BROOKE HAND

Brooke is a tech marketer with a passion for strategic marketing, AI and automation. After completing her Bcom in Marketing and Management at the University of Canterbury in 2016, she began working in the global marketing team at Tait Communications; her role is centred around marketing operations, marketing automation and CRM system management. In her spare time, she’s focussed on building up her knowledge and skills in running AI for business and marketing operations. Alongside her marketing work at Tait, Brooke was the change manager for the company’s migration to a new CRM system. This involved the planning and development of a global change management strategy, while working closely with stakeholders located in New Zealand and offices around the globe to ensure the strategy was executed smoothly and on time. In 2015 while at university, she co-founded a not-forprofit with a mission to guide first home buyers through the process of purchasing their first home. The organisation’s services ranged from providing advice on accessing government grants and partnering with industry professionals, through to research, advocacy and hosting events around the country. Helping others is a big part of Brooke’s ethos – in her spare time, she can be found volunteering for causes close to her heart and sitting in volunteer positions on local executives.

What has been the biggest motivation of your career?

This might sound cliché, but the biggest motivation of my career is taking

New Zealand to the world; showcasing our huge range of talent, thought leadership, and ability to kick butt no matter our size and location. Succeeding in the marketing world, and helping the businesses I work for to succeed as well, drives me to achieve excellent results. We have an amazing ability to develop and produce world-class products and services through innovation, tech development, and pushing the limits, and I want to help these businesses compete and succeed on the world stage.

I currently work for a global tech company, and I love the challenge of communicating and engaging with leads and customers from many backgrounds and cultures around the globe. I love generating organic interest, engaging with consumers, and developing awareness of what we have to offer. I find it incredibly fascinating to observe and understand the way we acquire leads, the behaviours they display, and the actions they take on their journey through to successful sales. It is also rewarding knowing the time spent behind the scenes analysing, planning and developing a strategy has been effective. Showcasing New Zealand to the world and establishing ourselves as genuine contenders across a range of sectors is the best kind of motivation and fuels my eagerness to always improve on what I have done.

What’s the most important thing you’ve learnt?

The most important thing I have learnt in my career is to take on board at least one lesson from the results of every action executed. From a single email send through to executing an entire campaign, learning from our past actions and understanding the results is so important for growing and improving on the steps we take in the future. In addition to improving existing systems and practices, trialling new technology, testing new formats, and reviewing the way we identify and segment customers through their characteristics and behaviours is equally important for development. Learning and constantly improving on what we have done keeps us competitive and positions us as leaders in our discipline.

What in your career are you the most proud of?

I am most proud of the global CRM migration project I worked on in 2017 as change manager. We were given a three month period to implement a new CRM system, including training all end users, establishing business workflows, and having data prepared and migrated so it was ready for use on our ‘go-live’ date. The turn-around time for achieving such a project was always going to be a challenge, but the team rose to the occasion and were able to overcome all hurdles we came across. It was a huge team effort and I felt incredibly proud and privileged to be part of such an amazing team of people.

What challenges are you facing now?

The biggest challenges I am facing now are all related to data. New regulations in data privacy and processing such as the GDPR, and increasing consumer awareness around how personal data is gathered and used by companies, has created a raft of challenges. Seeking to collect information to better understand and address the needs of customers, while not putting them off with too many questions, can be a fine balancing act. Even when that information is given, there is always a risk of inaccuracy. Beyond the data we collect directly, we also rely on access to millions of social profiles

From a single email send through to executing an entire campaign, learning from our past actions and understanding the results is so important for growing and improving on the steps we take in the future.

across multiple platforms for advertising and engagement with customers; however in May, Facebook newsroom reported in Q1 they disabled around 583 million fake accounts! Had these accounts been allowed to exist, the potential for misrepresented results is a real risk to advertisers. Facebook also stated that despite their efforts, in the same period 3-4 percent of active accounts on the site were still fake – a total of around 89 million active fake accounts!

To have a clear understanding of ROI, the metrics need to be reliable. With an ever-increasing stack of digital platforms available, and the need to justify spend for each channel, can we confidently argue that we know our money is well spent when there is so much rubbish in the digisphere? Deloitte Insights (2017) uncovered that while there has been an increase in consumers willing to share data with companies they trust or purchase from, younger consumers in Gen Y and Gen Z are more likely to take protective action and provide fake information online compared to Boomers and Gen X. This is concerning to say the least. Gen Y and Gen Z are the future of purchasing power, and when we rely on data provided by them to carry out our regular marketing activities, can we confidently say we know who we are talking to? These issues are further exacerbated by situations like the Facebookcambridge Analytica scandal, and the many companies that have had their databases hacked over the years.

It is certainly an interesting space to watch in the coming years, with the introduction of AI platforms for marketing, and regulatory precedent set by the EU around data privacy and security. As marketers, we must be innovative in ensuring our messages get to the right people without breaching any laws or negatively impacting the brands we represent.

What advice would you give to young marketers wanting to take the next step in their career?

Keep an eye out on emerging trends; understand how they will affect your role, our industry will adapt to operate in the changing landscape. We have already gone through a significant period of change with the introduction of all things digital, and are well progressed in harnessing the power of martech tools to our advantage. Martech is establishing itself as a necessity in the toolboxes of marketers around the world, but some NZ businesses have yet to implement any kind of marketing automation tool. Ensuring that we can keep up with technological advances, and be the disruptors instead of being disrupted, will go a long way in ensuring the longevity of our discipline and the businesses we represent. Staying agile, creative and continuing to learn are so important for not being left behind.

Highlight of your career so far?

The highlight so far has probably been the Qrious brand refresh. Even though I’ve worked in technology for a number of years, I don’t believe that a technology brand needs to stick to the conservative (often blue) mold that you typically see. Even though we’re B2B, we’re still dealing with people, and people want to be inspired – even when they’re at work. I really wanted Qrious to stand out and capture our client’s imagination. We went with bold colours and imagery and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. People love the look and energy of the brand and are excited that we might be able to deliver something different for them. It always gives me warm fuzzies when you can influence someone’s thinking, get them to break away from the traditional, and perhaps view things a little differently.

What do you think has been the biggest thing to disrupt the way we do marketing in NZ? And how did you and your team tackle that?

One word – data. Data has the ability to completely change how marketers engage with their customers.

Gone are the days of fluffy brand campaigns that we shoot out into the ether and hope for something to come back. Now we can be so much more sophisticated in our approach. With data we can now create much more personalised and targeted marketing that resonates with customers. At Qrious we have a much more defined database, so we don’t have big numbers to crunch, but we can still be data-driven by looking at things such as our engagement scores and tailor our follow-up communications based on that. Another example is analysing our blog views to see what topics are resonating and what’s not, and then optimising our content strategy to reflect what our customers and prospects really want to hear about.