Podcast is now starting all attendees are in listen-only mode well good morning everyone and thank you for joining us for our webinar today I am Jenny Bailey from the agile business consortium with a not for profit member organization who are leading promoting an enabling business agility worldwide just to keep with a little bit of housekeeping and we are going to be recording this webinar so the sessions definitely been recorded and the slides will be sent to you after the webinar also you have an opportunity there to ask questions and we'll have a space at the end of the webinar and where I'll put some questions to my guests this morning but if you want to put any questions in those boxes there on the platform please do so and if we have time and it's obviously a relevant question to what we're talking about then I will stop the flow as it were and and put the questions forward so we'd love to keep discussions open here so please feel free to add some questions in there and we'll get to them in two course and also write the topic today on the webinar is also about exploring agile marketing and this is a fairly new topic for some and not so for others I'm aware there's lots of books out there on the topic and the subject and it kind of makes sense to us as well here at the consortium because obviously as the wave of agile goes through organizations it's gonna settle into marketing because it seems a natural fit in lots of ways so at the conference recently we were talking about agile procurement we were talking about agile HR and now we're going to be discussing agile marketing and actually looking into it and looking at the values and also we're looking at this really from two different angles this morning my guests this morning are really coming at it from do two different tracks really we've got one that's very much the mindset and the ethos and and this lady's really studied agile marketing in a great deal of level really you could say even it's her passion and she's very passionate in marketing in general but she's read the books she she's looked at it for a number of years now and she's actually brought it to the consortium's interest really I think it's probably the to say and we're very interested in the topic and like I said it's a natural fit with agile so we're bringing this to you as an exploratory investigation really into looking into agile marketing and my other guest this morning is actually working in agile marketing implementing agile techniques and I think it'll be really interesting to have this conversation with both of them really to discover ones obviously the mindset view and one is very much the the delivery and the implementation and how the agile marketing techniques are actually working so that's what we're going to be covering this morning and also if you've got any feedback at any time please send that through to me at Jenny an agile business org I'm always really happy to receive your comments and your feedback so we're not further ado let's go through and let's introduce you to our panel this morning who we've actually got so as I said this is a new subject for us for the consortium and it's the first one we've actually done so what I'd like to do is introduce you to Pamela Ashby who is our agile marketing and communications consultant at the consortium and also Sabina stalked you and she's head of marketing and PR at rad tech limited so ladies good morning how are you both morning Jenny it's fantastic to have this opportunity to talk to you about agile marketing and share some views and together explore the value that are gel marketing has Thank You Pam no it's fantastic for you to be here thank you for your time and Sabina you're there as well aren't you so welcome to the welcome to the webinar Sabina Thank You Jenny good morning Jenny good morning Pam good morning everyone or good afternoon depending where you are listening from evenings and consideration well thanks running by today I'm very excited to be on the webinar thanks for the opportunity I'm sure we're gonna have a really good conversation exploring at a marketing and so I'm very much looking forward to what we're going to explore fantastic there's been or it's great for you to join us thank you so before we kind of really tackle the subject and into the values and how we see it and everything like we've just been discussing really and how can you just give us a little outline of your profile really okay I think you know my profile in itself is only of interest in as much as it provides my perspective it's Who I am and what I'm what has led me to see the value of agile marketing so I came from a very large corporate background then I moved into the creative services sector managing marketing within creative agencies and then I've done a lot of international marketing in IT that drew me into the project management world at which point I stopped in the tracks about hang on a moment I've been a project manager all my career okay so that was sort of one epiphany if you like and then it was from there that I came to agile and and agile marketing I've also been journalists in my past and and a lot of journalism and feature writing around creative services around marketing and project management particularly and they're agile fantastic and now I draw with a capital A it's a major parties and inna can you can you just give us a little bit of an outline on on rad tech and your role there please yes of course so I come from a marketing and PR education background and I've worked in in marketing and PR before I joined rhetoric it was with Rana tech they actually have discovered agile I hadn't really come across at her before him not with you know lowercase a not with uppercase I serve come from a from a technical marketing background mm-hmm in my role at reflect they have discovered agile and you know it's been a really good learning journey and still is and by all means we're learning from from our our colleagues our consultants and our trainers every day so retic is a you know it's a global consulting group that catalyzes anti transformation my empowering organizations to adopt embed and evolve anti ways of working and we do that as a company through coaching and consulting and through training so you know because we want to be to be a good consulting and training comple-- we we want to work in an outer way you know we want to pre practice what we preach essentially so within the company we've started to apply agile and agile mindset and agile ways of working into all of our departments you know not just teaching others how to do it we we try to do our own and hopefully we'll succeed in some ways that's great I mean that's great you're sort of obviously teaching it training it and walking it at the same time and I know you've got some great techniques that you actually and employ really at your organization so we'll come to that a little bit later but Anne thank you that that's that's a really lovely outline and I think before we actually start what I'd like to do is actually run a poll to find out actually who's them who's out there and really who's joined us this morning and in terms of who's actually working in a marketing role currently so if you can just put your fingers please on the on the keypads and join us with this poll that would be fantastic I'm just about to launch this one for you so what we're asking you is are you currently working in a marketing role at the moment so if you can please and answer that for us that would really give us a really good understanding of who's listening in okay so it looks like it's always it's always gone 50/50 now funnily enough first of all it started off really strong but it's gone to 50/50 so that's where it's settled so that's wonderful thank you very much for that so we've got about 50% in marketing and and 50% curious I think to join us to learn more about them agile marketing clearly okay so we've got one more poll just to send out for you and that is are you using agile techniques or an agile approach at the moment so I'm going to launch this one for you again if you can respond we'd really appreciate it just to get an understanding of who's listening there and who who's who's joined us this morning it's afternoon this evening okay so this is coming through really quite strong in terms of it's about seventy percent using an agile approach at the moment and agile techniques so thank you very much for that that that really helps this and steer the conversation and for the for the webinar so I don't how do you view and I think I think that's really interesting isn't it it is I think it's interesting because 5050 in marketing but a high absent much high percentage using agile techniques which is very hotly you know loving that take on that out of interest I think it's really interesting I mean we've seen you know agile become this this very large phenomenon worldwide right and we've seen in growing and as what started out from software and IT background has really expanded into other areas including marketing and I think in some ways you know we're getting to the point where we're agile is not really just them you know I could be doing that that will be nice to do but it's it's some sometimes either becoming like a necessity because you want to you know you wanna you want to survive you want to thrive if you don't want to be overtaken by a competition so I think is really good that that as much as many people as possible explore you know as always are working okay alright no well that's a great start thank you for that and let's move let's move on there now we know who's listening and let's really look at this term agile marketing shall we and how would you start us with this here please because I believe obviously you've been working in this at some time and it's a huge passion of yours and you've done a lot of study in this agile marketing realm that it were so these I believe are your values aren't live how are you actually see ad your marketing and the benefits so can you talk us through this one I think in terms of this is a webinar to explore the meaning of agile marketing so let's look at what sits behind agile marketing value in any element of agile is is always a critical factor because anybody that's working in an agile way is constantly looking for value you don't do something unless you can see the value for the business we have to have an eye to productivity which is critical to marketers because frankly they're always busy they've always got more on their desks and they feel they can handle now agile gives us some techniques and some clues on to how to to cope with that we'll talk about that later on putting the customer at the absolute center of everything that we do is critical element of agile and it doesn't take too much imagination to see that that sits very well with marketing hmm yes absolutely authenticity I think is is something that has massive reach it covers the whole area of being true to yourself knowing enough that you can be honest because you have genuine knowledge that an understanding that sits behind that and working in a really transparent way and again these are all things we're going to talk about later and do really pull out why that matters h - h h - h - no i this is just a little quirk of mine in marketing we talk about b2b business to business you know to see business to consumer in today's world and tomorrow's world for the new world that we're lining ourselves up for forget all that it's h - h is human to human what we're doing now is building relationships and communicating at a very human level that's good I'm glad about that we're not when all machines no really the business world used to be actually quite mechanistic and that's for yesterday it's easy a longer good I'm very glad or not okay and trust and transparency that's that's a huge an agile value anyway isn't it you have to have trust you have to trust in transparency and perhaps particularly trust to feel safe its that psychological safety that it's really really important for being able to experiment and learn if you're not at that point where you can say well maybe that didn't work then you can't really work within that gel way okay but again more on that later okay and then when we were talking about these values and Sabina you wanted to add visualization into there didn't you yes that's correct Jenny so for us in my personal view and in what we do a rat attack visualization is a really big part and it's really key to everything we do because you know it just improves what you do and it adds value in so many areas and in so many ways it's an visualization should really be a large part of agile anyway because what's the point of you know working in a silo and and for no one to be able to see what you are doing you need to be able to show the rest of the company and then what you know internally to your company and externally to customers what you are doing so kind of goes have inwards towards a company and outwards towards your customers and it supports so many of them and the values that you have mentioned them for us you know we find that it really helps with engaging stakeholders and it encourages collaboration when people see what you're doing they can jump in you know they can add to it you can you can collaborate things where people can add value it's going to trust and it's reassuring the business and the customers because they know they can see what you are doing it's showing what the value is that you bring and it increases productivity and you know in some ways it really helps with refocusing and staying on track when you visualize what you are doing it's kind of easier to say you know what am i doing how is it looking is it am i doing the right things am i doing what I'm supposed to it's really like that supporting you know all the other values and we've seen it a lot of times in what we do and in house we've got you know we've got a service which which is around visualization and we've seen it with clients that you know we have a visualization artist goes in and for example he captures insights for meetings he makes them visual and instantly it just helps people understand what you know what we're talking about mmm no no that's right and we can I mean you obviously use a lot of visualization in your implementation of agile marketing as well which we can come to later I mean that there is lots to talk about on that level but the visualization is obviously a very key factor there for you which which which makes a lot of sense actually yes yes that's correct so thinking more about what is that your marketing I'm a great grabber of quotations from other writers and I think that you know they all help us to focus on the things that we need to be doing here this Haslam and Shenoy quote that you can see on this side to me just sums up at your marketing think big you have to have an LA to the future but start small don't overwhelm yourself and try to do too much from the very beginning expand only what's proven because we need to look at the evidence of what we're doing is it right is it giving the value okay then this Seth Godin quote I love perhaps even more you know it's five words that in itself is agile precise specific make useful promises keep them in this is the sort of clear language that I think we as marketers should be using in all our communications absolutely this points towards the the value useful it points towards the productivity you have to be able to keep your promise that you have to deliver mm-hmm and it points towards the customer being at the core this customer centricity that we target all the time in as much as it uses the word promises it's about relationships okay I mean I can definitely see how that can apply to to agile marketing but that quote wasn't necessary for agile marketing was it by Seth Gard you know I just saw it and thought actually no I think you know if it to be fair they have some annoying one isn't about agile much you either but when I saw that I related strongly hey this is really good because you know you start with testing a piece of content in a small way see how the audience reacts to it and then you build it you don't stop on a big piece of content and wait until it's perfect until you release it to the world because while things are moving on exactly you're you're losing that opportunity to get feedback from your community so the materials aren't working for you while you're sitting on it no it needs to be out there okay so ultimately I think it's about getting the right things done and another that is the key thing it's finding the right things and I think agile techniques offer us the opportunity to hone in on the things that really matter you know we might call those our must-haves or we might call that a Minimum Viable Product right is the ability to avoid protracted processes and hone in on just that thing to keep that focus on what the business needs right now and not waste time and resources planning for a year's time of course because things change okay okay and then obviously you've got your quote there as well Pam yes like I I think that that reason reach about like things done well it's you know looked at that and I thought hmm okay fair enough I do think putting it there we've no nothing on the bottom sure but then I thought well you've really studied this topic so it makes a lot of sense to me it really does ok so then moving on and we've got one of your favorite quotes here as well haven't we from one of your favorite authors yes absolutely and Ruth I rewrote this a very valuable book death of a marketer now don't panic everybody yeah but doesn't mean that we're all out of a job it means that we have to accept that the past is the past and we now have to do things in a new way and this particular quote from the book that I pulled out I grabbed because people get very hung up on methodology they panic they worry oh my goodness I have to use scrum I don't quite know how that works sure or how exactly is Kanban working ok what is scrum ban should I be doing that fair enough but ultimately if the methodology is the means to an end as Andrea says Harriet it's what we took do what we need to do to support our larger goal of being a child okay well that makes a lot of sense and then this is also supported in Steve dennings book which I would recommend to everybody the age of agile if they've not already read it it doesn't on I came out this year wasn't it yeah yeah and Steve also validates this view that in the end at Giles the mindset you know that the the tools the processes and practices matter but it's the mindset mmm that really makes those work I think it to do with what is an agile mindset it's to do with accepting that we don't have all the answers hmm is this you know crystal ball itis thing where people come in and they expect you to know well a professional you're a marketer why don't you know the answers well I'm sorry but the world is moving exactly so what we have to do is test we need to be able to come in with an idea test upon our audience and find out if it works we have to be comfortable not knowing mm-hmm and then have a safe environment to experiment collaboratively in a co-creation with stakeholders and customers okay to mean you'd agree with that would you threat that obviously agile is mindset and so agile marketing is is my definition a mindset as well yeah definitely I mean there was a really good quote spam that you have highlighted it's a really good point that you have you know have has outlined fair and definitely agree with all of them to me know our marketing is is more than anything a mindset which helps us marketers refocus our attention you know every time we see these shiny new things we could be trying out this mindset helps us refocus towards thinking and working in a different way an art in a more competitive way that ultimately focus so puts our customers at the center of what we do and you know that as you have pointed out it's that the world around around this keeps changing in in every domain in every industry and marketing is no you know it's it's not an exception to that so we have to we have to keep pace with change we have to be ahead of the change we have to be flexible we have to welcome change and time I think that you pointed that out really well we we have to be open to experimenting trying out new things and not being afraid of failing fast you know this concept of fail fast use tested get some feedback and then see how it's how it how it's been if it's failed then it's fine it's not problem you just learn and move on and you try another thing it's bending thing isn't it to being that do you I think that for an agile organization and anybody using it at JAL techniques it's about having a what Carol Dweck calls a growth mindset it's that thing about always looking to improve do you remember when we were in school and we used to get reports maybe of course I never got one and that was it's really interesting that what you've guarded is a negative thing hmm but you know it isn't a negative thing now we need to live by that could do better mentality because let's face it everything we do we could do better and what agile is doing is drawing our thin to say okay well we've done that it worked well in this regard but maybe we could do better what do we need to do the next time so that we're iterating and improving it's it's about sort of evaluating one chunk of work and then improving it so I would say that marketing expertise is about having the experience and the framework within which to experiment in a useful way that adds value okay now that's fair enough thank you ladies that that make all makes a lot of sense and I mean if we move on we've got this slide now that's obviously you know showing how customer centric and marketing needs to be and organizations need to be now but what would you like to say on this well I think this is really interesting because this this little cartoon here comes from a book that was published in 1987 so let's not kid ourselves putting the customer at the heart of marketing is not new no exactly you should always be the way but look what he's doing he's doing it you know what we're saying is that we're putting the customer at the center in a different way because invert those days we lived in a company centric world it was about the company and we sat there is the beneath the combi products mm-hmm no this is who we are come and get them but now the customers in control we this is an absolute within the days of the Internet the customer can get product information anywhere it's not the question of product information being delivered to consumers through marketing you know they're driving it on thing that ESU is definitely driving it it's a it's a different thing Andrea in her book says marketers are participants in conversations not sources of truth participants in conversations not sources of truth and I think that is is really important that what we're doing now is finding out where the customer conversation is mm-hmm involving ourselves in it okay not so much giving them what they want but finding out what they don't know they need okay that was about giving them what they want now we're getting into conversations with them we're building relationships to find out what they don't know they need don't forget that the original research apparently around the Sony Walkman said nobody would ever want to listen to music on the go people don't always know no sure you know the largest taxi company in the world owned no taxis hmm things are happening now we can't protect absolutes so we just have to involve ourselves in those those conversations in it in an h2h way if I can we need to be thought it's become part of the customers world not expect them to be a part of us okay absolutely definitely agree with that and there's this lovely concept know about unknown unknowns that I really like because it just it just pictured is you know how customers sometimes don't even know what they want they don't even know what they need so Pam what you were just pointing out is really helpful and I think for marketers to understand and I've heard this quote recently I can't remember who was from unfortunately but I remember there's someone saying you know we live in a world where in marketing especially there's noise everywhere around us as customers and you know the place you want to get to is become that noise that people want to hear right put it in a funny way but it is becoming relevant to people and building those relationships that you have mentioned that yeah I think I think we need to take as marketers every opportunity to get closer to the customer yes I do know what your experience is for this Sabina you're quite interesting but for instance with the case studies people sometimes say to me we write this case study we as the organisation will tell you all about it and then you can write it and I tend to push back as they will actually know I want to talk to the customer because so often I have found in my experience that what the customer thinks they've bought if different into what the organization thinks it's sold yes so you need to have a conversation with the real customer you find out the words they use to put back in your marketing materials that makes more sense because it's them and and their tone their language and what they think they're buying because the value may not be where you think it is now that's not the point okay so can I do more faster how does this apply I you you get through things quicker it's about doing more and actually it it is to an extent it isn't an extent it isn't that's perhaps exactly we've got to say this but my governance very strong believer that you can actually do more by doing less agree to that know the important thing is that more applies to value not stuff mm-hmm so by doing less and really using the agile approach to hone in on the things that give your organization the most value when it needs it you can actually do more but in reality you may well between less you're just doing the right things so it's there's a lot of tenants within agile when my favorites is stop starting start finishing mmm-hmm and I think marketers because they've got stuff being thrown at them from everywhere they tend to they tend to become overwhelmed quite quickly and all that time that's taking in task swapping is time lost isn't that where like prioritization should come into it though in a way as well absolutely but it you can't prioritize unless you're constantly honing in on where the value is you know that's that that's really the key and this statistic is actually quite shocking and wouldn't it be wonderful if we all said oh no we don't recognize that do you recognize this yeah I mean we M we were guilty of doing that but we found that you know actually work in an Imagi way it helps us again refocus by you know having this backlog of tasks we want to do and as Jenny as you point out prioritization using prioritization to just constantly look where the highest value is and focusing on those items delivering them first because you know that's really value lies let's not do everything we can anything and then risking you know to get burnout and we're gonna help anyone really as marketers or the customers right absolutely yeah I mean I think that you know there's some very simple thing that we can do to combat this problem I have a thing with meetings where if you put the make it a collaborative online board it could be Trello it could be JIRA asana any of those you have a board for the meeting and people actually put up before the meeting what they would need to achieve from that meeting and then there's a place where they can put up issues that they want resolved ok sure and maybe other collaborators can resolve those before the retakes and they will type that in get it done and then what you're left with is a much shorter agenda and those are the things that really need discussion so you get rid off you hone in on what you need out of it what are the outcomes and then you get rid of what you can before the meeting even starts but if you to list if you're using those collaboration boards and doing all the visualizations to be in the sense the need for reporting meetings constant emails to be diminished is diminished because you know emails of the worst if you have it on a collaboration board you get the discussion around the challenge that needs to be resolved the West yeah absolutely when we come back to that trust and transparency angle as well haven't we because everyone if everyone's standing up and doing the techniques as it were everything's out in the open and those meetings can be a lot more focused on what needs to be resolved and the expectations would be clear what yes yes absolutely Sabina would you like to add anything there at all on that one what absolutely agree with what you both said you know and we found it so many times working for us where we go into meeting we don't just you know go with a blank sheet and no matter if you use an online collaboration tool like Trello or if you use good old post-its that we all love in the agile way no you're right yeah just you know just scope out what you want to achieve from the meeting and even prioritize the things you want to achieve in that meeting so you focus for once first and you know make sure you have time to go through them discuss them and to reach some actions or some some items to leave the meeting with that really helps in you know not wasting time doing meetings and pointless calls and and then going oh you know I have to get reporting because we haven't actually achieved anything in the meeting I mean that's good working practices isn't it really yep that's nothing okay so now we're looking at sales sales and marketing yes I think that sales and marketing can jet is a huge generalization journey okay this is your thoughts in general hmm I think sales and marketing can support each other more than they do and I think marketing particularly needs to be super close to the sales department because let's face it mostly they're the ones that are closest to the customer they faced Casey Anthony and I am sorry to say that in many many instances over my marketing career I've been in many rooms and heard things like a Salesman or a business development person talking to a prospect and saying oh yes well it says that on the website or it says that in the brochure but don't worry about it mr. customer that's just something the marketing department produced Wow okay you know we have to be real because the business development department will the salespeople that go out and talk to customers they may not use their own website I can see how those you know Larry's can appear yeah so you absolutely have to so take your take a lead from the salespeople because the mother marketing materials should reflect the story mmm that the salespeople are delivering of course it needs to be in one language yes and yeah to be honest that is one bit of collaboration that can be improved in most organizations and you see agile marketing paving the way for that and bring those two together a lot closer so the wishes of the the customer I guess are more in focus absolutely and I think agile generally encourages collaboration across functions okay and so what I've done here is I've just picked two functions that very obviously should be collaborating absolutely and I know that very often there is more that can be done here to bring them closer together you collaborate there don't you Sabina you must do it in your organization we do I mean we do our best you know obviously we're not experts by any means but you know sales marketing collaboration and alignment for was worth I think one of our favorite topics in the marketing world and us marketers always like to say you know oh no sales are not collaborating with us nor we could there's definitely always I think room for improvement but you know working in an agile way I think is is something that really helps with the sales marketing alignment - because of all the good things that adder brings to the table you know collaboration visibility trust and seeing what the other team does building collaborating on a to-do list and then prioritizing what's the most value for customers because at the end of the day it doesn't matter what sales team wants it doesn't matter what the marketing team wants it matters what the customer wants and lively you know the ad awake and can help us matter way of working can help us get there very much I mean once again this this sounds to me very much like common sense and and it should be as it is but we know this is not they do so that's another good work in practice to bring everybody together multidisciplinary teams that's part of it as well but obviously the value and the customer and they need to be held in huge and high regard and everybody needs to collaborate I mean it's yeah it makes a lot of sense okay so look at a July briefing man Pam yes I think I think we have to take our agility across every level and we know that in agile we keep documentation to a minimum mm-hmm and anybody that works with me knows that when I'm doing marketing projects they get really minimum documents I talk about like one side of a fall because you know if it doesn't fit on one side of a fall it's too much tiny writing there's some very easy ways to to keep it simple sure and I just what about keeping it simple and user stories is really anyone you know you start with a user story and that means that you're really honing in on the outcome you want to achieve and you know who the audience is and what they're going to to get from it so you know ever something I want something so that I can do say house and as soon as you apply that really simple formula and then you've got it the other thing I do with briefing is to do outline briefs first okay and then for something like a sort of larger project website whatever hmm I do an outline brief and then the next level is produced in close collaboration with the supplier of course so you use your outline brief to procure mm-hmm and then their next level you do together because then you've got complete buy-in you've got complete understanding as you go through you can agree your schedules and confirm when things can be done by your you're working much more collaboratively so it's co-created in a sense and that way you get multiple perspectives on the brief and again I just all about remembering there are multiple perspectives that we don't know the answer so if you get multiple perspectives you guard against being locked into your own thinking mhm and automatically falling into doing what you did last time without reevaluating the current climbers point absolutely I'm Samina would you like to add anything there it all sounds good to me working practices like that that sounds very very strong definitely that's something we know I definitely endorse Pam what he just explained and I love the idea of an outline brief you know that's that this is what we do as well and works really well um you crazy outline brief you know call it an epic if you want cliff your high-level initiative it's just not an epic for us is a kind of a larger initiative we want to do that then gets broken down into features and then tasks though you know and I mean you can see the brief may be supporting the epic the epic is you know what is it that I want to do and then the brief you just you know described in a very high level what you're trying to achieve what you would like to achieve I love the idea of having the outline brief and then getting together with the people that were actually gonna be involved in in the work and then you know collaboratively you you segment more need to be doing in two smaller by bite-sized chunks so that he can actually you know start working on them and start delivering value and keeping things moving and you know not just spending ages on writing pages and pages of documentation without actually getting to do anything absolutely okay all right so let's let's talk about some of those techniques that you use and the occasions that you use then and Sabina because you actually have agile practices that you work on a daily basis or more possibly don't you and in in rad tech so can you can you kind of talk us through some of these we've touched on some of these already obviously we've mentioned user stories and we've mentioned Moscow or the prioritization so this is actually one of your one of your boards isn't it it is yes that's our marketing board in the office and there's actually got post-its you know written by different members of the team which would mean they would have different handwriting some of a nicer or some of it you know not so nice but this helps us very much you know it acts like a visual radio if you want to use a fancy terminology and it creates that visibility that visualization that we've we've touched on so much earlier and we're very much of you know the mentality that you have to find a way to work that works for you you know there's no point in in you know saying I'm gonna use scrum and then just be really really strict about using scrum if that is not the right way for you same with canva you know we might be using elements of different methodologies and just getting to a point where you kind of pick what works for your own scenario for own situation so that you get the most value out of it and that's sort of what we do so we use them you know we work in Sprint's we've got a scrum team which is actually build from from cross-functional teams members from cross-functional teams and we work in sprints it's really helping by creating you know visibility across the entire business and really really helping with the collaboration part and especially because we're not looking at all in the same office so you know the Sprint review and the sprint planning for example are really good opportunity for us to get together and collaborate to talk about what it is that we are doing fine things we you know they require collaboration from from members from different teams and together just doing the best we can to move things work forward getting value out of things and well ultimately getting value to our customers and now come aboard we're using you know has been customized to work for our own situation you've got traditional to do doing done and then we've inserted a few columns like expedite for example because the reality is that us marketers have requests coming in all the time especially from internal stakeholders in the business and we obviously we have a backlog of items we need to do and they have been prioritized in terms of that the value they bring to the business and then ultimately to the customer and so when new requests come in it's really good to have this expedited column because we evaluate those requests in terms of you know what are the others what are the other priorities and these new requests that are coming in I are they have higher priority for the business from what is reading it to the customer and if they are they get within the expedite column and being mindful you know that just means that the earth stuff gets pushed down you know so much at a time no another column we've got in doing and I'm not sure how much you can see in the picture but we've got the actual working progress in doing and then we've got a little side column called waiting because again for us and marketing it you know we produced something and the reality is we sometimes need input from stakeholders now we work things let's say you work on a case study right you bring it up to a certain level but then you want you want to check it you know with your delivery team you want to check it with your sales team so you do you advance things as much as you can and then at some point that just they just get somewhere where you need more feedback or more inputs and then we've just got the sine of column which just means you know this is done everything's done on it we just need to make sure the stakeholders are happy with it and then we're ready to push it out essentially okay and oh yes and we also have got color coding that's why we've got random colors of post-its on the board and we don't just like to keep it colorful which we do we we've also color coded in terms of what type of marketing activities they are you know for example green we used for contant yellow we use for email marketing okay purple is for sort of more BAU stuff you know business as usual mm-hmm Blue is for marketing materials and that just helps you know instantly when us as a team but anyone else really walk into the office looks at the board they can see instantly what is going on hmm just just a little sorry what do you wanna see that done column you know fool it kind of just fills your heart up with a nice warm fuzzy feeling right cuz you got so much stuff done so it's a nice pat on back as well for the teeth so then what do you do with the done column you take them down and start again yeah we usually take them down on a weekly basis you know every week at the end of the week or it starts early start at the next week we take the done items out and and what we started doing is we started recording how much we get done in a week so that we have you know we can but get better at forecasting what the capacity of the marketing team is okay okay and also just out of interest you keep this on it on a digital kind of board as well of interest we do yes so we use Trello and we we mirror what we do on this physical board in the office would mirror it on Trello because you know the whole point of being visible is also making it accessible to others so physical port is great for us in the office but Trello just more pros what we use at the moment no matter what you use in a digital way it helps other people in the business see what it is that you are doing it helps stakeholders be able to you know to provide their input in areas where it's relevant it helps people collaborate with you on you know tasks that might involve other departments mm-hmm it gives us that nice reassurance at the business that at any given time they can go into the Trello board and they can look you know where is the marketing team at with my template for example sure oh it's great to see so no really appreciate you actually sharing that with us and talking through these techniques as well and I mean obviously Moscow is there and that's that's an agile p.m. technique as well isn't it Pam yes indeed it is I think Moscow for marketers is brilliant I really do I use it a lot I think particularly when you're starting a project and everybody wants everything obviously it's a very good way of of breaking things down and getting a new perspective on everything so if you're doing a website hmm you can literally take once you've got the complete specification you can take it and put it into the the must have done Trello or whatever must have columns should have column it could have column and won't have this time because naturally with a website you're probably heading to a sort of phase two of the development mm-hmm and then that really makes people focus on what they really really need now where's the real value now for the business and what can be left so it just gives you a little bit of a sort of granularity okay on the urgency so it's very useful tool okay well no thank you thank you for sharing that with us and Sabina as I'm going through those points it's like I said it's really good to see in that and that transparency is very clear there because obviously you have the stand-ups as well don't you and you actually have everyone standing around and and talking how long your stand-ups out of interest because I know textbooks they're supposed to be well about ten minutes yeah so we are you know it depends how many bad marketing members we've got in under day we keep them as as quick as possible and the way we've run it is you know and that's something I think you can tweak based on you know every team's preference and then what again what works for everyone we usually start with the latest done items you know just to give a quick review of what we have achieved and we kind of work our way backwards so we start with done you know what's been done great job okay let's move on what's in sign-off what's in sign of usually needs to be reviewed with other people so to do that as fast as we can so that then those things can then move over to done then we we have a look at waiting you know what's in waiting what can we do to get things out of waiting moving towards sign of our done mmm-hmm then we get to you know what working progress and then you know ultimately going to what to do and then again because of the new requests coming in we tend to have a look at the backlog you know every day make sure the tasks are in a in a well prioritized way providing the most value first to the business to your customers and then just you know doing any reprioritizing as it means be sure okay well I mean the last slide we actually popped in this was actually agile p.m. wasn't it absolutely at thanks for including that Jenny I think that can I just say just before we go on to an agile p.m. just to kind of discuss that if there are any questions out there please feel free to send them through because after this slide we're going to go through two questions and I'm just a bit mindful at the time so we're yeah we've got a few minutes the questions so if you can send on through if you're curious if we've if you've got any questions relating to any of the topics really we've covered this morning and across the subject of agile marketing cuz I think it's very clear that it's a huge powerful method mindset to actually make happen in organizations it just makes sense like a lot of agile tasks like we've discussed so yeah please send the through to me please don't type them in and I will try to get through as many as I can so Pam over to you let's look at a joke Ian because obviously these principles can apply Conley these are the exact agile p.m. principles the only one I have messed with so I apologize what Mazur is communicate continuously clearly and I've added and transparency transparently because that obviously is really important but agile p.m. is what really brought me to the world of agile for marketing and it is just effect in every way we covered a lot of this but you know the value identifying and prioritizing what the business needs most now that's how we get through our workload and avoid that overwhelm setting the right level of content to make sure it can be delivered on time without missing opportunities so finding out where the real value is cutting things back doing less to actually get the full opportunity optimized collaborating closely with those really next to the customer as Sabina pointed out earlier quality affects your brand so that must be protected at all times so because you're all working in an agile way that does not give you license to overlook quality ever never compromise quality and building from firm foundation so always starting with that discovery process to understand the outcome that you're targeting and fully understanding that outcome means looking at it from different perspectives and that iteration you know getting feedback doing a little bit improving it could do better at being at the heart of the way we work and getting the visibility and as a visibility as a part of communication so constantly looking at the analytics finding out the evidence of what we've achieved visualizing that and making it public to those that need to know okay all right know that that makes a lot of sense and so they can very much apply currently to agile marketing so I I think we've discussed this and we've really explored this topic in some great depth and I think it's very clear that agile marketing is is here to stay and I think it can only get stronger as people find though their way through with the agile principles to relate and connect to their marketing subpoena what would you say yeah definitely I think you know it's it's a growing obviously a growing trend that we see with as I mentioned earlier and expanding beyond the tea beyond software and you know there's a reason to that because people try out a few things they see hold on I actually bring some value it helps me achieve more things it helps me work better you know smarter and better day way so if it helps me you know why shouldn't I do it okay well absolutely in though yeah I'm not gonna say again it makes sense because I was gonna say yes which aligned on that since it's okay okay all right let's take some questions now and we've had a question from Clive so thank you for your question I really appreciate you engaging with us with the webinar and we've got here in my experience agile marketing can sometimes be seen as a tactic responding to the environment on the hoof rather than a strategy is there a disconnect in some people's minds between a dual marketing and strategy for their business if so how can we link between agile marketing and business strategy and how can that we made stronger that is such an excellent question great questions thanks glad for that you can answer it this is what's thrown at agility really sort of okay it just means that they're doing this do things on the hoof and making decisions but this is where you get back to those firm foundations if you actually set your goals and have a clear idea of your outcomes and know what you're targeting and you set that up at the start at just a high level you know the the way it's achieved and the detail can be filled in later so if for instance we're doing saving an email marketing campaign hmm there's no excuse for not knowing what you need to achieve from that and you might end up with 10 weeks of subject line yeah but no emails right but you know you you that's an example of how you you know your your strategy you know how that email marketing campaign fits with the overall strategy mm-hmm you've got all your building blocks in place it's in the detail that you're leaving until later I hope that explains it Sabina would you like to add to that at all I mean that that was a really good answer in my opinion I would say you know let's not view as a marketing as an excuse to sort of you know making everything up as we go and buildings yes and saying I'm just gonna do something I'm gonna experiment all the time we do need to have a strategy you know and even you know out of guidances there has to be some planning you know we can't just dive in blindly into what you are doing you have to know you go so you have to know what you want to achieve and you do a high level plan but the whole beauty if I think of Fanta marketing is you leave room for improvement you leave room for change you leave room for experimenting especially things change so quickly you know around us in in every sort of business area and industry that we have to not just be open to change but welcome change sure sure yeah absolutely and we've had another question through and I think we can agree with this and it's important to understand the difference between strategy and tactics before implementing agile absolutely I think they it's a good question because people do often get these muddled up I think it's a statement actually but it is important because tactics are what deliver strategy yes those are the things that you do and and the strategy is the the direction your the whole organization is going hmm and what you want to achieve at the end that you know strategy is how you will get there and the tactics are the specific things that you do okay I'm Sabina one last question coming through to you I think it actually and if you have practical experience of implementing agile marketing strategy as opposed to the process part of agile so I guess you have an actual marketing strategy to work with agile marketing what's yeah so we do have an agile marketing strategy what we have a marketing strategy sorry let me rephrase and you know coming back to the whole point that's Adam being a mindset we you know our marketing strategy might be a traditional one what we do is we take an adder approach to it you know we we get put things to an MVP stage and Minimum Viable Product so we're able to get something out there and get feedback and then iterate improve you know do better and so it's not so much about labeling it as I think as an agile marketing strategy it is a marketing strategy we've taken an agile approach to it and you know through the tactical things we are doing it sort of becomes more agile and supports the mindset if that makes sense okay yeah no it doesn't make sense there's a few more questions coming through and please that's not solutely finally we'd love to receive your questions and I will put them to my panels probably off there now because we've obviously come to the end of our hour of the webinar and I just want to thank you everybody for for tuning in and listening you will get a recording of the webinar we will get that sent out to you and possibly if my guests are happy and we'll try and answer some of these questions that are coming through in that follow-up email that we'll send out as well that would be really helpful that would be fantastic generally more than happy to do that okay and there's some ones coming through about the the technicalities of delivering and the in communicates our implementations as well Serena so and well I can put those in your direction as well so if you can engage with us that would be fantastic as well yeah of course I'm happy to share you know I could share um I think we'll have to draw it to a close it's been an absolute delight talking to you two this morning thank you so much for your time Pam and Sabina I we really do appreciate it I mean we did start off with exploring agile marketing and I think we've done a fantastic job so looking at the mindset obviously and looking at those practical implementations to delivery and to give that value to the customer I think that's what it's all about and I think we've learned a lot today of how we see it and how we perceive it from everything we've read and everything we've studied and everything you've put into practice as well so really I really appreciate your trust and your transparency in joining us this morning it's been really good and I hope you know everyone that had has joined us today has sort of you know sounded as useful as I have personally found that released really engaging to explore our marketing together and I'm looking forward to perhaps talking about it in the future and exploring it even more yeah absolutely it's a subject that deserves our attention I think there's going to be more attention on agile marketing definitely from the consortium so again thank you ladies for joining me this morning and thank you to everybody for joining us on the webinar let's keep the discussions flowing as I said to send them through to Jenny at agile business talk let me just get this back to the next slide because it really is that time now to say thank you very much and send you further questions and feedback to Jenny at agile business talk but from all of us now this morning goodbye for now and thank you for taking the time to engage with us today thank you bye bye
