In this episode of The Unicorny Marketing Show, Clare Jones, CMO of System C, challenges the common perceptions around demand generation, explores the changing dynamics of B2B buyer behaviour, and discusses the complexities of mergers and acquisitions.

Clare highlights why marketing needs to be involved at every stage of the buyer's journey and makes a strong case for its importance at the board level. You’ll gain insights on how marketing can influence M&A processes and why collaboration between sales and marketing is crucial.

• The importance of combining demand generation and brand work for effective marketing.
• How viewing sales as a marketing channel can redefine customer relationships.
• The strategic role of marketing in mergers and acquisitions, especially in unpredictable markets.

Listen in to hear Clare’s advice on navigating these challenges in today’s business environment.

About Clare Jones

Clare has a long history in B2B marketing, developing strategies to build brands and drive growth for software businesses.

Clare thrives on delivering results-driven integrated demand generation programmes with clear goals and outcomes, which have been recognised with industry awards. Clare has successfully executed on brand strategy which incorporates acquisitions as part of an overall growth strategy.

A passionate marketeer, Clare recognises the contribution every member of the team can make and enjoys creating high performing teams. And of course, have a little fun along the way.

Links 

Full show notes: Unicorny.co.uk 

LinkedIn: Clare Jones | Dom Hawes 

Website: System C

Sponsor: Selbey Anderson 

Other items referenced in this episode:

Dale Harrison’s Unicorny episodes

Sarah Robb’s Unicorny episodes

CVC

Chapter summaries

Introduction to Clare Jones and demand generation

Dom introduces the episode, outlining the focus on demand generation and its importance in modern marketing. He introduces Clare Jones' expertise and sets the stage for an in-depth discussion on the topic.

The relationship between demand generation and brand building

Clare discusses the need for a balanced approach to marketing, where demand generation and brand equity work together. She critiques the industry’s use of jargon and advocates for a more straightforward, integrated strategy.

The impact of the pandemic on buyer behaviours

Clare shares insights from her MBA dissertation on how the pandemic altered buyer behaviours. She highlights the growing role of digital channels and the increasing influence of millennials in B2B decisions.

Rethinking the role of sales in marketing

A discussion on whether sales should be considered a part of marketing. Clare argues for closer integration, highlighting the ongoing role of marketing in customer advocacy and relationship management.

The challenges of long B2B sales cycles

Dom and Clare explore the difficulties of lengthy B2B sales cycles, the need to understand decision-making units, and the importance of collaboration between sales and marketing.

Managing mergers and acquisitions with agility

Clare discusses the importance of understanding market volatility and the role of marketing in navigating mergers and acquisitions. She shares strategies for ensuring successful integration of acquired companies.

The strategic role of marketing in M&A

The conversation focuses on the tactical and strategic implications of M&A for marketing. Clare emphasises the importance of early involvement in the M&A process to align with business goals.

Challenges in merging brands and cultures

Clare explores the complexities involved in merging brands and cultures during acquisitions. She highlights the importance of a research-driven approach to brand integration and the need to handle cultural differences with care to avoid disruption.

Handling brand equity and emotional attachment in acquisitions

A deeper discussion on the emotional aspects of brand equity when acquiring founder-led companies. Clare talks about the importance of respecting the legacy of the acquired brand while making data-driven decisions for the future.

The delicate process of post-acquisition integration

Clare addresses the critical early stages of post-acquisition integration, where the acquired company is most fragile. She discusses the risks involved and the need for constant communication to ensure a smooth transition.

Dom’s end bit

The episode concludes with Dom summarising the key points discussed. Dom highlights the importance of early marketing involvement in M&A processes, the need for careful brand and cultural integration, and how marketing can drive value in complex business environments.

On the 2 July this year, my inbox lit up. You see, we aired an episode that day titled the truth about demand creation. It's a lie. In that episode, Dale Harrison explained that he considers demand creation and demand generation to be semantic subterfuge designed to make marketing's mission more meaningful to the CFO. Now, many of you didn't agree. Me, I think I'm still on the fence, but we're right in the middle of a very sticky market at the moment and I wanted to hear the other side. So we invited a super successful CMO who specialises in, wait for it, demand generation to come and teach us a thing or two about how to create value. So today we meet Claire Jones, CMO of SystemC, the only British software provider offering healthcare, social care and education solutions. Now, Claire has some interesting views, and this is a really strong listen, so don't go away.

You're listening to Unicorny and I'm your host, Dom Hawes. I have some sympathy with the academic argument that you can't create demand in the same way that you can't turn base metal to gold. But I don't want to get bogged down in a comparison with alchemy here. So let's stick to the topic and be specific about the issue. You cannot create or generate demand at the category or market level, but you and I both know that you can at the product or customer level, don't we? And if there's no demand for your product or service, you won't be in business too long. I'm going to let Claire tackle that topic in a minute. She's much more eloquent on the subject than me.

But our show is all about creating value through marketing, and today's episode is a masterclass in that. As well as talking demand creation and generation, we're talking about sales, marketing, buyer group composition, targeting, M&A, private equity and more. How can we use all these things to put the proverbial food on the table? Now, I said Claire has strong views and I think it's time you heard them.

What I think we should do, given some of the recent output on this podcast, is start by seeking some semantic Clarity. Because we're going to use the phrases demand gen and demand creation a lot today. And you may have heard Dale Harrison's episode where he sort of slightly poo-poohed the concept of demand generation. Why don't we start looking at in your world, demand generation, demand creation to just set some context about what we're going to talk about for the rest of the day.

For me, as with anything marketing related, you focus in one area. You tend to get a very skewed view. So one aspect of marketing like demand generation does not work without all the other elements, like the brand equity that you try and build. So when you look at something in isolation, then you struggle to make it stand up on its own, and quite rightly so. And I think we are very clever at the confusing the market as well. So if I think about demand generation and demand creation, what was the difference between the two? And there's also demand capture. Martech colleagues, I think, have been quite clumsy about introducing ways of creating their own space by introducing, dare I say, unnecessary terms, to be honest, for me, it's not needed.

And I think demand generation can be linked to brand, demand creation can be linked to that lead capture. And I think over the last ten or so years, we've seen a real fight for marketing to have a presence at board level. In order to do that, we need to be a revenue generating function. That's why we have been so focused on lead generation, let's call it that for the time being. Because that way we can demonstrate clearly the value that we bring and we can link it to revenue. And I think as Dale pointed out, when you look at brand, so if we look at that demand generation piece, it's harder to measure and that's why people shy away from it. But one doesn't work without the other. That for me is the key point. One becomes very difficult.

And with the demand creation and that, you know, we're all obsessed with capturing leads, engaged leads and our marketing funnel, the other investments can fall by the wayside, which in turn then makes that really hard. So we don't help ourselves sometimes. I think.

yeah, I would agree. And lack of crystal-clear language has been a recurring theme throughout this pod, but so thank you for that. I think we understand that full funnel that you have to be operating at all the different stages of a buyer journey, whether they're in market or not. One of the things I thought was really interesting when we had our pre call was that you used your time in lockdown really well. And one of the challenges we have in business to business is how hard it is to sell anything, because the decision-making committees or the buying committees are enormous. And you decided to use your lockdown. To try and explore some of this. Tell me more.

I did, although I started my MBA prior to lockdown, so it was pure accident, not design, but it meant that I had something to do other than go and stand in a supermarket car park once a week. So I decided to do my dissertation on changing buyer behaviours. And of course, the pandemic was a massive trigger for that. We will all have very vivid memories of COVID both personal and professional. For me, the kind of professional trigger was were about to go live with a companywide campaign, multi market, multifaceted, multi product, very complex, and were super proud of ourselves for getting a campaign to this point. And one of the strap lines were going to lead with was, no one dreams of keeping the lights on.

Now, literally within a space of seven days, that's all everybody did do, was, how do we keep going? And then from a pure kind of comms channels, the comms channels that we thought we had access to disappeared overnight. So all of the face to face, the events. So I thought, right, that would make a sensible topic to do a dissertation on. Trying not to go straight to the answer, one of the. The key findings was how we need to be more agile in our marketing efforts. And that's quite. I think everybody, even outside of marketing, we've learned from that we will draught our campaign plans. They might be three months, six months, but how often did we, at that point in time, look to the external factors that influence our campaigns? And the truth was not very often. So that was a. The probably the almost predicted outcome.

I think one of the less predictable outcomes when we start. When I started to explore how buyer behaviours had changed, it was over 75% of a decision-making unit in a business to business environment is now made up of millennials. Now, I am clearly not a millennial, so that was a consideration point for me. I think it was over 80% of people in that decision making unit were influenced by social media. And even sort of five, six, seven years ago, it was still a right, where does this have a play for us? And that, I guess, nods to the pace of change. But the buyer behaviour models of industry experts like Kotler and Sheth, and some of those date back to the seventies, and they talked about individuals within a business-to-business decision making units.

So that was encouraging. What was less encouraging was, for the most part of that time, we've ignored it, actually, if you look at the buying cycle from start to finish, so go from that awareness awakening phase all the way through to advocacy. The key takeaway for me was that the buyer behaviour models were built with sales in mind, but actually marketing hold the domain knowledge. They are present and active in every single stage of that buyer's journey. Sales typically are at that act stage, they're at that conversion stage into a transaction, whereas marketing is present. So I think the more controversial finding for me was to pose the question is sales actually a marketing channel? So I remember having a very robust conversation with a CSO at the time who didn't recoil in horror.

I think you did a lot of smiling and nodding and then maybe cursed me behind the scenes, I don't know. But you think about the continuity that marketing has and the ownership that marketing has throughout that cycle. And then once an organisation becomes a customer and you start that journey again, we are the constant. And that for me is affirmation of marketing's role at that board level as well.

That's really interesting, I think. I'm delighted, I'm delighted you said that. Clearly sales is a marketing tactic. It's the face to face, actually. So in B2B SaaS, maybe it's different because you probably don't need salespeople at all. You might need some sales consultants or pre sales, but where you're selling in a more traditional environment, the face to face is done by the salespeople who have a completely different skill set. And very valuable it is too. But as you say, that golden thread that runs through the whole thing is marketing and customer advocacy, which I love.

And you hint there at something else. We discussed, which is it's become a bit of a. A trope or a meme these days, but, you know, the human-to-human piece. But it's so easy to forget when we market to other businesses that actually it's people in that decision making unit, by the way, not the CEO or the CFO. Everyone thinks that they need the CEO or CFO in their target group, almost certainly they don't. But there are real people there. Talk to me about your experience of that.

It's not a case that people forget. I think it's because it's hard to achieve the whole B2B buildings don't buy from buildings, people buy from buildings. And building those relationships at all different levels, they all play their part. And I think marketing can support that by some of the fundamentals about really understanding who those corpus owners are. So if I think about the healthcare environment that I work in now, and a typical customer is an NHS trust now, that decision making unit is incredibly complex. So it's almost like you need to understand those Personas, what's important to them. Everyone, I think, agrees with those principles. But then you have to feed that with content, and that's when it becomes hard, but there are tools that we can use.

And that's where Martech absolutely can play a really strong supporting role in making sure that we use personalization as much as we can. We might make some broad assumptions around what's important to some of the economic buyers, like an IT buyer, a finance buyer, and just make sure we speak to them. But it's the content that drives it. So I think people are aware, I think it's just hard. And then you come up with the day-to-day resource constraints. Where do you place your bets, the people buying from people. What I've found has worked well is making sure we've got that stakeholder engagement. So we have, I am fortunate enough to work with a very cooperative board. So our chief exec, our managing directors, how we're structured with business units, they get involved in those larger scale deals.

They can't get involved in every single deal, which is why we kind of stack rank our target audiences and take time to understand the types of customer we want to approach and who we are a good fit for as well. So it's not, I think it's not just a sales effort to build those relationships. Every part of our organisation has a part to play.

I absolutely love that phrase, relationships at all levels. It's so important. I mean, it's something that I try and get my team here to think about that actually. It's not just the senior to senior. Actually, if you want to get a really good understanding of a customer's environment, you need to understand it at all levels. And it brought to mind, before ABM, there was a whole book and thing about power-based selling. I don't know if you remember that phase and that is nothing more than understanding who is in the buying group and understanding how to reach and influence them. I think we're kind of back there.

I think we are. And I think again, we can fall into a trap. And again, it's when you've got that revenue focus, all eyes can go on to the salesperson, you know, the business development exec or the account manager, whichever title is appropriate. But when you're looking at enterprise B2B software deals in particular, one person alone, they might manage that particular account, but there are multiple touch points and everyone, it's a terrible phrase, actually. Everyone needs to lean into that and understand. It's a real commitment. And that's why I'm a firm believer in doing that stack rank, understand what a good customer looks like for your organisation, because they're not all a good fit. The demographics might fit on paper, but actually where they are in their own maturity, their software maturity relevant to your offering becomes really important.

The other interesting thing about the length of the sales cycle, you know, up to 24 months, if you are trying to take into account things like technology adoption lifecycle, at what stage of their own maturity they are at, you could end up in a different place than you started. You're going to need to adapt what you're doing as they get more sophisticated or as the technology matures. This is a very complicated process.

It is. And I think during that sales cycle and that's where, ok, I'll give sales a little bit of leeway and then they may take the lead at that point for those more commercially led discussions. But the marketing effort shouldn't stop there. So we need to constantly build out and really understand not just who is in that decision making unit. And that might be anything from ten to 30 people. And I think sales and marketing are both accountable for making sure that, you know, when you are almost there, that contract goes to board level. Then you've got senior stakeholders that you might not have had any direct engagement with because it's not appropriate. But the CEO then turns around and says, I haven't got a clue who these people are. Go back to stage one. You know, that's unforgivable for all of us.

Right, Unicorners, there's loads to unpack here, so let's pause and call out the three big so what moments that I heard. Number one, demand generation and demand creation. I think that debate's going to run and run. But suffice to say, I think Claire has a pretty good answer. I think she's wise to say it's pointless looking at these things in isolation. Like performance marketing is ineffective without brand work, and brand work, well, it's toothless without performance marketing. And on that I think Dale Harrison would wholeheartedly agree. But I'm still on the fence about Claire's next point. That demand generation is simulated by brand, and demand creation is stimulated by performance. Well, of course I totally get it as a concept, but I find the idea of either generating or creating customers a pretty difficult one to buy into.

Because the market of customers, it exists. We can't make more customers. What we do is we try and capture as many of them as possible. But I think the conversation just ends up with us getting tied up in a knot of language. So maybe it's time we move on from the terms generation and creation as we've seen in a previous pod with Sarah Robb marketing slanguage hurts our cause, particularly at board level. Which brings us back to Claire's main point, which is that to be taken seriously at board, we have to show that what we do brings home bacon. And the way we do that is with a combination of brand and performance work. Okay, enough said. Number two, hold the phone. Hit the brakes. Remember where you were when this bombshell dropped? Is sales actually a marketing channel? Oh, controversial.

My guess is we'll be coming back to this one again and again in the future. But look, as a marketer, it might sound like I'm getting ready for a big long gloat here, you know? Well, that's put sales in its place. But on the contrary, I absolutely hate the rivalry between sales and marketing. I love it when the two work seamlessly. And that's what I really like about Claire's definition. It clarifies the roles of sales and marketing in their relationship with the customer. It's not about who owns the customer or about who is more important. And when you think about what she's saying, it's actually about delivering long term customer care. Marketing establishes the grounds for a sales relationship. Sales comes in to deliver that relationship and of course they get the sale.

But then marketing steps back in again because the goal is a happy customer. It's beautiful. Number three, understanding your DMU, your decision making unit. Oh, this is fundamental stuff, but I think it gets missed or glossed over all the time. As business marketers, we have to recognise that considered purchases are made by diverse collectives. For too long, we focused on the concept of a buyer. In reality, that person is really just the person that pulls the trigger. They need buy in from the user groups, they need ratification from the C suite. The intermediaries need to know what's in it for them, and so on. So, a B2Bbuying decision. It's an emotional trifle. And our job is to understand who in the DMU are the strawberries, who is the custard and who is the whipped cream. Right?

Where I want to go next is growth. We are in a funny old market right now. Organic growth is thin on the ground. Some sectors are completely flat, others are dangerously volatile. And so, taking a leaf out of the old private equity playbook, many businesses are looking at M&Ato achieve their growth targets. But a merger or an acquisition means a whole new ball of wax for the respective marketing departments. So let's jump right back in with Claire now and hear about her experience of dealing with acquisitions and I think this one's going to tee us up nicely for what we're going to talk about later, the importance of brand and brand authenticity.

So, Claire, you've got significant experience in mergers and acquisitions. Let's start off looking at markets where you've got low growth and either highly volatile or fragile or unpredictable markets. Organic growth is really hard.

How do you handle that?

For me, the key is to truly understand your market. And what I mean by that is understand what the potential is with your current offering and in the market. And that can drive some quite tough conversations, because that might not actually yield the revenue growth that you're looking for. And I think it's a. A marketing role, marketing and product management actually working really closely together to understand what that addressable market looks like and maybe bring a bit of reality to what is true, certainly in enterprise software. I guess it's understanding what volatility means because the demand might stay constant, but there might be other disruptors. So we've seen Brexit, we've seen some magnificent disruption. Let's face it, we've already talked about the pandemic, but the global uncertainty, the significant ripples that causes. And I think sometimes it's not necessarily disruption that you would expect.

Disruption might come in the form of a competitor leaving the market, which gives you more opportunity than you thought. And that's something that I'm experiencing where I am at the moment. But it can also mean volatility, which means that it makes organisations more hesitant, more cautious about pushing forward with decisions. But that disruption can come from M&A on the customer side as well. So whether, you know, you've got two finance systems, for example, you bring two organisations together, common sense would tell you only need one. There are all sorts of pressures. So understanding, taking the time to understand the market, we've talked about understanding what a good customer looks like for you, so you can serve them really well. That whittles it down.

But then you link that back to revenue potential and then use that to drive some realistic conversations about where the potential is, but also with existing customers as well. You know, there's a revenue potential there, so you serve those customers well, then you've got your cross sell and upsell opportunities with them.

And you mentioned agility at the start of the show today. Presumably that plays a role too, in making sure that the organisation is as resilient as possible. Because are you wargaming then, based on. So if you know what your good customer looks like and you know where the market volatility or uncertainty is coming from. Presumably you can wargame different outcomes and look for leading indicators to inform your action.

We do. I probably wouldn't have described it as wargaming, but it probably is. And it's understanding where the risk lies. And then you mitigate that risk wherever you can. And then, you know, you might need to take some considered bets because we know things don't stay equal. So when you, you know, map your forecast for the coming year, we all know that for us it's 1 April. You know, by the time you hit September, October, certainly for us at the moment with a general election, we know things are going to look very different. But you need to continue. You need to, you know, plan as much as you can. But yeah, you need, you absolutely need.

To continue and continue in organic growth is hard yards, which is why many businesses, I think, look at times like these to M&Apartly because I think there's a perception that when things are hard, you can buy value whether you can or not. I'm not entirely convinced. I always think good companies are good companies and value holds. But can you share some of your experience with mergers and acquisitions, particularly how that impacts marketing from a strategic, but also a tactical point of view?

For me, it's understanding the key driver behind the acquisition or merger. So are we buying market share? Are we buying extended product capability? Because that then has an influence on how you fold that into your marketing approach, I would urge any marketeer to be noisy about it as well. And by that I mean make sure you understand what that investment thesis is and challenge it. If you have the opportunity to challenge it prior to acquisition, that's great, because you will bring a different view, you'll put a different lens on the potential cross sell capability.

So if you're buying an organisation that gives you product adjacency, for example, and thesis builds out that actually you can take that product and you can sell it into your 200 customers, the insights you've already got into that customer base may give a different view, which again, ties back to the revenue. So, you know, I do feel incredibly passionate about marketing being that revenue generating function and being involved in those types of discussions, because we've got a lot to add. If you have an opportunity, get in.

Early and with M&A that's like revenue planning, because you're the one with the informed view of the potential of those products. But how early in your experience do the marketers get involved in the M&A process? Because I've had people in this studio where the CMO has literally said, oh, by the way, we've just acquired Dot, dot. You need to dot, dot, dot. But the smart companies are getting the markets in right at the beginning of the process in origination. Right.

I think it's fair to say we learned the hard way. Okay, so where I worked previously, it was a. I think marketing with the first few acquisitions got involved primarily from a communications standpoint, this is happening. We need to tell people internally and externally. And actually, once we understood and, you know, it was a learning curve, certainly for me, for my first two, three, four. And I would say every acquisition brings a different learning experience. No two acquisitions are the same and size is almost irrelevant as well. Acquiring a business that might have 50 employees and think, right, actually that's, you know, we can absorb that quite easily. It can take just as much, and arguably, it should take just as much time and effort to bring in an organisation of that size than it would of an organisation of 500 employees.

Just as a benchmark.

I think the really interesting thing also, I find the whole M&A thing really exciting, by the way. It's one of the more exciting areas of our work, I think partly because you've got this melting pot, so you've got two different cultures coming together, you've got two brands coming together, you've got product portfolios coming together, you've got different ways of doing things. And I think from a marketing point of view, that's a really exciting challenge. In your experience, how have you managed things like brand and managed culture? Because when we've acquired. My concern sometimes is if you buy a small unit, for example, we say size doesn't matter. You know what you're buying on the things you want to fix to get immediate value up post acquisition.

But there's always a risk that the small one might infect the bigger one and that the wrong it might get the wrong way. So how do you manage these things?

Brand and culture perspective for me, as a huge handle with care label on it. So from a brand perspective, depending on the type of organisation, let's assume it's an acquisition. People have chosen to go and work for that business, you've just acquired it, so they haven't chosen to come and work for you, they chose to work for that business over there. That's quite a leap for people. I'm always very cognizant. There are people, bit like the B2B people to people. There are people, real people involved. Some will relish the opportunities that brings and others won't. So that's the whole kind of handle with care from a people perspective, I think that's really important. And you can't over communicate, I think, in my opinion, and from a brand perspective, the same principle applies. You have to handle it with care.

I've certainly been involved in acquisitions where we've bought founder led organisations. There is a huge amount of emotional attachment to a brand, and quite rightly so for somebody or a group of people who have built up a business. And then, you know, again, you're handing it over to somebody, there's a huge amount of trust involved in that, so you've got to look after that. And I think from a brand perspective, the key for me to be research led, take the emotion out of it. What is the right thing to do with that particular brand? So you might have a brand strategy. So we have a brand strategy where we are, where I am currently.

I think if you make decisions, research and data led, you can remove some of the emotion, not all of it, but if you show a clear line of sight as to why you're recommending a particular path, and I choose the word recommending rather than an edict, we are going to do that. You've got to remember, again, there are people on the end of that and you want them to come on your journey with you. You made the point about you're acquiring businesses because you want to acquire good businesses so you can make the combined parts better, so you don't want to break anything that you acquire. If you're requiring the right type of organisations, you don't want to break it. So it is a definite handle with care.

And there is a time in that acquisition where the acquiree is really fragile. It is a very delicate process, I think something that's often overlooked. One of the reasons, I think, actually that businesses that don't include the marketing team until after it is there and just ask them to handle communication really are almost. It's almost like a company sized bet that because an acquisition that goes wrong.

Can bring a whole company down, we catch up quickly. But it's not a great place to start when you're on the back foot. So engage early, definitely.

Given that we know that organic growth is hard to find for just about anybody at the moment, then M&Ais a possibility that's more the preserve of private equity, or it's seen that way, certainly these days. And they have really good playbooks to help them deliver value from M&A What do you think marketers can learn from the private equity industry's approach to.

M&A I think there's a lot to learn and I think understanding the main drivers of the private equity firm that you work with is really important. So in my experience, I've been fortunate enough to work with some private equity firms that are wholly focused on building value. That's not always the case. So my advice would be do your. Do your homework and make sure you're in the right place for you. With the private equity firms I've engaged with, they develop networks across their portfolio for you to tap into, which I found incredibly useful because it gives you a very different view. Anything that takes you out of the day to day and lifts your head up, you know, it's really important to carve out that time. So that's really important.

The organisation I worked for previously, the PE firm, had a very strong playbook. It was almost like a blueprint that you could draw from and then actually adapt a suit to your own environment. So that allowed us to accelerate really quickly. SystemC is owned by CVC currently, and their strap line is creating sustainable value. They live wholeheartedly by that. And I joined a communications spotlight last week, funnily enough, and they have quite a diverse portfolio geographically and also cross sector. And I might think actually there are very few B2B software vendors in here. What am I going to learn from this? There was a German premium beauty product brand, there are sports brands in there's a real mix.

What I found really refreshing was some of the BTC, some of the challenges are the same, irrespective, but we can take learning from B2C it doesn't, you know, we can't be blinkered into B2B. So my advice would be tap into the network that is available to you and the expertise that they can offer and the guidance.

Yeah. And even if you're not pe backed, you can still actually learn from the tools and the playbooks. There's nothing to stop a CMO or a marketing director putting a hundred day plan together to kick start some activity and get some energy into their programme.

Yeah, absolutely. Don't think it's not for you, because it is.

That's epic advice from Claire. Principally, it's about getting in early, declaring your opinion as a CMO on the merger or acquisition, and assessing whether or not it's going to be of value to your customers. And, of course, what the implications are going to be for both businesses in terms of revenue. Now, that can be really hard in an organisation that does value marketing properly. You know, the kind of place that does the deal and then says, okay, marketing, over to you. What's the comms plan? Well, in actual fact, an M&A deal can be a really good opportunity. If you are a CMO working in what you think is an unsupportive environment, because it gives you the basis for a really grown up conversation with leadership, suddenly you've got a context that everyone's laser focused on.

And by bringing a revenue viewpoint to that context, it demonstrates marketing is not a afterthought department, it's mission critical. And I also really liked Claire's handle with care maxim. It seems an obvious one, but in my experience, obvious stuff often gets forgotten because everyone thinks it's just going to happen naturally. You know, you can't communicate enough in a merger or acquisition. One of the biggest gripes that we hear and that I've experienced is that people feel left out, unconsidered, unwanted even. Which means if that's how you're going to be, well, you're off to a bumpy start at best. And at worst you may even have the start of a revolt on your hands.

You see, I think this is a really great opportunity for a marketing department to show its value to the rest of the organisation again, because we're the people who can actually make a merger work and we do it through great communication. And Claire's so right about private equity. It's really important to do your homework and find a team that is right for you. You know, private equity can be a great experience, particularly if you're sitting in the marketing seat. Well, that's all we've got time for today. That is the end of part one of this value creation. Deep dive in part two. We're going to be asking Claire about rebranding. Like what are the challenges? How do you maintain the brand and its authenticity? Because we all know a brand, it's just not a shirt you can just change when you want.

A brand's the DNA of the whole company, for Christ's sake. So we're going to get deep into that and we're going to ask Claire about stack ranking, how she prioritises and targets her best customers. Don't miss it. You have been listening to Unicorny. I'm your host, Dom Hawes. Nichola Fairley is the series producer, Laura Taylor McAllister is the production assistant, Pete Allen is the editor and Peter Powell is our scriptwriter.