As women in marketing, we need to make young female talent aware of the wealth of new career opportunities available.
During my matric year, I was chosen to attend a Technology for Women in Business (TWIB) event, an initiative by the Department of Trade and Industry. A special part of TWIB was its focus on encouraging young women to follow careers in science and technology through a programme called the Techno-Girl Programme, which I was a part of back in 2001. This exposure set me on a career course … or so I thought. I left university equipped with a Master’s degree in Biophysics – one of the first black females to do so in South Africa. I had no idea that the creative world of marketing would ever be on my professional radar.
Fast-forward a few years and, after a stint as a research scientist, I joined a multinational entertainment group as their senior digital analyst. I still mined data, and I still had to clean, analyse and create models that would inform decisions. The major difference was that this time I was helping the business build its consumer-facing brands and acquire customers.
The concept of ‘Big Data’ was on everyone’s lips, and media businesses were beginning to appreciate that data could inform some big business decisions. Suddenly we were able to collect extreme amounts of data in femtoseconds, and had the ability to use platforms to efficiently store and process these large datasets. It was a data scientist’s dream come true: to be able to map out customer journeys and feed recommendations engines more accurately.
From this first job in the media world, I enjoyed a stint in the health insurance sector. This marked a big change in my professional future. I found myself working as part of a marketing team, outside of my comfort zone. As a firm believer in change as the only constant, I embraced the challenge. I was an expert at analysing data and identifying trends and patterns, but packaging it into useful and understandable business insights propelled me in a direction that opened up the prospect of a whole new career path.
I use this example to motivate my younger team members today. Behind every ‘kick-ass’ ad campaign on TV, every campaign on social media, every marketing campaign, lies solid data driven research, insight and strategy that can demonstrate ROI.
Then the world was hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. Some businesses have survived, some were too slow to pivot and transform digitally and did not. The sense of satisfaction I gained from seeing how my skillset could culminate in a client being able to convert customers on a website or app sparked a love for media and marketing environments – I soaked up the opportunity to help clients help their customers make informed decisions about what to buy, when and how to buy it, at the best possible price, while protecting them from fraud and scam. Underpinning all of this was the ability to gain true insights from data.
I joined the Wunderman Thompson SA team during the pandemic as head of data, insights and analytics. For me, my appointment reinforced the company’s commitment to being a marketing partner for future-fit clients. I now work in an environment that is part creative agency, part consultancy, part technology firm. I find myself, as a data scientist, perfectly positioned at the intersection of best-in-class agency capabilities working alongside designers, measurement specialists, creative teams, technologists, SEO and paid media marketers, social media strategists and implementers.
It is a microcosm of what our media and marketing landscape is today: creatives, strategists, technologists and data scientists coming together to solve business challenges for brands.
I have built a team of 30-plus data ninjas – as we are fondly called by our colleagues – and I am proud to say the team features some immensely talented young women whom I have no doubt will move through the ranks in years to come. Strategists and my team members are ‘joined at the hip’, and creative team concepts are always firmly rooted in data insights that my team members provide and litmus test.
Prior assumptions about data scientists and analysts having to pursue careers only in the fields of science, engineering or technology have been blown apart – a fact borne out by our country’s critical skills list. In early 2022, South Africa gazetted this long-awaited new Critical Skills List, which had not been updated since 2014. The list clarifies that there is no longer an emphasis purely on technology and science, but also on roles that in the world of marketing and CRM are becoming increasingly important.
It is encouraging to see roles such as chief information officer, customer service manager, data management manager and data scientist on the list. If I, as a woman working the fields on data and analytics, can introduce and harness this expertise to young, mostly previously disadvantaged girls, including those from rural areas with no proper infrastructure to keep up with the daily change we experience in the economy, half the battle will be won.
The misconception many have is that you must have a university degree to be able to get into data and media. Lately, learning has become easily accessible through online platforms such as Udemy and the Analytics Academy. You can get officially certified for most of these free online courses run by reputable companies, which leaders like myself do recognise when recruiting.
My company has also partnered with GirlCode, a not-for-profit aimed at empowering young girls and women through technology. They believe that the more women get involved with technology, design, development and leadership, the more successful and diverse companies and their products will be in the future. The leadership team I am part of shares that belief, and at the end of 2021 sponsored five places for young talent to go through a bootcamp course, and then spend time immersed in our company for first-hand exposure.
I’m in a space where women are valued and allowed to bring their whole self in contributing to the success of the organisation, and the growth of our clients. My team and broader Centre of Integrated Marketing Communications Excellence is characterised by female leaders from all walks of life, so recruiting female talent is supported and espoused from the top down.
I am championing the message that there’s enormous opportunity ahead for young female talent who have data-related and analytical skills. By the end of 2023, we’re going to be interacting online in what we call a cookie-less world – in simple-speak, it means brands and businesses will have to rethink how they intend to collect what we call first party data, and to build trust with audiences and customers about how that data gets used. There won’t be a business that will not have to make sure the right data strategy or technology infrastructure is in place, and there won’t be a business or brand that won’t have to put ethics about how audience and customer data is treated front and centre.
For women working in marketing this opens up all kinds of career opportunities that hitherto did not exist. We source data, gather that data, and collate it into digestible format working alongside strategists so that collaboratively we can offer our clients insights that are well-informed and measurable. Those of our clients who appreciate the value this adds to our strategic recommendations are already reaping the benefits. Those who, regrettably, believe data is about percentages of vanity metrics on a post-campaign report are only leveraging half of the total value an appreciation in data analytics and insights can bring to a business. The greatest value, in future, will come from ‘closing the circle’ – allowing data to inform strategies and tactics, tracking performance throughout to enable real-time optimisation, and interrogating results at the end so that both clients and agencies can learn invaluable lessons…and so this cycle should continue.
This approach can enable marketers to demonstrate return-on-investment – it takes traditional advertising and marketing tactics way beyond the realm of pure reach, and catapults us into a world where marketing and data converge to drive best practice. It allows brands to shape, track and measure their marketing, customer experience and service activities in a way they have never before been able to do. As I said – world of career paths for young female talent.
Palesa Molukanele began her career in science and technology but has been lured to the world of marketing and media, where she now heads up data & analytics for the Wunderman Thompson group in South Africa. Her personal mantra: ‘In God we trust, all others must bring data!’
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