Sarah Bogue is the Director of Brand, Marketing and Communications at EY in Denmark. Her work spans everything from traditional marketing to brand development, corporate branding, and miscellaneous projects. She is passionate about brand engagement externally and internally and her top tip is to always ask if you can do things another way.
Many people focus on making big changes and innovating with large-scale projects, but looking at small aspects to improve can make a huge impact with less pressure. Sarah starts projects by thinking about what one thing she can do differently, rather than a multitude of ideas. This helps her focus her attention, test and deliver something new, and hopefully get more momentum for more change down the road.
According to Sarah, “then you can innovate in a secure and safe way for a lot of people… because many people are so afraid of failure nowadays that you [need] to encourage them to be curious.”
So, instead of asking big questions, start with small steps. When you accumulate all the little changes and tests and tries, it will be enough to move you further towards your overarching goals. Many of the tries will be unsuccessful, but the sum of them won’t be. And that makes the difference between staying curious and giving up.
This way of thinking is part of Sarah’s bigger preoccupation with brand engagement beyond the “obvious” external marketing work. She thinks that companies need to put purpose before anything else in their marketing today, as consumers have become more discerning and demanding. At the same time, she thinks the same applies to internal engagement to create loyalty and to attract talent. More than ever, brands need to focus on how they deliver their message of purpose to generate sales, as well as to avoid losing good employees.
Listen to Sarah’s views on why consumers and employees need to be attracted in equal measure, hear her advice to students starting in the industry, and more, on the podcast here.
The Shiny New Object podcast is a production of Automated Creative, an adtech platform that turns brands’ media impressions into marketing intelligence.
