Introducing the “Renaissance Marketer” Concept

We live in a new world now, dominated by fast-moving technology and greater consumer awareness. Marketing Leaders must evolve, from a single purpose (brand) with cost-based activities to a multi-disciplined (brand, product, finance) leader with contributions in driving long-term growth. This new type of marketing leader is the “Renaissance Marketer.”

The great “renaissance” icons of the past—Leonardo Da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin—are known as “polymaths,” which are people who have breadth (wide-ranging knowledge), depth (deep vertical knowledge) and the ability to integrate by connecting and synthesizing disparate networks of information.

Marketers are in the perfect intersection where art, science, and creativity come together. Therefore, Marketers are primed to be the new renaissance thinkers…

By adopting and leveraging the “Renaissance Marketer” concept, marketing leaders and aspiring marketers will be able to drive further innovation in their domains.

See full transcript below.

Transcript

Hi, my name is Rose Jia and I’m very excited to talk to you about something that is near and dear to my heart: Renaissance Marketer, the next generation of leadership.

But first, let’s start with who I am and why I can speak to this topic. I lead paid media, awareness and discovery for one of Amazon’s fastest growing businesses: ultrafast grocery, which includes brands Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods.

But I wasn’t always a marketer. I took a very unconventional path that ended up giving me my superpower. I was a history major in college. I obsessed over military strategy because I saw its applications to other aspects of life, especially business. After college, I became an Investment Banker. I learned all about driving business and shareholder value as well as topline growth and bottom line profits. And then, I found my calling in marketing. I was opened to a world of human behavior and how it translated to revenues. I quickly studied up on behavioral economics and thoroughly agreed with its main premise that consumers are not always rational when making purchase decisions. As in, I have made many many (sometimes regretful) purchases because of an emotional trigger that I felt with that product.

As a marketer, I was surrounded by tech entrepreneurs and forward thinkers. And, I longed to build skills beyond brand and digital marketing.

To cut my teeth in the tech world, I built two startup platforms: one, diving deep into technology and its disruptions in traditional industries; and the other: gamifying whisky education.

Every differing experience, from working in financial services to entertainment, from being a banker to being a marketer, from running my own startups to being a part of a corporate conglomerate… all of that helped me achieve my super power: the ability to connect disparate dots, and create something new. I combined my skills in marketing and product to design native ad units that viewers wanted to watch, like a movie trailer. I used my startup skills to mesh with my corporate mandate to build tools for small business owners. And now, I’m employing my financial background to reframe marketing spend as an investment portfolio of channels and capabilities that will drive compounding ROI in the future. I call this being a “Renaissance Marketer.”

Why Renaissance? Renaissance was a period of time when art, architecture, math, & science all fused together. For example, Leonardo Da Vinci (on the left) incorporated scientific principles, such as human anatomy into his artwork. Aside from painting the famous “Mona Lisa” and “The Last Supper”, Leonardo was also an inventor, an architect, and a scientist. He was the quintessential “Renaissance Man”

Like the great masters of the Renaissance period, America’s founding father Benjamin Franklin (on the right) was also a man of many talents. He was an inventor (creating bifocals) and he was also a statesman (he got the rest of the world to recognize our thirteen states as a nation). 

But what do these iconic people have in common? They’re known as Polymaths. Psychology Today broke down “polymath” into 3 parts:

1. Breadth: having wide-ranging knowledge in very distinct areas
2. Depth: having vertical knowledge in specific areas
3. Integration: Ability to connect and synthesize disparate networks of information.

Which leads to… innovation.

Innovation has oftentimes been equated with net-new (never been discovered) ideas… but that’s rare. In the hundreds of thousands of years we have been on this earth, almost everything that could be considered net-new has been created, discovered or at least thought-of… but innovation isn’t just about net-new… it’s about bringing together disparate information and reshaping it in a new and different way… which is essentially creativity. 

According to Professor Robert Root-Bernstein,

Marketers are in the perfect intersection where art, science, and creativity come together. Therefore, Marketers are primed to be the new renaissance thinkers…

In the past, Marketers have focused on:

• A singular purpose (building the brand)
• Activities were considered costs because it was spending on advertising
• And the reliance on the art part of marketing was greater than the science

But we live in a new world now, dominated by fast-moving technology and greater consumer awareness. Thus, Marketers must evolve:

• We must become multi-disciplined (brand, product, CX)
• We must reframe our contributions as growth drivers
• We must balance art and science

Thus, the new Marketer must become a “Renaissance Marketer”:

1. Clearly a Marketer, who has the ability to employ psychology and tell engaging stories
2. But also a Data scientist, who can gather customer data and build feedback loops
3. As well as a Product manager, who can develop new technologies to help drive growth (CX, UX)
4. And of course a Financier, who can drive return on investment

What this means is a shift in mindset—from growth mindset to investment mindset. Growth mindset implies infinite capacity to learn and grow, but let’s be honest, we have finite time and resources. One must continuously make trade-offs. So we must think about marketing efforts like any other “investment” … aka growth overtime, thus putting the impetus on driving long-term value over short-term gains.

You might ask, what will Marketing Leaders invest in?

1. Technology: there has been a ton of new martech developed in last several years. CMOs will invest to build in-house or integrate with best-in-class solutions
2. Resources: think about product roadmaps, want to look into new platforms, and consider the investment returns of their ad spend
3. People: because people are pipeline of future innovation

Leonardo Da Vinci surrounded himself with people of diverse backgrounds and passions b/c it sparked creativity. He recognized the power of innovation through diversity…. and so do the most innovative marketing leaders.

Here are some modern day examples of Renaissance Marketers:

• Steve Jobs was one of the best marketers in the world, but he was also an engineer, a salesman, and a designer. He revolutionized how we think about personal computing. I mean, just look at how the mobile phone has become a major appendage. 
• Antonio Lucio, former FB CMO, often mentioned how as a CMO he has to be a ”businessman first and artisan second” indicating his role as the head marketer is to the “chief brand officer, chief people officer, chief alignment officer and chief storyteller”.
• Joanne Bradford, SoFi CMO, was the chief operating officer prior to serving as CMO, which is a testament to her analytical and leadership skills. 
• Diana O’Brien, Deloitte CMO, was a management consultant in healthcare & life sciences prior to running marketing. 
• Deborah Yeh, Sephora CMO, built engagement apps that helped people “try on” makeup digitally vs. just running advertising.
• Kristin Lemkau, former JPMC CMO, now CEO of Wealth Management division, has led the charge on combating issues of ad fraud and brand safety, and had her team develop its own algorithm on YouTube to ensure that its ads didn’t end up next to inappropriate videos.

Prompt – So, think about your future as a marketer – do you exhibit the traits of a Renaissance Marketer?  

• Are you a sponge for knowledge?
• Are you keeping up with new technologies?
• Are you applying what you’re learning?
• Are developing your skills?
• Are you building a diverse network?

I have created RenaissanceMarketer.com to help aspiring marketers and established marketing leaders adopt this way of thinking…