In her latest column for MAD//Insight, new Bloom & Wild CMO, Charlotte Langley, argues that because marketing is constantly changing, no one can ever call themselves an expert at it. 

I’ve recently taken on a new-to-me area of our business and become CMO. Like anyone who’s expanding their role or starting a new job, currently I feel a bit rubbish at it. I’ve got a lot to learn. But as I was speaking to a peer the other day, I realised that actually, this feeling of being a little at sea is pretty much the way any good, humble marketer should feel most of the time. 

Because our profession changes all the time. When I first started working in marketing, influencers didn’t really exist. Instagram had just launched. Netflix had yet to come to the UK. And before you say anything, I’m not even that old. 

With all this constant change, I don’t think we should call anyone a marketing expert. You might be expert in a slice of it, in how your particular company or category does it, maybe you’re really seasoned and have spent enough time to become knowledgeable about more than one category. 

With technology, algorithms, and metrics constantly changing does anyone have the time to be an all-round marketing expert?

But to be expert in the whole of marketing is just an impossibility. There are two many facets of it. It changes too much, too often. 

So it dawned on me that probably the most important skill we can have as marketers is adaptability. Being able to adapt to changes in algorithms, to the birth of new platforms, to the continual evolution of culture, to audiences who consume media and engage with brands in totally different ways, and to big shifts in how we concept and deliver work (hello AI). 

Success in marketing only ever comes with a willingness to learn and being open to the idea that how you did things last year might be entirely the wrong answer (or at least be missing a chunk of the answer) for how you should do things next year.

So if any of us are expert in anything, it’s getting up to speed quickly, adapting to new context and being open to continuously trying new things, learning new stuff and getting comfortable with forever feeling a little at sea. But hey, who doesn’t love a sea view?

Charlotte will be writing for MAD//Insight throughout the year.