Amidst the ongoing coronavirus crisis, there are some business leaders continuing to lead with openness and transparency, championing radical change &, above all, listening to consumers first.
“It was like nothing we had ever experienced before.” Unprecedented may be one of the most overused words of 2020, but as Alicia Skubick, Marketing Director of Intuit Quickbooks explains, it is nonetheless an apt descriptor of how the company pivoted to respond to the crisis. “The first thing we did was ensure our teams were grounded, that everyone was OK. We started from a place of total transparency, with open question and answer sessions,” she explained.
The cloud software company has over 50 million customers across the globe and many of them were small businesses which found themselves at the sharp edge of the crisis. “As a business that focuses on small businesses, we quickly moved to a direct response approach to marketing to support our customers,” Skubick says.
To this end the brand has been running an ‘Ask The Expert’ series since March, providing practical, tangible support on subjects as diverse as cash flow and mental health. When the government furlough job retention scheme was introduced, the brand held six town halls attracting over 5,000 attendees seeking support in how to access and implement the scheme.
“For us we have a clear mission, which is powering prosperity across the globe. Small businesses are struggling. This means that understanding what has changed for them and coming from a genuine desire to help has been key to our approach,” Skubick explains.
We have seen such a radical transformation over this time; things won’t go backwards.
Alicia Skubick
Just as Intuit placed learning and empathy at the heart of its marketing strategy for customers, internally building a culture of remote learning was also vital. Ultimately the pandemic and the revolution in remote working it has ushered in has propelled internal marketing and learning to the very top of the business agenda. “Building out of internal communications channels was vital,” she says.
So, how did Intuit successfully build a culture of remote learning? “To start with we really wanted to stay close to our staff and ensure transparency and we began with a very clear vision to ensure all our teams had a voice,” explains Skubick.
This constant communication and transparency underpinned the business approach which included open live question and answer sessions with business leaders. The company also embraced a genuinely transparent approach to working from home in the midst of a global pandemic. “We were clear with our expectations and focused on listening with empathy,” she adds.
These are not just empty platitudes; the company actively shifted and simplified its performance metrics for employees. Skubick says, “We have people in house shares and then we had parents and careers and we had to be thoughtful with their time and we pushed teams to innovate around these challenges.”
Skubick is also focused on the challenges facing the industry as a whole and not losing focus on pushing for progress in the midst of a global pandemic. “The number one thing is diversity,” explains Skubick, “firstly within our talent and our teams, but also the representation within our advertising. We feel we have a deep responsibility to be a force for good.” Secondly, she is focused on ensuring that the brand is integrated end-to-end to ensure a seamless product experience.
To achieve this Skubick follows the mantra of Intuit’s Co-Founder Scott Cook when it comes to understanding customers: “Don’t just listen to what they say, watch what they do”. To this end the company has been continuing to watch how their customers use their software, only in the midst of COVID, this test and learn approach is powered by Zoom rather than face-to-face interaction.
The empathy-first marketing approach of Intuit, both externally and internally, underlines the fact that amongst the economic and emotional challenges of the coronavirus crisis there remain hope and opportunity. “We have seen so much incredible innovation from our customers and our teams,” explains Skubick. She points to restaurants pivoting at scale to deliver packaged goods as one example of that flexibility and innovation.
“The most important thing is to keep motivated as people,” she adds. She points to the example and inspiration set by her father, a doctor in the US, who has continued to help patients virtually throughout the pandemic: “We have seen such a radical transformation over this time; things won’t go backwards.”
The story of the Women in Marketing Awards is one of building a movement and a network that is the antithesis of the ‘old boys network’, which has historically excluded women from key networking and profile building opportunities, so vital to building a career in the creative industries. To mark a decade of the Women in Marketing Awards, as we move towards the 2020 Awards, Creativebrief will be asking supporters and past winners of the Awards to open up about their experiences in the industry and give their advice to the marketing talent poised to enter and pick up the much-coveted awards in the future.
Q: Tell us what the most challenging moment of your career has been and how you got through it?
A: When I was appointed Head of Marketing, in the first three months I faced family tragedy. I had to scale my leadership and scale through others. I asked for help from other leaders in our business and was given some excellent advice which was to focus on 8/8/8 principle. What this means in practice is to ensure you get eight hours sleep, eight hours work and eight hours rest. I think this is really important, particularly with COVID.
Q: Tell us about the biggest high point of your career?
A: Launching the women’s network at Intuit four years ago. I don’t lead it now, but I have a sense of pride like a parent watching it grow. As well as this being a pathfinder as to how business-to-business brands go to the market, in the UK it’s a huge source of pride. I believe that small businesses are much more like a consumer and that is reflected in our marketing; we use TV, out of home, digital. Now lots of other business-to-business brands are adopting that approach; it really helped make us. Also more recently, we picked up an award from The Drum for PR. [Intuit QuickBooks recently picked up an award alongside its agency Ogilvy in the Finance and Professional Services category.]
Q: Tell us about why you are sponsoring the Change Maker Award?
A: I am deeply passionate about Women in Marketing and we see that it can be a big force for change.
Q: What would be your advice to women starting out their career in marketing today?
A: Be curious and get to know your business end-to-end. Marketing is not just about the deep craft experience; it has truly moved from being seen as fluffy to being understood as a really important strategic driver of a business. Really understanding how a business works is key to this.
Creativebrief and BITE are proud to be media partner to the Women in Marketing Awards. To find out more about the awards please click here: https://womeninmarketing.org.uk/awards/
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