MANAGEMENT TOP TIPS
areas and interpretational stuff can come later.” The education process can also work both ways, and spending some time talking with them about the brew- ing process, to give greater background to the discussion can be a great way to establish rapport: “The brand teams have an amazing knowledge on categories and I see it as an opportunity to educate. Bring along raw materials and explain what is going on and build that trust with them. When they want a brand extension, they’ll see you as an advocate and grab you in person to talk to you about it. Always think about how you can be collaborative – for example, write tasting notes for them.”
mercial side of the business. As well as easing communication, there are other bene ts as well: it’s a natural instinct for us to trust someone who is speaking using terms and language that we understand we use ourselves. So, adapting our language is a great way to get your point across. How do we do this? One interviewee shared his process: “Marketing teams tend not to adapt their language and they will talk about segmentation studies or use technical terms from psychology and you need to learn to understand this. I had the opportunity to embed in a Brand team for six months and I found that I became their ‘tame’ technical person and they would come and ask questions which was brilliant. I found that you can easily pick up the essence of brand man- agement by spending time with the team.” This, perhaps, is a slightly extreme approach to learn more about market- ing. But there is always the classics of some background reading, training courses and YouTube – or you could try asking for some mentoring from the marketing team themselves? “There is an educational opportu- nity in spending some time with them, ideally 1:1 in their environment. Once they see that you are helping them you will get more acceptance and collaboration.” It also goes without saying that when we are communicating technical information we also need to adapt our approach as discussed in the previous Top Tips article in this series: “Resist the temptation to bamboozle them with technical jargon and don’t do a snow job - it’s not great team working. You really have to bring them on board.” “I recommend going with a simple ‘black and white’ in terms of discuss- ing the merits of the idea and this helps to get the message across. The grey
will give them information and advice in a way that they can understand: “Always roll out a warm welcome no matter how busy you are. The earlier they come to you the better – so you want to encourage this interaction. You need to make sure that you are not seen as the hand brake. You want the brand teams to come to you sooner rather than later and I nd if you always start with a ‘yes’ and are positive this will happen.” “Be approachable so that they can come and ask the question. There are no stupid questions. I always start with saying yes. I nd that using a picture can be much better than words to lead them through the process and numbers. Don’t over complicate it, and make sure that you are simplifying any technical terms.” Obviously, being approachable is only useful if you can communicate well, and this has its own set of challenges: “Some marketeers can be a chal- lenge as they often can’t explain what they want clearly. I nd that it always pays to replay the request to them to check you are clear on what they are looking for. Then always be positive; say something like ‘yes, and this is poten- tially what we can do.” 2. Mind the communication gap The career paths leading to marketing careers and technical careers are very different, and this leads to a commu- nication gap. The marketing team may lack scienti c knowledge and vocab- ulary and the technical team may lack psychological knowledge and business vocabulary. Communication becomes tricky. Bridging the gap can therefore take some doing, as one interviewee pointed out: “There are fundamental differences in training between those who come from a technical route versus a creative route. Each will not recognise or under- stand each other’s thought processes or approach.” Perhaps the key message from these interviews was that it is down to the technical teams to work on bridging the communication gap. The reality is that marketing teams are not going to learn technical language, and that it’s unrealistic to expect them to do so, since it may be a long time since they studied science. So, being pragmatic, it makes sense for the technical people to get a grip on some of the marketing jargon and learn more about the com-
3. Partnering in innovation Part of the creative process is
generating ideas and this requires a positive environment to get the ow going. All ideas will not be brilliant, but there will be some great ideas amongst the not so great. A chal- lenge for the technical team is to encourage this ow of ideas, be pos- itive and trust the creative process – and put a hold on evaluating the practicalities of implementing these ideas until later. There were some interesting tips on how to handle this ow of ideas and become a positive part of the innovation process: “The marketing team holds a lot of ideations sessions and they can become a bit of a blur. I recommend replaying the actions at the end of the meetings to make sure that some great ideas are captured and keep a good record.” But, clearly at some point it is essential for the technical team to put on the brakes and make sure that the ideas going forward are feasible and pro table – otherwise, there is a problem:
MORE TIPS ON INNOVATION
“They will come to you with crazy ideas like plastic beer glasses with rip off tops – but try to encourage this. It may not be the greatest idea but some of these ideas will be good and you don’t want to stop the creative ow.” “Beware of dismissing an idea. Marketing comes in with a ‘new’ idea which is actually not new although they think it is. Rather than telling them why it didn’t work last time, go with an approach of ‘let’s give it a go’ and see if we can do it better. Technology changes and what went wrong last time might not go wrong this time. Don’t let your previous experience cloud judgement otherwise a wall will go up and they won’t come to you with ideas.”
november 2019 I BREWER AND DISTILLER INTERNATIONAL ● 51
i bd.org.uk
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