Vito De Filippis, CM, Senior Vice President of Sales at Environics Analytics, discusses everything from knowing your customers intimately to how marketers must constantly produce effective strategies to prove their value. Vito covers wearing different hats, shifting goals and how a leadership role taught him the power of helping a team find success.   

Collaboration, Mentorship & Best Practices

The CM program and the designation are important in Canada because they provide professional recognition for marketing as a trade that didn’t exist before. The CM designation also helps build trust among clients and potential employers and creates a community of like-minded professionals. When we have meetings with CMs involved in different skill levels and learning, we have better opportunities for collaboration, mentorship, and sharing best practices.

Messages that Resonate

I think the idea of taking the sales concept to a higher level and a bigger audience inspired me to be a marketer. Since I was young, the whole idea of sales and marketing has always interested me. Working in retail sales exposed me to the idea of having people choose to make shopping decisions based on products and messages that feel tailored to them and their needs. It’s like how 100 years ago, a small neighbourhood grocery store shop owner would know their customers intimately. I feel like modern marketing tries to replicate that concept of knowing what your customer needs are on a much larger scale, nationally and globally by creating products and messaging and relaying it to a customer group to capture their attention and make their lives better.

Different Hats

When I began my career, I wish I understood the importance of wearing different hats and being versatile. There are so many facets in this industry beyond creative or digital marketing. There are a variety of subcategories such as analytics, advertising, social media marketing that work together define what a brand is and what it’s marketing content means. This gives a marketer the ability to become an expert in many different things and starting early is always better.

Early in your career, you’re always trying to define and set yourself apart. Marketing is one of those professions where you can do that. Spending time understanding the ins and outs of the business and having that time for exploration early in your career is essential, and I think marketing allows you to do that.

Proving Value

One of the biggest challenges in marketing is that, in a way, it has two jobs. One is being a good marketer and producing good marketing material, content and strategies. The other is proving that your marketing has value and is worth it’s budget. That’s what makes marketing unique. A marketing leader’s job is to help a brand grow, but they also must prove to the CFO and executives that their marketing is working. They must use measurement to understand how and why their marketing works to maintain or increase their budget. Data plays an important role, too. Clients always ask how to use data to prove the value of what they’re doing and understand where the opportunities are to optimize marketing spend.

Discover New Solutions

To stay current, I try to keep abreast of industry trends and webinars, attend conferences, and meet as many people as possible. I’m fortunate to work with about 200 clients and meet with many of them regularly. My conversations with them teach me more about marketing than any article I’ve read. Each has unique challenges, and I see trends come through the more I meet and work with them. It’s allowed me to discover new solutions relevant to today’s marketing landscape and pivot what we’re doing to fit what a marketer needs today.

Technology

In my opinion, the biggest change in marketing has been in the area of technology. The access to tools and the abundance of organizations you can work with to elevate your marketing has changed so much since I started my career. When you add AI, which affects how businesses conduct their marketing, technology is one of the biggest things you can keep a bead on if you’re a marketer. You must ask yourself, “What’s happening with marketing technology, and how can it help my business?”

Success and Shifting Goals

One of the most defining moments in my career was when I took on a leadership role during the pandemic. Business was changing worldwide, but until then, I had always wanted to be an individual contributor because I found success that way. Accepting a leadership role taught me the power of helping a team become successful. Learning to shift your goals from revolving around individual success to producing a powerhouse team capable of amazing things was a huge defining moment for me.

Artificial Intelligence

In every article I read and conference I attend, AI is a massive topic. I’m most excited to see where AI ends up going. While many people might be investing in AI, I’ve yet to see it become an all-encompassing solution. Still, I’m curious to see what intelligent and creative marketers do with it. I’m hoping using AI doesn’t cheapen brands but helps to support personalization, which is another big trend.

Understand Business

My role is in data analytics and most of my experience has to do with how data fits into the marketing discipline. People interested in data analytics must understand that it’s a big part of marketing decisions. Another thing I learned early in my career was to think about marketing as one piece of a larger business.

Ask yourself, how does marketing get influenced by the product, by sales, or how does marketing influence sales? How does it help with supply chain or real estate locations? If your business has stores or restaurants, where does marketing play a role in helping define the brand, what it is, and how it fits into all these different facets? Simply understanding business in general can help you become a better marketer, which seems simple, but you would be surprised by how myopic some marketers can be.

 

 

 

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