Source: Insights
No Chief Marketing Officer understands how to scale a marketing program quite like Denise Broady. After getting her start consulting at small shops, then becoming the Global Chief Operating Officer at SAP’s industry cloud organization, she’s returned to another small company called WorkForce, which specializes in making timesheets, as she puts it, “sexy again.”
Its headquarters in Livonia, Michigan, belies the company’s global scope, which includes offices in Australia and the U.K. But when Broady arrived nearly two years ago, WorkForce was in dire need of two things: a strong marketing plan and a cohesive brand identity.
Those are two big action items, and a risky undertaking for a new CMO. Fortunately, it’s also fair to say that few CMOs are better equipped to deal with risk than Broady, whose mother fled Thailand by boat with Broady and her brother when Broady was 6 1/2. Her mother’s bravery made a lasting impression. “In my career, she always would say to me, ‘If you try it and it doesn’t work, it doesn’t change anything’ and that’s really always been in the back of my head,” Broady says.
With this ethos, Broady set out to revamp WorkForce by first establishing its core values – tenets that every employee could embrace. Internal buy-in was a top priority for Broady, who believes that real marketing change is more than just a top-down transformation. “It’s not about the words on the pamphlet; it’s about getting people to embrace it,” she says. “I really do truly believe employees – if they love their brand, if they are passionate about where they work – their enthusiasm will amplify on the market and what we do.”
What she and her team centered on was a message of customer-centricity. And with customers at the center the brand, Broady moved on to the next critical step: bringing this idea to life through a transformation of their lead-generation processes. “It’s really critical to bring the core processes,” she says. “Many times, people think marketers all work on brands and logo and do this creative stuff, but without the process and without the KPIs, you…
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