marketing proficiency in five critical areas: Insights, customer experience, strategy, brand and digital. These straddle sectors including B2C, B2B, FMCG, professional services, government and SMEs.

“The skill sets required to be a marketer today are changing so rapidly, and the need to remain relevant has been a critical piece for us,” Powell told Mi3. “Over the last three years, the board realised we had a role to play as the pre-eminent professional organisation for marketers in Australia to ensure marketers are relevant and proficient. This is so they not only grow brands in Australia and fuel their own careers but inspire other great marketing careers as well.” 

The key challenge is the breadth of remit and evolving skills mix marketers are expected to cover. The continued march of martech, data-driven marketing, digitisation and media channel fragmentation has led many to specialise and develop deep category or technical expertise – but often limiting their ability to see the bigger picture as well as their career options.

“There are so many marketers focused much further down the funnel, and more in performance marketing, and they don't have those core marketing competencies. I've been around for a while and grew up in FMCG, which is the godfather of things like data analytics, insights, strategy and brand. You don't see them as often. But isn't that fundamental to marketing and the core of what marketing is about?” Powell told Mi3.

“Yes, you need digital, martech and all those pieces. But you also need to fundamentally be able to understand what a brand is and how to describe a brand. Brand positioning, brand essence and what makes up a brand are key.”

Broad or bust

Powell accepts marketers are unlikely to reach advanced proficiency in all competencies – and that deep, specialist skills will always be in demand. But it’s incumbent on marketers, particularly those at emerging and mid-level points in their careers, to take more accountability for their career trajectory and gain a broader array of skill befitting the profession, she said.

Powell’s not the only one taking that line. Narrow specialism won’t cut it, Lion Chief Growth Officer Anubha Sahasrabuddhe recently told Mi3, and generalists that can cover all bases stand a far better chance of making not just marketing’s top rung, but the broader c-suite. Sahasrabuddhe urges marketers to go as broad as possible in both capability and thinking.

ANZ is another major proponent of cross skilling and upskilling across its marketing function, circa 300 people. Under then-CMO Sweta Mehra and program lead Kate Young, ANZ has developed Brand Academy and Marketing Masters programs that tackle the biggest challenges in the industry one module at a time: Data and insights gathering, market intelligence, portfolio economics and business implications, for example. It has since been endorsed by the AMI – and it's telling that Mehra, like Lion's Sahasrabuddhe, is a strong proponent of going broad. Mehra has since moved up to become Managing Director of Everyday Banking at ANZ.

Non-linear thinking

Powell said most marketers – 69 per cent, per the AMI’s research – recognise they need to adapt and want to acquire new skills. But they also have to know where to start in order to get where they want to end-up.

“This is more about competencies, skills and where are my gaps, as well as how I fill the gaps. What are the behaviours I need to demonstrate to show I have a competency on insights, or brand on digital? What are the behaviours around that?  Then there’s an assessment guide that goes along with it to help you map your career,” Powell said.

“If you don't know where your career is going, you could end up anywhere. What I do say to people is when you jump between verticals and industries it can be a good thing, because it will help you on those competencies. There are a lot of people I know who have been in that one swim lane, like FMCG, who can't get out of it. They haven't got digital or martech, they haven't got this piece and they can't move.”

Hence Powell believes marketing careers should no longer be considered linear, particular the first 10 years.

“To broaden that skill set, people need to think laterally and make lateral moves. That means going from a much more performance-based marketing job into a brand job. That may feel scary, but you’re going to come out the other end with performance-based and brand-based skills and bring those together,” she said. “It is one of the things we recognise with these new ‘career pathways’ and when you’re assessing your skills. You need to be open to making some lateral moves to get that. No longer is it about starting my job here and going straight up a ladder.”

Brand overhaul

The AMI has made an overhaul of its own identity in a bid to better reflect the organisations’ professional intent – showing up in a bolder, more modern way to reflect the ‘brilliance’ of the professional marketer.

The new brand identity, developed with Hulsbosch, centres on a diamond design with a new colour palette, typography, imagery and graphic style. Powell told Mi3 the AMI made a conscious decision to leave subtlety behind.

“We need to ensure we are bringing to life our whole proposition, which is about inspiring brilliance in marketers. Our logo brings that together; diamonds are brilliant, marketers are brilliant – that’s what we want marketers to be,” she said.

“We're trying to be more fit-for-purpose for the future marketer in the way we show up in our overall brand identity,” per Powell. “Showing up for change,” she said, reflects both the AMI and its membership, which she aims to increase to 10,000 by 2025 and triple the number of certified marketers within that mix while putting certified marketers on an equal footing with other professions, such as “doctors, engineers and accountants.”

“This is about setting us up for our future ambition of what we want to be,” Powell said.

Calling all marketers – and agencies

Since January, the association has been doubling the rate of CPMs in its member base by more concertedly highlighting the importance of accreditation.

CPM and the forthcoming Competency Framework isn’t just for a client-side marketer – it’s open to anyone in the marketing industry said Powell.

“That means a career marketer’s partners. We have lots of CPMs already who are agency leads, or own agencies ... Because they're all part of marketing.” The same invitation applies to the broader media supply chain, said Powell.

Proficiency pipeline

Alongside the forthcoming Competency Framework launch, the association has renewed its fortnightly webinar program, refreshed its emerging marketer mentoring program, extended partnerships around training and development, including university accreditation programs, and cemented relationships with international associations so members can be part of a global marketing community.

A refreshed AMI Excellence Awards for 2023 seeks to recognise marketing professional performance, not just campaign performance. Also on the cards is a relaunch of the CPM program next year, recognising a combination of marketing expertise, experience, brand and people leadership across marketers of at least 10 years tenure in the profession. CPMs are then expected to undertake a minimum of 100 points of CPD Continued Professional Maintenance Programs annually to retain certification.

Ongoing disciplinary rigour is essential in putting certified marketing accreditation on an equal footing with other certified professions, said Powell, though she accepts that marketing can never rely on the mathematical certainties that are fundamental to engineering and accounting.

“We know marketing is both right and left brain, science and art. The art piece is where it starts to make it more difficult. But in CPM assessments, there are 650 points you have to achieve based on education, levels of experience, size of team and size of brand. There are numeric pieces we assess you on, rather than just whether you have a head of marketing title or not. We undertake a proper assessment and assign points in the same way you would have points to achieve as a CPA, and this goes through a review committee. We are trying to put more discipline behind what that looks like,” she said.

“Now more than ever, we need to be trusted that we are great marketers and to be able to be do things ethically with integrity and trust,” added Powell. “Integrity and ethics are in our competencies and are critical in terms of how we show up as professional marketers. There’s too much out here that we know isn't.”