It’s been great being Co-Chair for LettsSafari and spreading the word about rewilding. We’ve been working hard in restoring biodiversity, tackling climate change and inspiring communities globally.
We’re just getting started, but here are four personal highlights from an impactful year:
1️⃣ Rewilding Expansion: We’ve now planted 2,000+ trees and support 150+ endangered animal species. We’ve seen our first Nightingale and, at the same time, healthy increases in our birds of prey. Plus we’ve successful protected black fallow deer across our parks. 🌳🦌
2️⃣ Community Education: Our “Create Your Very Own Safari Garden” series empowered individuals to transform gardens into urban wildlife havens, promoting biodiversity from backyards to city streets. 🐝🌸
3️⃣ Global Advocacy: Celebrating World Rewilding Day, we spotlighted projects like Derby’s Allestree Park and the Tower of London moat transformation, inspiring wider urban rewilding. 🏞️🏰
4️⃣ Art Meets Sustainability: In celebration of Earth Day 2024, we emphasised the significance of combating plastic pollution and embracing nature restoration by creatively showcasing sculptures made from recycled plastic bottles in our Capability Brown gardens 🎨♻️
Looking ahead to 2025, we aim to expand our reach - spreading the LettsSafari approach to more communities, gardens, and even countries! 🌍✨
👉 Join the revolution! We need your support to help in our expansion (it’s just £4.50 a month!): Sign up here: https://lnkd.in/eda6y7gz
#Rewilding #Biodiversity #NatureRestoration #LettsSafari #Sustainability
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LettsSafari is all about collective impact through low-cost subscriptions. For every 10 subscribers we plant a 5 year old, naturally grown tree annually, every hundred subscribers support the introduction of new wild animals each year and every 10,000 subscribers we add a whole new safari park a year.
Let’s continue rewilding together—one garden, one park, one animal at a time. Join us in creating a more biodiverse and sustainable future! 💪🌿
✨ Reflecting on 2024... my 20th 🤯 year on LinkedIn! 🎉
The year didn’t start easy— being part of an industry-busting acquisition, reduction in force and a broken ankle were certainly challenging! But 2024 also brought incredible moments: celebrating an 18th, a 21st, and an 80th birthday, successful A-Levels and sending Son 2 off to University 👨🎓. Plus completing Phase 1 of our Puglia renovation 🏗️ .
On balance, it’s been a year of celebration 🥂 Thanks to all the smart, interesting folk I’ve had the privilege to meet, work with, and learn from this year—both old and new connections. You’ve inspired me, challenged me, and helped make 2024 one to remember. Special thanks to:
💡 Alexa Schirtzinger, Alison Masters, Andrey Khusid, Carol Carpenter, Doug Kessler, Ed Hoppitt, Gavin Bradbury, Giles Fraser, John Horsley, Jon Buss, Joshua Leatherman, Justin Cooke, Laura Heisman, Lucy Timms, Martin Loat OBE, Philip Letts, Paul Mackender, Richard Peers, Richard Perry, Roger Warner, Sandy Purewal, Scott Harris, Scott Stockwell, and Tricia Miller.
💼 And of course, my former VMware teammates: Anna Lawler, Barry Cowan, Caroline Clifton, Danilo Lissoni, Isabelle Mehdi Bouriaud, Katie Dobiecki, Kerry Graham, Lothar Haenle, Martin Schuhte, Maud Allioux, Michelle Vaughan and Sarah Semple. You're all rockstars 🌟
Lastly, a big shoutout to the AI assistants who’ve supported me - all talented, promising individuals 😉.
As I look ahead to 2025, I’m focused on:
1️⃣ Continuing my weight loss journey. 29 lbs / 13 kgs down in 2H 2024 🏋️♀️)
2️⃣ Learning Ableton for music production 🎶
3️⃣ Doing more of what I enjoy ❤️
4️⃣ Making a difference 🌍
So here’s to 2025 and all the (AI-powered) opportunities ahead! 🚀
#2024Reflection #GoalsFor2025 #AI #B2Bmarketing
It’s Not 2008 Anymore ‼️
In 2008 I was CMO of a 120-person SaaS scale-up, looking for a low-cost, high impact way to create more opportunities for my business. Through a friend I reached out to a little-known company called Marketo, and joined the Beta program for their yet-to-be-released lead management software. It blew my mind and totally changed how we could build our business.
But that was 2008 and B2B marketing has changed dramatically since then 📈.
That's because the way audiences seek solutions to their problems today is a world apart from 2008. Then it was all about websites, events, analysts and SDR outreach.
Fast-forward to today, and those traditional methods have lost their credibility 🚫.
Why?
• Company websites = email mining machines 📥
• Events = more about sales pitches than value 💰
• Analysts = often viewed as pay-to-play 💸
• SDR & automated emails = ignored inbox clutter 🗑️
Meanwhile, the way people connect, share, and learn has completely evolved. The power of communities has EXPLODED 🌍 :
• Social media has become a valid place of B2B connection 🤝
• Facebook Groups and Reddit spark global conversations 💬
• YouTube comments are a goldmine of insights 🕵️♂️
• WhatsApp and messaging apps allow instant collaboration 📲
• Review sites like G2 and TrustRadius offer transparent peer feedback ⭐
• Good word of mouth about product experience has more reach than great marketing 💡
Here’s the reality: If you ask buyers where they turn for solutions, they’ll tell you—they ask their peers 👥.
Buyers crave credibility and authenticity ✨, and those come from trusted connections, not corporate lead gen 🏢.
So, as we head into 2025 we all need to harness people, technology and AI to :
✅ Tap into real conversations in communities
✅ Build trust, not just leads
✅ Pivot to Product Led Growth over Sales Led Growth
So stop marketing like its 2008. Embrace the change! Your audience already has 🚀.
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📸 : From the Marketo, Inc. Flickr site. Meeting some of the Marketo team for the first time in San Francisco in 2009 (I know, it looks like the 1980s!). Jon Miller, Laura Mishima, Maria Pergolino and, in loving memory, Amy Guarino.
Is LinkedIn losing its way?
🚨Urgent : send help immediately! Kyle Lacy is trapped in the LinkedIn algorithm!
I don’t know Kyle, but LI really really REALLY wants us to be friends 🤣. He gets suggested 3 times within the first 10 posts in my feed.
Nothing against Kyle, and I’m sure he has interesting things to share. But 30% of my content? I’m going to say - I think not 😀
Just another example of the craziness going on with the LI algo right now. Jeremy just did a great post on the randomness of post reach and engagement. And how LI in the need for engagement is sliding towards more entertainment and less education. Check it out 💡
Is LI losing its way? Is it getting better or worse?
I’m rooting for you LI! But please please please free Kyle!
Anyway, Kyle - HMU! 🤙
Making your marketing more "Bobular" - the 2024 Redux 👱♂️
10ish years ago, I wrote an article about how brands needed to make their marketing more personalised to the consumer. I framed it in the context of my (amazing) experience at my local wine store, and more specifically with Bob, the manager of the shop.
You see, Bob knew me. He knew what I liked, what I didn’t like, what I’ve tried before. What I’ve bought recently. That I like to cook and entertain. The list went on...
I wouldn’t think of buying my wine anywhere else.
In fact I enjoyed buying from Bob. I loved the experience that much.
The bad news: most of B2B marketing back then was far from Bob. In fact it was decidedly un-Bobular.
If Bob was a marketer instead of the world’s best wine salesman, I’d walk in and instead of saying “Hey John, how’d you get on with that Riesling?” he’d say, “Hello potential customer. This is a wine shop. We have red wine and white wine and sparkling wine. Some of it is from France.’
Fast forward 10 years and is marketing any better or worse? Despite all our investment in technology (data warehouses, Business Intelligence, marketing automation, programmatic ads, CDPs) I'd argue we're no further forward.
Which is why I'm sceptical about AI in the hands of marketing unless we listen to the customer, understand their intent and generate a personalised experience.
Maybe AI will be thing to help us become Bob-like on a massive scale - being that personal, informed brand that doesn’t treat every customer like a new person who just walked in off the street. And treating each one like the valued individual that they are.
I'm hopeful the time is now.
So maybe, we can all finally go forth and become Bob.
#marketing #AI #b2bmarketing
(Big thanks to Doug Kessler for helping me craft the original story.)
Contemporary Issues in Marketing in 2024
Honoured to be invited back to guest lecture to 3rd Year Business Management Students at St Mary’s University, Twickenham on "Contemporary Issues in Marketing".
Always a topic that causes some reflection - many “issues” haven’t changed for, coughs, decades (understanding the customer, building a point of differentiation, being smart on channels, sales/marketing alignment, etc. etc.). But thinking on "contemporary" issues I picked these five:
💥 Consumer Choice - the war for attention / how the customer controls the purchase journey / lack of brand loyalty.
💥 Channel complexity - so many choices, so little budget / using creativity to cut through the digital noise / the yearly rise of new social channels.
💥 Sustainability - driven by millennials, consumers demanding greater brand transparency on DEI & sustainability.
💥 Skills - marketers needing to be much more multi-faceted across business, creative, data & program management / tools change, skills don’t.
💥 AI - of course! No tech is ever a silver bullet and our track record of implementing tech in marketing is, quite frankly, poor. But those who embrace AI will win over those that don't.
There are many more I could've added…
Lots of great questions from the students too on (unsurprisingly) AI, innovation and ethics in marketing.
Great to see such an engaged group. Thanks again Lucy Timms for the invite!
#marketing #learning #marketingstrategy
No customers. No brand campaign.
🚀 No Customers. No Brand Campaign. 🎯
Tech companies love talking about their products – the amazing features, the cutting-edge tech, the “best in class” everything. It’s simple - our tech is quite simply the best (cue Tina at Sales Kickoff. You laugh, but I’ve been there for Steve Ballmer’s Eye of the Tiger! 🎤🐅).
But here’s the reality: before you get to the features and the tech, customers need to know three simple things:
1️⃣ Do you solve my problems?
2️⃣ Where have you done this before?
3️⃣ Who have you helped that’s just like me?
This lesson hit home when I led Adobe’s Global DX Brand Campaign working with then-CMO Ann Lewnes. Her mantra? “No customers. No brand campaign.” 💡
Those words shaped how we built campaigns that not only featured customers but integrated their success stories at every stage of the campaign journey. We went about involving customers in our ads, then continuing with consistent imagery and video testimonials on our website (spotlighting brands like The Coca-Cola Company, Sydney Opera House and Virgin Atlantic Airways). And creating community and events around the concept of customers who were “Experience Makers”, language which I’m proud to say still lives on some 7 years later.
We showed prospects what success looked like – in their own language.
Why does this work?
✅ It bridges the gap between brand and demand - you can take the idea into all sorts of of activations.
✅ Customers see your promise.
✅ And most importantly they see your delivery.
Remember, a great story doesn’t just sell products – it sells trust, credibility, and proof. Cue Tina! 🕺
#Marketing #BrandBuilding #CustomerStories #B2BMarketing
Lessons, Resilience, and Radical Cando(u)r
Thank you HotTopics for today's Marketing Studio event at the prestigious BAFTA🎬 venue. As always, great content, discussion and a masterclass in professional growth and marketing leadership. I came away with three thoughts:
1️⃣ Success Is Not a Straight Line
From the “fail fast” mantra of GenAI innovation to CMO insights on embracing feedback, the message was clear: failure is a stepping stone, not a roadblock. Chris Blaik, David Keene, and Sally Croft reminded us to treat setbacks as teachable moments. Success isn’t about perfection—it’s about resilience and the ability to adapt.
2️⃣ Self-Awareness Fuels Great Leadership
Kim Scott’s Radical Cando(u)r provided a lens to understand how directive coaching and self-reflection are interconnected. Whether it’s holding up the metaphorical mirror or nurturing team wellbeing, self-awareness is the bedrock of authentic leadership. “Don’t take feedback personally” might be a tough pill to swallow for many of us, but it’s essential for growth!
3️⃣ Marketing Is Evolving—Are We?
The panel on next-gen marketing unveiled a shifting landscape where creativity meets data-driven insights. Faith Wheller, Carrie Heath, Emma Acton and then Mika Yamamoto highlighted that the focus shouldn't be on tools but on outcomes. Be customer-first, be super clear on talent acquisition, and adapt your style to generational expectations. We need to ask: are we evolving quickly enough?
Anyway, great to see so many familiar faces (Helen Gillbe, Andy Grant, Faith Wheller and more) and well done Philip Randerson, Peter Stojanovic and team!
#Leadership #CMOLessons #NextGenMarketing
All roads lead to the ICP
Had some interesting conversations in the past few weeks with a few GTM leaders. Different companies, different conversations, different needs but all were struggling with setting up marketing for success, the role of marketing, how to structure the team, what OKRs to set and what talent is needed.
What I love about marketing is in amongst all the shiny new things (RIP Second Life, SlideShare, Sribd, Twitter, Clubhouse. Hello AI!), the basics never change. All roads always lead to the need to define the Ideal Customer Profile and, more importantly, agree this across all the GTM functions.
With the ICP in place and the business OKRs mapped out, only then can we start to think about the marketing strategies and tactics. Digital? Events? ABM? Field marketing? Partner Marketing? SDR/BDRs etc. (I know, if only life were that simple).
Always, always get the fundamentals right first!
On a separate, but related, note I did a little sketch in thinking this through to myself, took a photo and asked ChatGPT to provide a clearer, more professional graphic. I think we’ll all agree AI hashtag#NailedIt 🤣
AI: 10x the content, 1/10 the meaning (Source : Jeff Allen)
Stop press: B2B Marketer Wins Marketer of The Year!!!
Source: PwC
I know climate change is a scourge of our planet, but has hell frozen over? 😂 A B2B marketer has won the prestigious Marketing Week Marketer of the Year 😳
Testament to how far the industry has come from being the poor relation to B2C marketing. I’ve always said it’s harder to be a B2B marketer 😀
So massive congratulations Antonia Wade. And kudos to the judges for shining a light, quite rightly, on all the good stuff going on not only at PwC but in B2B marketing more widely, hopefully raising the profile of the segment. 👏👏👏
Read more here.