Isn't all marketing performance driven? Lauren Bradeen, CMO and Partner at Deloitte, challenges the traditional brand-versus-performance debate in her conversation with Alison Simpson, CEO of the CMA. When Lauren stepped into the CMO role, she was driven to evolve the B2B marketing industry playbook. Now she's leading a transformation to help B2B marketers build marketing teams that are confident in the value they bring, rather than constantly justifying every dollar. Plus, Lauren shares why being a 'capability collector' is the secret to career advancement.

00:00:01 :18 - 00:00:23 :09
Presenter
Welcome to CMA Connect Canada's marketing podcast, where industry experts discuss how marketers must manage the tectonic shifts that will change how brands and businesses are built for tomorrow, while also delivering on today's business needs. With your host CMA CEO Alison Simpson.

00:00:23 :11 - 00:00:47 :22
Alison
I'm very happy to welcome Lauren Bradeen, Chief Marketing Officer and Partner at Deloitte Canada, for today's episode. Lauren is leading a comprehensive marketing transformation that's redefining how one of the world's premier professional services firms is approaching the integration of brand and performance marketing. Her expertise and strategic thinking have been showcased in industry publications, where she's contributed insights on the evolving challenges facing modern marketers.

00:00:48 :00 - 00:01:10 :06
Alison
Lauren's also been actively engaged in developing the next generation of marketing talent, recently participating as a guest speaker at our CMA NXT Marketing Careers Night, and she was also a judge for this year's CMA Awards. What sets Lauren apart is her journey from in the business into marketing leadership. She really understands how Deloitte works with clients, the processes behind it, and how to speak the language of the business.

00:01:10 :08 - 00:01:33 :06
Alison
Currently, she's leading Deloitte Marketing through what she calls the messy middle, an important part of any transformation. And they're moving from an operational marketing function to a strategic brand and growth engine with their own targets and accountability, all while maintaining Deloitte's position as the number one brand globally in the category. With marketing leaders across industries grappling with the false choice between brand building and performance marketing,

00:01:33 :07 - 00:01:46 :02
Alison
Lauren's approach can offer a roadmap for how these traditionally siloed functions really need to work together to drive real business success. Welcome, Lauren, I am absolutely thrilled to have you join us here today, and I'm looking forward to a terrific conversation.

00:01:46 :04 - 00:01:48 :04
Lauren
Thank you. Alison. So am I.

00:01:48 :06 - 00:01:59 :04
Alison
So let's get started with your story. When you stepped into the CMO role at Deloitte, what was it that resonated for you about that role and what were some of your early priorities?

00:01:59 :06 - 00:02:20 :08
Lauren
So I would offer that my journey into the role might have been a little bit more unconventional, as I was actually offered the role while on maternity leave, and so that really provided me a bit of space without an existing mandate to be focused on, to really think about the opportunity. And there were three things that surfaced for me.

00:02:20 :10 - 00:02:42 :12
Lauren
The first was to drive a greater impact for the firm. And so this role supports all of our businesses and all of our industries. And so within that, I have the opportunity to actually learn from and work with leaders across operate and consulting services and tax and legal, ER and I G.P.S. And so that was really, really interesting for me.

00:02:42 :14 - 00:03:14 :23
Lauren
The second was I had felt like the B2B playbook had not made as much progress over the last decade. And so I was excited about this opportunity for an industry that felt pretty ripe for transformation. And then the third piece was, what an honour. And so when they offered me the role, I felt like from a personal career perspective, the growth, the leadership opportunity to work with this large, incredible team, it just felt like something that I absolutely couldn't turn down.

00:03:15 :01 - 00:03:38 :13
Lauren
And so being on maternity leave, that also gave me a bit of space in a different way to think about what I wanted to do before I actually started the role. And so as I stepped into the role, the immediate priorities I had gone in with a bit of like blue sky unconstrained strategy, what were all the things that I would have loved when I was in the business?

00:03:38 :15 - 00:03:57 :18
Lauren
And then once I started the role and did my listening tour, in that first month, I was really able to validate, invalidate, gain new ideas from the team, hear all the things that they had always wanted to do, but maybe felt like they couldn't. And so right off the bat, the focus was just getting the strategy set.

00:03:57 :19 - 00:04:15 :07
Lauren
I started in Q2 as well for Deloitte, and so I felt like if I waited too long, it could actually be a bit more disruptive. And so we got that strategy in place, shared out this strategy so that everybody on the team felt part of and very clear on, what was our mission and what were we rallying around.

00:04:15 :08 - 00:04:36 :03
Lauren
And then the immediate priorities were around the areas that needed the most modernization in order to deliver on that strategy. And so we set up what we called task forces. There was about six of them, they're like mini consulting projects around things like digital transformation and KPIs and measurement. There were a few new capabilities we wanted to stand on, like our content studio.

00:04:36 :05 - 00:04:40 :06
Lauren
And so those were the immediate priorities that we took on once I stepped into the role.

00:04:40 :08 - 00:04:52 :13
Alison
I absolutely love that Deloitte gave you the promotion when you were on mat leave. That speaks so incredibly well of the culture, and the signal that that would have sent across the organization is incredibly powerful.

00:04:52 :15 - 00:05:10 :03
Lauren
I will reinforce that. I felt incredibly honoured and also very proud of Deloitte for giving me that opportunity while on maternity leave. I also asked my leader, like, do you think this is something that I can do as a new mom? And she was like, I think you can do this because you're a new mom. Like the the perspective you'll bring.

00:05:10 :03 - 00:05:15 :13
Lauren
And so that was definitely a very proud moment for me, for the firm.

00:05:15 :15 - 00:05:45 :02
Alison
That's amazing. Now, one of the big themes in marketing today is the ongoing tension between brand marketing and performance marketing. It is so often treated as an "either or" instead of an "and" relationship. So with that as a backdrop, I know you're leading a significant transformation at Deloitte around performance marketing. I'd love you to share your approach to structuring and changing marketing within the organization to be more performance driven, acknowledging that the brand part is an important part of driving that performance as well.

00:05:45 :03 - 00:06:08 :04
Lauren
So first and foremost, I've never loved the term performance marketing. I can appreciate that what felt like quite suddenly, marketers could track a sale and attribute a dollar to the marketing spend. It was very exciting. But I actually think we did a disservice by categorizing a part of marketing as performance, because then what is everything else in service of?

00:06:08 :06 - 00:06:32 :00
Lauren
And so I feel like the pendulum swung now back to needing a more balanced approach. And that's absolutely how we are embracing it. And so we call it "from brand to demand". And all marketing is performance driven. But it's in service of different KPIs. And so in terms of how we're thinking about performance marketing holistically, and you need that KPI framework.

00:06:32 :00 - 00:07:03 :01
Lauren
So we have quantifiable KPIs across brand, eminence consideration and growth. And we work in service of that KPI framework. The next thing I'd say, that we have done, again, in service of this broader performance marketing definition, is being a little bit less binary around how we look at spend. And so I think even when performance marketing started being talked about, you'd say, okay, well, we need to invest this percentage of our budget on performance marketing and then this percentage on everything else.

00:07:03 :03 - 00:07:27 :07
Lauren
Whereas the percentage splits or the way in which you flex your budget is very dependent on what you are marketing and the challenges that you're facing. We know that through things like media mixed modelling and different incrementality and approaches, you're going to learn what the right budget split at a given time is. But I do think we need to be more fluid in our approaches to budget and spending.

00:07:27 :12 - 00:07:58 :01
Lauren
And so we're really thinking about, what are the needs of our business, what are the needs of our client, and what does that mean from a spend split perspective? In the same way that you wouldn't look at the cost to acquire every segment the same. And so I think that comes back to everything needing to be in service of that KPI framework, because if you're only looking at something like the cost per acquisition, you're goi