Ep. 23 | Pt 1 Strategy, COVID 19 Response and Elevating The Role of Marketing, Danielle Regan and Dave Hendy, Mace
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Marketing In Times of Recovery hosted by Ayo Abbas, a built environment marketing consultant and founder of Abbas Marketing.
It's part one of a two-parter with today’s guests are Danielle Regan and Dave Hendy from Mace.
In our discussion, we talk about:
The role of the business partner as the glue that joins the marketing team with the business.
The McKinsey Framework that helped support Mace’s business strategy through the pandemic
How the role of internal comms became more open and transparent.
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Resources
Abbas Marketing
Mace Group
McKinsey Framework - Beyond coronavirus: The path to the next normal
This episode was recorded on July 01 2021.
The next episode is live now if you want to find out more about how Mace tackled internal comms and purpose click here to listen.
Transcript.
Ayo Abbas 00:05
Hello, and welcome to Marketing In Times of Recovery. And I'm your host Ayo Abbas, founder and director of Abbas Marketing, a specialist built environment marketing consultancy. This episode was recorded on Thursday, July 01 2021. And today I've not got one but two very special guests from Mace, Danielle Regan and Dave Hendy. Mace as a company is one that I know really, really well as I used to work for Danielle, for four years in the business partner role that she mentioned in the podcast. In our discussions, we talk about a host of things from why purpose is so important in their new 2026 business strategy, how their marketing team had to restructure overnight to support the business during COVID. How internal columns has grown in stature, unimportance, and why it's been so important for them now to be viewed as a team as a trusted advisor. And if you liked the show, please, please, please do leave us a review as it really will help us to spread the word to more people. Anyway, I'll stop talking and let you get on with listening. Enjoy. Okay, so welcome to the show, Danielle and Dave, um, could you introduce yourselves and your roles at mace, please? kick off with you, Danielle.
Danielle Regan 01:27
Hi. Nice to be here. Yeah. I'm Danielle Regan. I'm the group Marketing and Communications Director at Mace.
Ayo Abbas 01:36
And you Dave, thank you.
Dave Hendy 01:38
Yeah, it's fantastic. I'm Dave Hendy. I'm Mace's Head of Corporate Communications.
Ayo Abbas 01:42
Cool. And, Danielle, can you give us a quick rundown on how their marketing communications team works at Mace? Because you're quite a large team, aren't you? What size are you and what you do?
Danielle Regan 01:52
Yeah, we're we are quite large. Now. Actually, it's been really interesting. Actually. I've been at Mace for 13 years. And I think when I joined, I think we were about a team of about five or six. And now we're approaching about 40 people as well. And, you know, actually starting to become a bit more of a global team as well, which is fantastic. So, yeah, I guess so our role really is. So it's three main parts to it, you know, position protect and promote the Mace brand, support the business to win work, but also a huge part of what we do is actually creating brand ambassadors. So you know, kind of starting from the inside out, really trying to turn our 6,500 employees into brand advocates kind of out in the marketplace. And so that's kind of what we do as a team. We're split into four small, smallish teams. So we've got corporate comms that Dave leads, which is internal comms external comms, and that includes sort of press, social media, corporate affairs, thought leadership, as well as supporting all of our internal comms and transformation and employee engagement. Again, we've got digital and design, which is kind of digital marketing, but also graphic design, video and photography. That also includes our kind of CRM and customer satisfaction team as well. We've then got a small events team, so they're the team that do all of our physical, virtual and hybrid events. And then we've got our business partners. And that's the kind of the link between the business really so almost like account managers, so they represent marcomms within the engines of the business and the business units. So they turn the business strategies into kind of marketing strategies and campaigns. So they're the voice of marketing in the engines and the voice of the engines in in the team.
Ayo Abbas 03:49
So that's, that's gonna say the engine just like, that's the job I used to do at Mace.
Danielle Regan 03:56
I think it was one of you at the time Ayo wasn't there. Now there's an army of marketers. Yeah. Which is fantastic.
Ayo Abbas 04:06
I guess, like in lots of stuff I've always done, it's like people go, we want to see if this works. And that's kind of a lot of the roles I've had, it's like, do we need marketing? Or do we need and it's kind of just demonstrating to the business, what value that kind of role can be bring and the business partner role, I guess, is the all seeing eyes in the business in a way isn't it, which is quite a kind of key thing for a large team. And a larger organisation as well.
Dave Hendy 04:27
I think was really interesting. So I joined in 2017, and the business partner function wasn't a very big either and actually, it's almost a measure of the growing understanding and acceptance of the role of what we do as a team you can measure by the expansion of the business partner team, because each of those business partners represents part of our business that has recognised the value and is prepared to kind of stick up the cost to make marketing and comms happen in their part of the business and aimed at them. And I do think you can, you can almost track the growth of our kind of success as a team over the last four years, by the growth of that function kind of demonstrating why we need to be where we are and what we're doing.
Danielle Regan 05:05
Yeah, I absolutely agree. Dave, I think, you know, as you know, Ayo being at Mace a number years ago, you know, marketing wasn't as perhaps mature in the sector at that point in time. And we've been on a real kind of journey really sort of trying to get people see the value of what we do, and embed it within the business. And I would say that now, as Dave says, the size of the business partner team is really testament to that, because the the the people on the ground, and you know, that the engines themselves are really bought into it and see the value of it, and hence, have then invested in, in marketing professionals to really support them to drive their agenda. So you know, it's a really, really positive story.
Ayo Abbas 05:53
And how do you I just how did you get the business to see the value of marketing? How, what kind of things did you do? Were there particular things? Or what did you have to do to show them? Because I know, it's not that easy to convince people, and it does take time.
Danielle Regan 06:04
it has taken time. And I think there were certain things that there were certain things where no matter how well we did them, it wouldn't change what the business thought of marketing. So there's certain things almost, I don't want to call them hygiene factors in so much as they're, you know, they're not strategically important. But there were certain things that, you know, wouldn't shift the dial, they were just kind of expected. I think when we got into the space of really trying to support the business to win work, you know, whether that was supporting on kind of strategic pursuits and bids and getting into kind of the capture planning space. Or really trying to kind of position the brand in new sectors and new markets, or support the business with new service lines. I think that's where when things started to change, because we were almost treated more as kind of advisors and kind of strategists than just to kind of delivery, you know, channel delivery function. So I think it's, I think it's to do with that it's really sort of getting under the skin of the business, trying to understand and also not just understand where it's going, but also influence where it's going as well. But I think that's something else that we do now as a team is we're actually involved in kind of group strategy level, rather than just kind of responding to what the businesses that the direction of travel, were actually trying to influence the direction of travel.
Dave Hendy 07:29
And I think some of it as well, as is, is also being quite selective around what you don't do. And I think, you know, I thought is really interesting. We had a, we had a team meeting recently, where we were talking about ground rules as a team, and somebody has been in the team a long time, kind of pushed back a little bit against this idea of us being a fun team that had a sense of humour. And he was saying, well, actually, you know, when I, when I arrived at Mace, we were the fun team, we did all the fun stuff. And we never did anything serious and important. And that was quite difficult. And I think there has been that growth in some of that is about being quite selective and how you present yourself back to the business. And about, you know, I remember when I turned up in 2017 is a very firm, we don't do brochures, whatever we do, we don't do brochures. But you know, making that a clear statement of intent and say, actually, we do we do push people towards different channels. And we don't take the easy option of nodding along and saying, Okay, well, you've asked really nicely. So you do get us to go into your nice PDF brochure, but actually sticking to what we know works. But by doing so you do begin to change your perception of the business. And you do begin to say, Well, actually, just because you've asked for this, we're not going to give you that we're going to work out what you intend to do, what your objectives are, and how we can help you reach it in a way that we think will work. And I think sometimes it is just doing that again, and again and again, and again and again, until you begin to get that traction. And then the other bit of that is, is having the tech stack in place to be able to show people the outcomes properly. And actually, you know, I think one of the things that's really changed in the time I've been at Mace is the measurement and reporting capability that we've built in the past few years is just so much better than it was actually we can, we can show people, demonstrable that we can demonstrate to people the really clear outcomes, the work we're doing. And as a result, that argument you make when you say we don't embrace what you need is for us to do an integrated capture planning campaign, actually, if you can then show people what that means in terms of, you know, market generated leads, that's hugely valuable. And I think that's really changed the dialogue quite significantly as well.
Ayo Abbas 09:28
So actually being able to report back on your performance and the impact of your campaigns has been a huge thing in terms of demonstrating the value. So how did you kind of get a kind of technology and Martech space kind of stack in place? Really.
Danielle Regan 09:42
I guess it started off it we've kind of we started off, we're trying to get a decent marketing automation system in place. And I think we've evolved and we're actually a quite an interesting stage of the journey now because we're, we're looking at that our digital ecosystem at the moment. And we've been refreshing that. And we're kind of just going through that, I suppose requirements gathering piece at the moment looking at the sort of people the process and the tech, not with the technology. Yeah, and I guess, we are looking at the stack and the systems, but actually, more importantly, we're looking at what they what we want them to do for us. You know, I've got this kind of vision of, of sort of AI being able to tell us what we do at the next stage of marcomms campaign should look like you know, which is kind of probably, you know, what happens in consumer marketing, where they track your buyer behaviour, and then target you with a very specific message your campaign, because the data tells them or predicts that that will increase your propensity to buy. And I've got this kind of, in my head, if we get this tech stack in place, that sort of fabulous CRM system with great marketing, automation and fabulous integrated kind of events, technology, and social media tech, and, and all the rest of it that at some point in time, we'll have enough data in there that's overlaid with the big data as well. And kind of the basic CRM data that it will tell us what we need to do the next step of, you know, a data centre client at this part of the, you know, this part of the buyers journey. And, you know, we're way off that yet. utopia is utopia, but it's not, it's not unheard of, you know, in other sectors. Yeah. And I think we have got a lot of the data. But it's all at the moment, it's in separate systems, and it's not necessarily integrated, I think that's where we're, that's where we need to get to that everything is integrated. And all because we've, you know, we do, if you look at how many bids that we do around the world, you know, that data is gold dust, and we just can't mine it at the moment, and overlaying it with kind of marketing campaigns. And, you know, that's, that's where we, we want to get to, but the great thing is, there is now appetite from the board to do this. So again, there's been a massive sort of step change in, in, in in the appetite for that, which is, which is great. So we're actually just kind of developing that sort of strategy at the moment, you know, looking at different digital asset management systems, looking at digital publishing tools, marketing automation, you know, how you SharePoint CRM, you know, which is the big missing link for us, in a way. So yeah, it's really from that point of view. It's, it's super exciting. So
Ayo Abbas 12:26
watch this space. Watch the space because you'll be watching us. So in terms of lockdown, and are we ever coming out of it? And how's it been for you at Mace? I guess How have your team had to work and what? What's the past? It's not even year, it's more than a year. It's like almost a year and a half been like for you. I'm gonna get that off of you, Dave.
Dave Hendy 12:52
I think it's an interesting question. I think for me, there's been some really distinct phases of this for us and I suspect for a lot of businesses is you know, although, although it can tend to kind of blend into 18 months worth of kind of bland, you know, lockdowns, been tough kind of stuff, actually. The first, you know, like, like a lot of big operational businesses, the first couple of months of COVID was a incredibly difficult and stressful time to be in the team. You know, we suddenly had, you know, all plans go out the window, we've got to close 90 construction sites overnight, we've got to design new safe ways of working, we've got to communicate with 1000s of staff on a nearly daily basis about changing regulations. And that what what I thought was really interesting about that is we we did change how we work to the team, you know, we we very quickly realised the existing team structure just wasn't the right structure to live what we needed to do. There were people in existing roles who didn't have much to do because a lot of standard marketing activity had stopped there were people in other roles who were just swamped. And so we collectively as a, as a marketing leadership team, led by Danielle kind of went okay, well, we need to change this. And we introduced agile working teams across different functions that that actually kind of tore up our team structure, put different people in different places, you know, gave people opportunity to use skills that hadn't used before taking responsibilities they hadn't used before, and actually created overnight, a new team working in a new way that was high performing high functioning and just delivered what the business needed. And that was really, although it was a really stressful time. And there were loads of late nights and lots of really long hours. Actually, I look back at that. I think what my God, we basically went remote in 72 hours, we have the rest of the business go remote in 72 hours. At the same time, we tore up the hierarchy and rebuilt it. And it just worked. And it worked well worked really, really well. And that's, you know, looking back it feels a bit feels a bit odd to look back and realise
Ayo Abbas 14:39
there was a serious crisis that was global that happened to everybody. I mean, how often does that happen? I mean, that's,
Dave Hendy 14:45
I think, and I think one of the things that it really showed to me was actually that that that internal comms role of kind of, you know, in normal times, it's quite, it's not slow moving, because there's a lot of stuff to do very quickly but, but the pace at which you're having to doesn't deliver change is never daily. And actually when the patient delivering change becomes daily, and the way in which needs communicate is a business and divides, you know, you've got one message for UK staff on construction sites, you've got one message for UK staff and head office, you've got another message for international staff in this part of the world, and actually suddenly having to know if you if you're a UK based business that operates globally, rather than a global business that actually presents some really complicated challenges. And I think the speed with which we had to build a new system, and a new approach and a new style of communicating and there was a really key moment for me where Mark, our Chief Executive Mark Reynolds, consciously switched to over-communicating. Let's, let's up the ante, we need to be as transparent as we can we need to be open, we need to admit we don't have the answers need to admit we're not sure what's happening. And that's exhausting for a marcomms team. That is a very challenging place to be, you know, suddenly organising, you know, every, every week we're doing a video from him to the staff, we're doing semi daily emails, we were doing four sets of webinars out to the entire business, led by the Chief Exec, as all this stuff was really happening very quickly. But I think it did make a difference in terms of people understanding that we weren't telling them what to do, we were saying, well, we don't know what's happening here, but work with us. And we'll all come out of this together as well as we can. And then so that's phase one. And then and then we kind of got into summer, last year, things returning to normal, you know, the world begins to open up again, at least in the UK, and you kind of try and find out what that new normal is. But then as a business, we went about a really ambitious change programme. And Danielle can probably talk about in more detail. But you know, they took the opportunity to say, well, we need to work out what our new normal is as a business. So let's change the strategy. And that triggers a whole different type of really hard, challenging, demanding work as a team. And as Danielle said earlier, one of the great things about that was that we were, as a marcomms team, probably more central in that than we might have been if it had happened six months Previously, we weren't supporting the delivery of a strategy. We were helping to write it, or at least Danielle was helping to write it. And I think that made a real difference.
Danielle Regan 17:04
Yeah, I think, you know, I just want to give hats off to Dave as well, actually, because he very much led on the crisis response for the team. And I think our internal comms response was really phenomenal. You know, the team did a really great job. And I think we launched like nine new channels.
Ayo Abbas 17:24
Did it show where you had gaps in internal comms? Because like you say, internal comms is always like the forgotten, forgotten channel in a way, right? Oh, never, ever appreciated as much as it should be. Right?
Danielle Regan 17:34
Absolutely. Yeah. And you know, what everyone says this, it's a bit it's a bit of a cliche, but it did just COVID just really accelerated things that were kind of in the in the kind of long term planning. So, you know, we'd always sort of said, right, we need to really make more of the Microsoft 365 package that we've got, at some point in time, we really need to launch Teams, we need to launch Yammer, we need to, you know, overnight, right? We really need to launch Teams now. Because it's not gonna cut it. And but I think, you know, just on reflection, if at all, really, I mean, firstly, from a business point of view, it was always about keeping people safe and well, and the CEO and the Board was so kind of, you know, they were really, really good at kind of that was the first and foremost priority, but also what the business did, which, you know, they followed a framework for sort of managing the crisis response, which enabled them to sort of, I guess, yeah, it just gave him a bit of a structure in which to kind of deal you know, sort of manage the crisis, but while also being able to think long term, so I think it was a McKinsey model, but it worked really well for us. And it was resolve, resilience, return and redefine, and the redefine bit that Dave's just mentioned was a kind of around July last year, I think, where, where Mark sort of said, right, we need to, you know, we've got so much of the business focused on the return phase and getting back into sight and re mobilising. But we need a small group of people really looking at that redefine element. So what does the future look like? So there was a group of us that used to meet every morning, obviously, virtually, and we've got some really clear workstreams that came out of it, you know, looking at the strategy of the business, looking at ways of working, you know, there was, there was some really kind of very clear kind of goals and objectives and this sort of small, smallish group of us to start with. We're just, you know, just kind of focused on that, while other people were focused on. Yeah, yeah. So, so actually, in hindsight, I think it actually, you know, it was manage, you know, from the board's perspective really well, internal comms did did a fantastic job and, and I think us as a team have got, you know, got a lot of recognition and in response to that, and I think people who probably have never really given much thought to what comms was all about
Ayo Abbas 19:48
parties, it's parties.
Danielle Regan 19:51
This is really important stuff. And, and actually, when we did the employee survey, at the beginning of the year, there was two metrics that came out of that really strongly. And one was around communication. You know, across the business people were our metric for comms & engagement went up, which, which was great. And again, I think testament to the team. And the other was sense of purpose, which we launched our new purpose as part of the redefine strategy. And, and really great to see, you know, really quite quickly, the the business had responded to it really positively and could kind of see their role in helping the business deliver against that purpose. So, yeah, so while it was a really super challenging, super challenging time, I think, you know, the business dealt with it in a really admirable way. And, yeah,
Dave Hendy 20:47
I think for me, there's, there's something that's really, you know, comms teams, or marcomms teams can really only be as open and transparent and engage with their audiences, they're allowed to be. you know, you are new, Every business has a has a sensitivity level for how open, they're prepared to be with their people about what's happening. And actually, we were able to do a really great job of keeping people up to date and engaged around different, you know, some really difficult decisions we had to make as a business. It wasn't it wasn't all sunshine and light at all. Some of it was really challenging, but, but we almost had a mandate from the board to say, actually, we need to keep people engaged, aligned, you know, we're all working together or pulling in the same direction. And that meant we could go out and do some of this stuff in a way that I wouldn't I'm not sure, I would have dared suggest, I think, you know, pre COVID, some of the level of transparency and openness, we went within this kind of all staff webinar and these forums in which we're putting very senior leadership in front of people to ask unfiltered questions on a really regular basis. And actually, I think that that kind of working in tandem, those two things that our drive, to keep people engaged and the board, you know, recognition that they needed to be transparent and open, if they were going to deliver this actually meant that we worked really well. And I've, I've had conversations with with peers in other in other firms where that that just didn't work quite so well. And they felt the need that they had to kind of operate as normal, despite doing really unnormal stuff, and really challenging stuff. And actually, it did lead to a bit of a mismatch. And I think you're right, you know, we you are you caught us, as a team, you're only really as good as you're allowed to be sometimes. And I think it was a really, it was a really good thing to be able to operate in an environment, where we were given the mandate to go and do that.
Danielle Regan 22:23
And I think it would have been really difficult, I think it would have been a sort of comms positional point of view. You know, authenticity is really important, isn't it? And I think the fact that from a comms point of view, we were being really transparent, and we weren't trying to paint a picture that wasn't accurate, we weren't kind of spinning it in any way. Was was was was was great. Because you know that it's very difficult, isn't it? When you're asked to when you're asked to do that, you know, whereas we could be really, really honest, and really frank with people,
Dave Hendy 22:56
I'm not gonna say there was no spin at all.
Ayo Abbas 23:00
I'm sure but actually even doing I guess internal comms always has that risk, isn't it? Because whatever you say, internally, could well end up external, right. And that's basically it, you have to assume that. So I guess that's that
Dave Hendy 23:12
level. And I think there was a really clearing examples last year of where that had happened and had gone both very right and very wrong. And I think, again, that this that's helpful, in some ways, because it sharpens expectations, it makes it easier to carry the message to say, we need to be careful here, we need to, we need to assume that anything we share with our people goes somewhere else has to be it has to be right but but also that shouldn't stop us being open and transparent. Because this stuff is happening to every company in the sector. Now, nobody that read a trade press magazine would be surprised the construction industry has had a really difficult q2 last year, because everybody closed their sights for a month. You know, they didn't they weren't told to by government, but they all did it voluntarily, mostly. And as a result, everybody had to reach out any time and so getting that recognition of senior-level to say actually, we can be transparent, we can be open about this stuff is is really important.
Danielle Regan 24:03
I think as well. You know, it also what was was positive out of it is the collaboration amongst the industry. You know? Yeah, Mark Reynolds, our CEO sits on the Construction Leadership Council and which is all the kind of major major contractors and some sort of supply chain as well. And they, they were meeting on a really regular basis. They were
Ayo Abbas 24:28
Yeah, they did tonnes of stuff, didn't they, they really stepped up with guides on how to get back site and they did to be honest, they filled a lot of the gap that you know, the government would put a line in the report and then they'd actually come up with a methodology on how to do it which is the most important part for a site.
Dave Hendy 24:42
and I think it was really interesting from a kind of with an external affairs hat on you know, the construction sector, it's fair to say hadn't didn't really get a lot of a lot of airtime with government. It wasn't seen as one of these really crucial industries it didn't you know, we'd look enviously on aviation and automation. To the auto industry with their kind of connections and influence. And actually at the point at which our industry became one of the few sectors of the economy, the government thought could operate safely. Because we had controls in place, we knew how to implement challenging health and safety measures in a tight environment. Actually, suddenly, we did have that ear. And it was really heartening to see the industry kind of pull together, which is not always famous for all together and use that influence and leverage to get some positive outcome to the industry and by extension economies. It was, you know, it was it was great to see stuff change internally, but also externally, the whole industry, I think a lot if given a lasting impression, it does feel like it's more collaborative, more communicative. You know, that senior level, there's much more engagement, there's a much more shared vision of what we need as an industry to grow and to continue to perform well, whereas before it was always, it felt quite fractured, it felt quite competitive. There wasn't a huge amount of that kind of ethos around sometimes.
Ayo Abbas 26:01
Thanks so much for listening to the latest episode of Marketing In Times of Recovery, and I'm your host Ayo Abbas. If you want to find out more about the Bi-weekly show do check out the show notes which will give you more information about who the guests are and all the things we've covered. And if you're listening on Apple or Spotify, make sure you hit the subscribe button so you don't miss out on an episode. Until next time, bye.
