Building a Remarkable Marketing Team - Mastering the Gen Z, Millennial and Gen X Divide

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Today we are tackling the topic of is it impossible to find great talent for your marketing team?

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And we have a great guest to talk about generational marketing Janet Granger.

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Welcome to the show.

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Thank you so much for having me, Eric.

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It's great to be here.

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Before we jump in, why don't you take a minute or two and give us some context, a little bit about who you are and what you do?

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I'm a marketing strategist.

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I've been doing marketing since internet and before internet, so that gives you a sense of how long I've been doing this, which means I started off in my 20s and I've been working with teams in their 20s ever since, and the makeup of those teams has changed over time.

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Gen X are just over here listening to Nirvana and I just hope these millennials and Gen Zs, if they're getting into fights online, that they just leave us out of it, because we used to fight like a person, not just like in messaging forums.

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Yes, and usually devolves into some sort of awful name calling, which is not a good thing, but, in all seriousness, we're ready to be inspired.

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Why don't you share a story with us about some of the best marketing that you've done in helping people find talent and managing across generations?

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Sure.

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So I've had a client for a couple of years now and I really took them from zero, like we don't even know how to hire this marketing person, to now there's a team of three of them and it's been absolute and amazing and it's not the same three that we started with right, because this is how life is.

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And basically he hired me to act as a fractional CMO for him to help him make this first hire.

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So it's a.

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She was a Gen Z, she's still a Gen Z, and should I hire her as an intern?

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We're going to try her out.

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And I helped him through that process.

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Just met her.

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She seemed great.

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She had actually done a marketing internship with he has a SaaS company, software as a service, and she had done some work with a legal firm.

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So she knew what marketing was and she seemed to know it.

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And I helped bring her on board, get her excited, show her all the different types of marketing that are out there, let her figure out her path of what she wanted.

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And, sure enough, eight to nine months later, she was like I really like this data analytics piece.

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I'm going to go to bootcamp Bye.

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And this is how it goes right.

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Sure enough, there was somebody else in the company that could fit right in.

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And the real success story here is this woman had been doing marketing probably for eight or nine years, but she had been kept down.

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She had never gotten to the point where she was the decision maker.

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She had always been the associate, or maybe the manager, who was told what to do and did the things.

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And the great success story here was understanding her as a gem, a hidden gem, and helping her to blossom.

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To go from.

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She just did whatever people told her and she was really bored and I had a sense she was actually thinking about tossing in the towel and I pushed her and I was like you've been doing this for eight years.

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Your stuff, it's clear, your stuff.

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You need to start coming to me with ideas and campaigns and stuff.

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And just that nudge and that push.

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All of a sudden she just started to blossom.

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And here we are a year later and she's up leveled herself and she now is.

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I keep pushing her to get more to the director level.

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Should we have hired someone outside that she manages her work?

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And it basically is a story of there can be people in your organization who just haven't been given the chance, for whatever reason, to really blossom, and they become so much more engaged in their work and they're so much more excited about what they're doing and lo and behold, look, the work becomes fabulous.

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And is everyone talented at everything in marketing?

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No, because marketing involves lots of different skills.

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You hone in on what they're really good at and then you help them find resources to fill in the gaps of whether not the star and help them realize, oh, I get to manage these people.

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So for me this has been an amazing success story of what you can do with younger people and the ability to help people just blossom in their careers where they may have been struggling before.

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Yeah, so part of that comes from just empowering people who can do it, giving them permission and encouragement to to really roll up their sleeves and do it right.

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And letting them know that it's okay to make mistakes.

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That whole fail fast thing Try it, let's try it.

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If it doesn't work, try something else.

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We'll try three different things and hopefully one of them will work.

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But it's that helping them to understand that if you don't take chances, you don't move forward, and giving them that space and that freedom and that security that they will then, you know, go further out on the ice and try new things, right, knowing that like you fall in, it's okay, I'll pull you out, we'll try again.

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Yeah, you have to be able to take risks in marketing and I think marketing leaders building marketing teams have to be willing to let their teams take some risks.

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Everything can't be successful.

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You would probably hope that things are successful a super majority of the time.

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Let's call it 80 or 90% of the time.

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No one can be perfect, but everything won't work.

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Everything hasn't worked for me in my career.

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I tried lots of things and lots of things worked and a few things didn't.

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So as long as that's the ratio, I think it's okay for people to take risks and it's probably to do the best.

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Top 1% marketing people have to be empowered to take some risks and here's the thing If you don't push the envelope and try, if you don't go just a little too far, you haven't gone far enough.

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Right, you go up.

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You keep going.

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It's the old let people run until they're tackled.

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Keep going, try the things.

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Oh, that didn't work.

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Okay, pull back, go over here, try this thing, right.

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But if you're not testing look at AI if you're not trying the thing and looking and see how it works, you're going to be left behind in the pack, right?

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So you have to constantly be out there and trying and testing and using new tools and seeing what's out there that wasn't there before.

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And yeah, all those things.

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So, despite the fact that everyone is really worried about AI taking all of the marketing jobs at this moment, I don't really think that it's ready to be taking over marketing jobs.

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No, but it can help.

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It can help a lot, and one of the things that I think is a common sentiment is AI won't replace your job, but somebody who's really good at using AI may replace you if you don't adopt it.

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So is that part of it?

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Is that part of finding great talent who is willing to embrace the new things, like AI?

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Yeah, and here's the thing about Gen Z they were born with the phone in the hands, right.

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They are always out there trying new technologies.

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They're excited about new technologies.

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They're very facile at it, they're not afraid of it, and so this is one area I tell people you've got younger people, you've got Gen Z, throw them at the AI, because they're going to go at it without any qualms or fears and help you figure out for your business, for your industry, what is the best use of AI and have them keep.

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Every day it changes.

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You've got to be constantly trying new things, right.

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Sometimes AI images are great, sometimes they're embarrassing.

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Sometimes copy is great, sometimes it's embarrassing.

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You've got to be out there trying all the different ways that AI can help you.

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So today, I think we're at an interesting moment, because a lot of companies can have marketing teams, potentially led by somebody in Gen X like me or you, and then they can have many people on their team that are either millennials or Gen Z All the generations, yeah.

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All the generations that probably think about things differently.

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What have you seen across the companies that you're working with?

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How do they manage that?

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What are some of the trends there that are helpful to people?

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So what I see is those that embrace diversity are the ones that do the best, because it's that breadth and depth of different perspectives that helps you see things you might not otherwise see, helps you avoid mistakes you might otherwise make.

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But also, the greater the depth and breadth in terms of diversity, the better off you're going to be, because you'll think of things, you'll see things, come up with ideas.

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Come up with ideas.

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Those that are out there that have this diversity, while it may be challenging to manage, are also the ones that do better in their marketing.

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I think that makes sense.

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Let me say this I recall 10 years ago when I was managing a very large team.

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We hired a lot of people right out of school, so it was a huge team of millennials and I remember myself and some of the other leaders in the company I was working with at the time really struggled culturally with wow, we haven't thought about this way.

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The millennials have a much different way of thinking about that and I've just noticed in the last couple of years people are having that same sort of feeling about Gen Z, but the actual issues and the behaviors of Gen Z are different than millennials in some ways.

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So how do companies, how should companies, manage that?

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Yeah, wow, okay, so I've written a book about that.

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I'm writing a new book about that.

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Just tell me in 30 seconds I'll tell you in 30 seconds.

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I think the biggest aha moment for me when I talk to companies is their job descriptions.

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I don't think they are being honest in their job descriptions about what they really need.

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And then they're surprised when Gen Z goes.

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You said nine to five, I'm out of here now.

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It's like okay, it's not really nine to five, it's really nine to six.

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And if we have a deadline but it's like no, you have to say that.

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And whenever I tell leaders about this, they're like well, if I tell them that they won't take the job and my response is that you don't want them in that job, it's.

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It's like a chicken or the egg thing.

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If you're not totally honest about exactly what the job entails and that you're surprised that people won't do it, okay, here's the new reality.

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Everyone's talking online, everyone is sharing.

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You have to be totally honest.

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So my number one recommendation is always it starts with your job description.

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Are you being totally honest about the job?

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is I think that's very interesting.

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I worked for one company it was actually headquartered in London and I had never seen a US company take this approach, and I think that they should.

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And I'm not sure that it was actually because it was a British company, but it was very unique in that the founder of this company had decided that the best way to help people advance who were earlier in their career at the company was to have them update their job description or their role document every quarter to reflect really what it was that they were doing, because a lot of times what happens is when they first conceptualize a job, they have an idea of what it'll be, but then someone starts and it evolves and it never gets updated and then you get to an annual review a year later and it's completely different.

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This is not what I'm doing right now.

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You know that right.

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And other variations.

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Like I'm doing three actually other different jobs in addition to this job, and so I thought the idea of updating the role document with your manager every quarter was a really powerful concept to not get this disalignment.

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Have you seen other companies using that strategy or other strategies like that to solve this?

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I have not, and I think it's a really good idea.

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I will highly recommend it because there's the what do we think this job is?

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And then there's the person who's living the reality.

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Yeah, that's not really what this job is, and PS.

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Half of my job is managing that team over there.

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You know what I mean.

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It's like yeah, and I think roles do evolve.

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One of the keys that this company put in place that is helpful if somebody wants to implement that is that it was actually the employee's job to update their own role, doc, not their manager's job.

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And that was also a really interesting aspect of it too, because that keeps it a lot more accurate, because it comes from that person.

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And then the manager just looks over and says, yeah, I agree, that makes sense, and if they don't agree, there can be a discussion about it.

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But yeah, and if they don't agree there can be a discussion about it.

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But yeah, I don't agree.

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It's like why are you spending so much time on this?

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It's like you want the work to get done, okay, I don't want you to spend more time.

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Then my job is going to change and you need to.

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You know, it's like that's actually where healthy discussion happens is in those differences of opinion of really, that's how much time you're spending on that.

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Huh, yes, you should know that.

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Yeah, I think that and in particular in annual reviews over the years.

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What I've done is reviewed with people usually bucket the top, let's call it five things that you're spending the most time on.

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To get that sort of understanding in an annual review, which is helpful, but only once a year, it's less helpful than doing it on a regular basis, but wouldn't it be much more helpful if you did it I don't know once a month or once a quarter at least?

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To wait a whole year to realize what someone's actually doing with their time to me seems risky.

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It seems very 20 years ago is what I was just thinking.

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Yeah, exactly there, you have it Exactly.

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And it's partially, I think, because the speed of business is much faster these days, right, I think because the speed of business is much faster these days.

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right, I think that is the speed of business is 24-7.

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So the other flavor of this disconnect around people's job and roles is, I think a lot of companies have created roles that probably shouldn't be roles and that I'll give the example a lot of tech companies I work for shouldn't be roles, in that I'll give the example A lot of tech companies I work for.

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Certain things could have been automated with technology from the start, but the company didn't want to invest in developing a technology up front because there's an upfront cost to it and there's some risks that it wouldn't work right or whatever.

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So they're like let's just throw people at it, like data entry, and that's pretty bad, because companies, I think over the last 20 years, uh, I've seen a lot of companies created a lot of jobs that really shouldn't have been jobs and they weren't really great jobs for people to have and they didn't create a lot of satisfaction, and then it caused people to bounce or leave, exactly like you were sharing in your story at the beginning.

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So we were like this job isn't really for me.

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I think I'm interested in something else and I couldn't really blame them when companies I saw had created jobs that shouldn't have been jobs.

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Have you seen that a fair amount, or do you think-?

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Oh yeah, and now?

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if you're not looking at every single job and going this really more something we should outsource.

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Is this an Upwork project?

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Is this right?

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I think that if people, if organizations and leaders aren't being really smart about, do we need people to do this, or can we outsource this to consultants or part-time?

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Or, to your point, oh my gosh, is there software that can do this for us already Off the shelf?

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Customized?

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Boom you're done.

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I think that the companies that are going to be most competitive now are the ones that are constantly thinking about that.

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Think about marketing.

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How much of marketing can now be automated?

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How much of marketing now can you have one person coordinate?

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Maybe a bunch of part-time people or people that they've hired consultants from outside?

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I think that every leader has to be really smart and savvy with to your point, do we need this role, and are there better ways to do this from a management perspective?

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Yeah, I think that ultimately leads to better results for the business and better satisfaction among the team you have if people are really being honest and putting some deep thought into those things.

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What final thoughts do you have for us today on this topic that I haven't asked about?

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That would be helpful for people.

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My final thought is actually, you brought something up which I thought was really interesting, because I had the exact same experience when I worked at a Fortune 500 company, and that was I was in charge of a very large project that was run by an outside, very large outside agency, and, lo and behold, what it meant was I was dealing with all of their new hires, who literally just gotten out of school, and I, as the client, was supposed to train them on my business, my industry.

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They knew nothing and, oh my gosh, it was one of the more frustrating experiences of my career that this agency dumped all this new talent on me, expecting me, as a client, to hire them.

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Don't do that, because, as a client, my feeling was I never wanted to work with them again, ever.

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You can't dump your training of new people on your client or someone else who has experience.

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You can't be lazy about this.

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First of all, it was a horrible experience for me, but even worse.

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Can you imagine what a horrible experience it was for them?

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I think that new people need training.

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Don't hire new people if you aren't going to invest in some sort of a mentoring or training with them, because it's going to be a lose for everybody they're going to be out the door, the client work is going to suffer, et cetera.

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So that would be my parting gift is once you hire these new people, then your responsibility and you get to hire them and get to train them.

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Just one comment is that I think it's great when companies do give people a chance right out of school to have a job and to do something, but unfortunately, a lot of universities today don't really prepare people with the skills they need to just hit the ground running in corporate America, if you will, and so, recognizing that there needs to be a training program, one of the companies I worked for had an actual six-week bootcamp for people right out of college that they had to go through six weeks of business training to understand the business, to understand how to act in business, and one of my favorite things this is Gen Z related.

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I actually keep a file because for my own entertainment value, of all the different mistakes that people right out of school make when they're like sending emails, like the way they sign off their emails.

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It's like OK, then bye, just like funny things like that that they write at the end of the emails.

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And that's because they don't know.

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No one ever that no one ever taught them Ten years ago.

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I cannot tell you how angry I would get when I would get these cold emails.

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Hey Janet, what?

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Hey Janet?

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Ok, you don't know me.

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Hey Janet, I mean, it's gotten better over time, but yes, I'm a hundred percent behind a six week bootcamp to business etiquette.

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And there's a cost to that for business.

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But the cost of doing something else like you outlined is probably.

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Hey, Janet Boom.

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All right, I think if people would like to learn more about what you do, I can link to your website and the show notes so people can easily get there.

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I think you had an offer you wanted to share for people listening.

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Yeah, so my website is my name, janetbraingercom, and it talks about a lot of the work that I do in terms of this intergenerational work, and my offer is, if anyone is having issues or questions with their marketing team, they would like free 20 minute consultation, I am happy to grant that.

00:20:59.578 --> 00:21:06.431
So just reach out to me through the website and let's talk and let me see if I can help you with what you're struggling with.

00:21:08.057 --> 00:21:09.521
All right, Janet, thank you very much.

00:21:09.521 --> 00:21:11.748
We appreciate your story and all your insights today.

00:21:11.748 --> 00:21:14.732
Appreciate you being on the show and making time to do this.

00:21:15.445 --> 00:21:16.836
Thank you, I appreciate being here.

Building a Remarkable Marketing Team - Mastering the Gen Z, Millennial and Gen X Divide

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