‘Data is the compass, but insight is the lighthouse’: Joanne Smith on building brands that last

From Dove to Blackmores, Joanne Smith has built a career around elevating capability and embedding innovation. Ahead of the ADMA Global Forum, she reveals why marketers need vision, courage and a return to the fundamentals to fuel real growth.

With the rapidly evolving marketing landscape, what do you see as the core capabilities of the future marketer, particularly when the scope and skill set of traditional marketing roles has changed so much?

It is crucial not to lose focus on the brilliant basics - the fundamentals of how to build and grow brands sustainably remain critical. Once the brilliant basics are in place, key future capabilities are in data literacy and analytics.  

The speed at which new platforms, technologies and consumer expectations evolve makes agility a competitive advantage. Future marketers need to be comfortable with data, pulling out insights and pairing analytical rigor with creativity. Digital fluency is a must, but so is ethical judgment.

Can you give us a teaser for your session at Global Forum? What’s one thing you hope the audience takes away from your talk?

I hope that audience takes away the enormous opportunity that exists for businesses to create sustainable growth with insight, vision, courage and great innovation that solves consumer problems.

You’ve worked across a number of brands, such as Unilever, Dove, Johnson & Johnson and Blackmores. How do you approach building high-performing teams that can thrive across very different industries and cultures?

A key priority for me in any team is genuinely and consistently investing in individual and team capability and ensuring marketers are given the right training, development and experiences to produce great work and to thrive.

What’s the biggest barrier organisations face when trying to elevate their marketing capability and how do you overcome it?

Ignoring the value of establishing and embedding the fundamentals of sustainable brand growth and getting distracted with the latest bright shiny object. It takes time, consistency and discipline to embed evidence-based brilliant basics and the principles of sustainable brand growth - but this is essential for building brands that stand the test of time.

Marketers today are swimming in data. What’s your perspective on how leaders can separate signal from noise and use data to fuel real creativity and growth?

A key skill is the ability to derive human insight from data – this comes from knowing your consumer better than anyone else, understanding the problems they are trying to solve and delivering solutions that make a difference. Data is the compass, but insight is the lighthouse and from great insight comes creativity and growth.
 

Under your leadership, Blackmores was recognised in AFR’s Most Innovative Companies list. What’s your philosophy on embedding innovation into everyday marketing practice?

We are now in our fifth year of transforming innovation at Blackmores Group. It’s been an incredible journey for the business that has led to profound commercial results.

Our focus has been on the entire innovation ecosystem, from supercharging our approach to quality consumer centric data and insight through AI, scaling innovation quickly across the 11 markets we serve, taking a whole-of-organisation approach to building innovation capability, and tracking and measuring our progress consistently and transparently.

AI is reshaping how we think about customer understanding and marketing delivery. How are you approaching AI at Blackmores, and what excites you most about its potential?

At Blackmores we see huge opportunity in the application of AI for growth - in other words, accelerating opportunities to improve the quality of consumer centric data that feeds innovation content development, and the personalization of content at scale.

AI has played a crucial role in improving our access to data and our teams have derived the insights that are feeding our innovation idea discovery process. It is leading to stronger concepts that better address consumer health needs.
 

What do you see as Marketing’s Next Horizon, and how can marketers Elevate towards it?

I believe that beyond strong consumer centric brand strategy, marketers can elevate by:

● Reclaiming creativity as a strategic priority. Creativity generates distinctiveness and emotional resonance. It’s how we turn insights into impact and noise into meaning. 

●Leaning into AI with curiosity and courage. 

● Building capability through connection. Building high-performing, cross-functional teams that thrive on diversity, shared purpose, and continuous learning.

● Championing trust and transparency. As privacy reshapes the media landscape, the brands that win will be those that listen deeply, act responsibly, and show up consistently

How do you continue to develop your own skills?

I love to read and I listen to podcasts, voices outside our industry, feedback from customers and consumers as well as my own team and stakeholders. I learn from other functions of the business, from my peers and, of course, I learn from mistakes!


Joanne Smith is a keynote speaker at the ADMA Global Forum on September 9. She will be joined by other industry leaders including business expert Todd Sampson, futurist Tom Goodwin, MECCA’s Kate Blythe and more. The last tickets are available here.