I'm Cat Dutton, Vice President of Global Growth Marketing at Pega, which is a fairly new role. Pegasystems is an organisation that's focused on the enterprise platform and AI decisioning and workflow automation. That's the biggest focus for us as an organisation. The company's based out of the US but I'm based in the UK.
Within Pega we have a number of different priorities as a marketing function. One is really about providing repeatable and scalable services. The second one is around growth and really focusing on our clients and how we build new pipeline with them, how we influence that pipeline, how we support them to transform their businesses, which is where my team is focused. And then the third area is more of an internal one but we're very keen to make sure that we have one collective aligned view internally. This is really about working across our go-to-market function and making sure that we're all collaborating, aligning and pushing our organisation forward as best we can.
Within my team, we focus very much on account based marketing for specific accounts. We also focus on what's called our growth programs or demand generation campaigns and then I also have partner marketing as part of my remit as well.
I think it's interesting because I've been in B2B marketing for over 20 years. In that time, my roles have always focused on how you link marketing back to the growth within your organisation. But I actually think we are becoming a lot more tech savvy as marketers and really utilising AI to drive what we're doing. I think a lot of the work that's happening in the industry is around how you really bring AI into your organisation and make it more efficient and make it more effective. I do think marketing is leading the way on that quite a lot.
One that really sticks out for me was actually in my previous organisation and one of the things that I'd implemented there is around the work that we do with agencies. We moved from a traditional agency type model of, we'll work with different agencies, we'll raise POs, we'll do the work with them, we'll brief them or write campaign briefs, we'll get the campaign executed together and then we'll have a partnership. And we actually ripped that up a little bit and said, actually, what is it that we really need?
One of the biggest things at that time was we really needed people on the ground that understood our business that weren't just delivering the traditional marketing campaigns, but really understanding how we work with clients. So we changed the model and we worked with one agency in particular. We had a really strong partnership on what we were doing. We changed the financial model in terms of how that worked. We really focused on actually wanting this to work as a true partnership. It is not a client and agency model. We're working together, we're trying to do the right thing by our organisation.
That's something that I've carried through into the work that I now do at Pega, where I really question whether we need to use agencies or can we do that work now internally. How do we bring the best of everything together to make sure that we're delivering in the most effective way? I think the other thing that I'm trying to do, but I'm very early doors on it in Pega, is definitely around the utilisation of Gen AI, so we ran a workshop that I put in place a couple of months ago, bringing the whole marketing community together and saying, hey, here's some of the Gen AI technology tools that we now have available.
It is not a client and agency model. We're working together, we're trying to do the right thing by our organisation.
We understand that different people are using some of these, but people are working at different speeds. We got people to work in breakout groups: do you want to run a marketing campaign? How can you use the different Gen AI technology that you have available to execute? Some of the tools that we do have internally, you can literally turn around copy within a matter of minutes. We just wanted to really embrace it.
I think that's a big game changer for this year and I can already see it coming through in some of the work that the team is doing.
I think there's a lot of work actually that's gone into that within our organisation. Storytelling is really important when you're actually working directly with a client and you're trying to do things differently. We do these things called vision proposals and value statements. Within the vision proposal it just gives a bit of an opportunity to yes, talk about our offerings, but actually just explore the art of the possible.
Imagine in 10 years time, this is what it could really look like. I think there's massive value in the power of storytelling where you're collaborating and working directly with a client to look at what the art of the possible is. Storytelling is what you obviously do within your brand and what you do from a campaign perspective, but it has value within client collaboration too.
I think there's so much change going on. I think it's really about having that mindset to embrace it and not being scared. Just try things and see what works. I think the other thing is as you're embarking on change as well is just have a purpose in mind and try to remain focused. We've just talked about Gen AI tech, but there's so many different tools out there. It's mind blowing. I try to not worry about all of it and just focus on what it is that you're looking to achieve and then have a play around with different things and figure out the right way for you to get there.
If people aren't already, they've got to get on board with being inquisitive, being curious, trying new things and just embracing change.
I think it's about having an open mind. We're not working in a traditional model anymore. If people aren't already, they've got to get on board with being inquisitive, being curious, trying new things and just embracing change. And that's hard because as individuals, in natural human nature, we don't like change. But I think we've got to get curious and we've got to stay positive about learning new things, trying new things and just going with it.
I think you've got to lead from the front. Like we just talked about, the fact that I've instilled these different workshops to just bring people together, get them using things. I think definitely leading from the front. I think the other thing as well is just showing a bit of humility. I don't always get it right. Come on, nobody gets it right all the time! But I think people have got to see that you're giving things a go and if it doesn't work, it's okay. It's what you learn from those things.
I think just having that, showing that humility and being approachable and making sure that teams know that's okay to try new things, sometimes they might not work, but they've got the support mechanisms in place and that if things are successful, great. Let's celebrate those successes. I think it's just being very supportive, creating a collaborative environment and being a bit humble with it at the same time.
Curiosity.
Always communicate. If things are going great, communicate the successes. If things are not going so well, escalate, communicate. Make sure people are aware. Get the support that you need. But also, just show some of the small wins, show some of the small things that are starting to take effect. And get promoting! I think as marketers we're very good at promoting our organisations. We're not as good at promoting ourselves. Don't assume that people know what you're doing. So over communicate!
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