Ep 34: Strategy, people and interims with Caroline Copland
If you’re looking to hire an interim or trying to change your marketing strategy to a new focus, this is the episode for you. It features Caroline Copland who is an interim marketing director talking about her latest role at Rider Levett Bucknall.
Marketing In Times of Recovery is a built environment hosted by marketing consultant Ayo Abbas from Abbas Marketing. The consultancy bridges the gap between business strategy and tactical marketing for engineers and architects. You can find out more about my latest work at abbas marketing.com
In this talk we look at:
Moving from a regional led to sector led strategy
How listening holds the key to marketing success
How to hire and get the most out of marketing teams including interim
Timestamps
00:04: Introduction
03:43: All about RLB
06:18: Joining a new team during lockdown
09:43: Restructuring from regionally-led to sector-led
11:34: Other marketing challenges
13:50: The marketing team approach
15:28: Levelling up, and UKREiiF
17:39: Taking a direct marketing approach
19:36: Delivering the right narrative and adding value
20:32: Defining marketing success
21:40: Employer of Choice campaign and being yourself
23:44: Advice for taking on an interim role
25:19: For those looking to make their mark in marketing…
28:05: Final thoughts
Marketing In Times of Recovery is a built environment hosted by marketing consultant Ayo Abbas from Abbas Marketing. The consultancy bridges the gap between business strategy and tactical marketing for engineers and architects. Sign up for my monthly roundup here for the latest built environment marketing news
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Resources
Caroline's Consultancy website
Rider Levett Bucknall website
Transcript.
Ayo Abbas: 00:04: Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Marketing in Times of Recovery. I'm your host, Built Environment Marketing Consultant, Ayo Abbas. I run my own consultancy that bridges the gap between business strategy and tactical marketing campaigns. You can find out more about my work at www.Abbasmarketing.com.
Today, my guest is the amazing Caroline Copland, who is a fellow marketing consultant. Her current role is as the Interim Marketing Director at built environment management consultancy, RLB. I've known Caroline since we both worked at NHS Property Services and we've kept in touch. In this episode, we look at moving from a regionally-led to a sector-led strategy, how listening holds the key to marketing success, and we also look at hiring and how to get the most of out of marketing teams.
If you like the show, don't forget that you help us to spread the word by leaving us a review on LinkedIn, or something on Instagram, or even just dropping us a line. Or, if you really, really want to, you could leave us a review on Apple or Spotify; it really does help us to spread the word. Thank you so much. Anyway, now it's over to Caroline. Enjoy.
Hi, Caroline, and thanks so much for coming onto the show. Can you give me a brief intro to you and your role at RLB and as an interim?
Caroline Copland: 01:27: Sure. Hi, Ayo, and thank you very much for having me. So, intro to me, I started life as a sports journalist and then I moved into the wine trade, marketing wine. So, both my previous roles, well, sports journalist and being in comms and then marketing in the wine trade, involved lots of travel and exciting, fun things, and then I moved into the built environment in 2007.
Ayo Abbas: 01:57: It's exciting, fun things as well!
Caroline Copland: 01:59: Which is actually a lot more fun than it sounds. So, yes, I've worked in a number of a permanent roles, blue-chip organisations, and I set up as a consultant in 2016, which feels like yesterday but actually wasn't. I've done both consultancy work and interim roles, and I love it, I absolutely love it; I haven't looked back.
Yeah, interim role and consultancy, it's a bit like you go into an organisation with a handful of jigsaw puzzle pieces and it's about finding the one that fits in the organisation that you've gone into; and when you find the one that fits, the picture starts to develop. It's great when the company goes, "That's what we've been looking for!" It's fun moving around if an organisation's doing that.
One of the challenges, I think, of being interim is you get asked often, "Do you ever become part of a team?" and weirdly, I feel I become a much stronger part of a team; maybe that's because you're bringing in new ideas and you're not there for very long so you get stuck in. Where I am now, RLB, is one of the best teams. I say, "One of the best teams", I have to be very careful when you say things like that, but it is a fabulous team. So, yeah, that's a bit about me and I work with a great team at RLB.
Ayo Abbas: 03:34: So, I did my research on RLB and it had 4,000 people, which I hadn't realised they were that big; that's kind of like Mace-sized I'm going to say.
Caroline Copland: 03:42: Yeah.
Ayo Abbas: 03:43: Talk a bit more about that firm.
Caroline Copland: 03:44: Globally, yes, we're 4,000 people. So, RLB is a global management consultancy to the built environment. What does that mean? What do they do?
Ayo Abbas: 03:58: A lot of long words!
Caroline Copland: 04:00: Yeah. So, RLB traditionally build buildings, build iconic buildings, also involved in lots of large-scale public sector projects, which may not be iconic but are vitally important, and infrastructure schemes, be that rail, road, airports, seaports; yes, we do that all over the world.
Ayo Abbas: 04:24: So, are they more on the services side, like more what a traditional QS would have been?
Caroline Copland: 04:30: Well, yeah. I would say RLB started in 1783, I think it was, as a traditional QS, but now we create solutions in the construction world all over the world. So we have to our name Sydney Opera House; the Phoenix Sky Train; the London Olympics; and, as I say, lots of public sector and social value products all over the UK. We work with a number of NHS trusts, schools, academies, universities.
I guess, when we started, as you say, were we traditional QSs? Back in 1783, globally, building was about building, it was about counting bricks and doing costs and those sorts of things.
Ayo Abbas: 05:21: Which it still is in some respects.
Caroline Copland: 05:22: Yeah, I would say we're more about solutioning now, and that sounds very marketing, doesn't it, but it's true. Yeah, we're about finding the right answers for our clients and that is what today RLB is all about. It's about everything from the business case, to the funding, to the entire programme management, right down to putting a computer screen on the wall in an office; although I would be told off for saying that, because digitalisation is integral to the conversation and technical solutions are addressed from the outset.
Ayo Abbas: 06:04: It's a lot of words!
Caroline Copland: 06:05: A lot of words, yeah.
Ayo Abbas: 06:07: So, you started your role at RLB was it during the second lockdown, in 2021?
Caroline Copland: 06:14: Yeah, March 2021.
Ayo Abbas: 06:18: How do you get up to speed during a lockdown and join a team and do a global role and do all that?
Caroline Copland: 06:26: I'd love to give you the textbook answer, but I didn't do it very well, is possibly the truth of the matter. In the previous lockdowns, I'd actually not worked from my spare room before; I'd actually worked in a hospital in another guise, and so I qualified as a keyworker then. So, I'd never had to set up the home office.
I was having to go through that "getting to know your team" while they were all in their spare rooms and, yeah, I found that a real challenge, a real challenge. In fact, in all honestly, I spent most of the first month walking around my local cemetery doing deep breathing exercises thinking, "What am I doing; how am I ever going to understand this global business when I'm sitting here in a corner of southwest London?" Yeah, how do you meet people?
Ayo Abbas: 07:18: It's really hard, isn't it? It's hard enough when you start a new job anyway, because I've started quite a few new jobs in my life. It is hard, isn't it, when you think about it?
Caroline Copland: 07:25: Yeah.
Ayo Abbas: 07:26: I used to have a list of useful people to get to know and all of those types of things, and you'd meet the team and you go out for lunch, but you didn't have any of that.
Caroline Copland: 07:33: Absolutely. It's just that classic getting to speak to people. It's that classic water cooler moment, when you actually find out how it all works and how long people have been here, who are the right people to go to? Of course, you can ring someone, you can press your team's button and ping into their face, but you don't really know the culture; you don't know if that's acceptable.
As I say, after the first month, I did actually call my boss, Andy Reynolds, who by the way is a fabulous leader. I said, "Andy, I'm just not the right person for this job. I spend most of my time doing deep breathing exercises walking around the cemetery". He said to me, "Well, I didn't know that, Caroline, until you told me; all I'm going on is the output. We've got a bit of a problem, because I quite like the output and that's what matters", so, yeah. And I guess, for that output, I have to give credit to a fabulous team. But it was what I really needed to give me the confidence that it was okay and that I was delivering and we were going to get there and we were working collaboratively.
Very quickly after that, I gave myself full licence to stop looking at myself as a caretaker who was never going to get to grips with this role, and to really address the challenges and the opportunities. That included grasping a fledgling restructure that had begun, and in theory, my job was to then take that on and make it work in practice.
Ayo Abbas: 09:09: So, you had to immerse yourself in the organisation, I guess, isn't it, and not see yourself as interim?
Caroline Copland: 09:14: Yeah, and what it wanted and, yeah, pick up. As I say, a restructure had begun and I needed to pick that up and run with it, which is interesting because my brief was, "This is what we're doing", and a lot of the business didn't know that was what we're doing, because although it had been conveyed, it needed more messaging. So, yeah, I had to implement those changes quite quickly.
Ayo Abbas: 09:43: What were the changes, Caroline, the overall business changes, not just what happened to the team?
Caroline Copland: 09:54: So, it was really about, the business had been regionally-led for a long time, had great local markets, great reputation locally, but it was about bringing that all together as one RLB, globally and nationally, and really to take the emphasis off our regional teams and become sector-led. The team that I inherited was focused largely regionally, and yeah, I needed to put the right people in the right place to do the marketing work that the business needed to be done from a sector perspective.
Ayo Abbas: 10:35: That is different thing, isn't it? I've gone through that in various organisations as well and it's quite a big challenge. It's a mindset shift as well, isn't it? It's quite a huge --
Caroline Copland: 10:45: Yeah.
Ayo Abbas: 10:46: It's a different way of working. It's not just the local team or those people are sat in my office, or not sat in your office, sat in their bedrooms, but it's a whole different ball game, isn't it? It's like you become sector experts and you start talking in a different way.
Caroline Copland: 11:02: You no longer need to be an expert in Sheffield or an expert in London, but you need to be an expert in residential, or infrastructure, or healthcare in the built environment. That was interesting, because that wasn't necessarily the team I was working with; they had expertise in different areas from that which the business was asking for. So, yeah, that was an interesting challenge.
Ayo Abbas: 11:34: So, I was going to ask you actually, my next question was what was your biggest marketing challenge for the past few years, but obviously the restructure's one; was there anything else you found challenging?
Caroline Copland: 11:44: Well, I've mentioned the COVID thing, coming out of lockdown, realising everyone in your team has been impacted in a different way and really having to pull out all the empathy and compassion that leadership requires, while keeping an eye on the prize and delivering the results.
Ayo Abbas: 12:02: Were there any new systems that had to come in or anything that you had to bring in at all, or was it all keeping it more balanced?
Caroline Copland: 12:11: On new systems, ouch, that's probably my sore point. We are on the cusp of some really exciting developments in marketing at RLB. This week, we launched 4Ward, which is a digital transformation programme that's been three years in the building, and the business and is really excited about it.
Ayo Abbas: 12:27: Awesome.
Caroline Copland: 12:28: Phase 2 is the marketing module, and we're just starting to scope out the Microsoft Dynamics Marketing module and sadly, the majority of the work will now be done after I have left, but it's really exciting for the team. There are so many opportunities with the tools and technology that is now available to us, and RLB's really embracing that.
Other new tools? Just the remote working thing, being able to collaborate globally through Teams, through using Microsoft Tools, just sharing global information, being able to share our global capability and present that; that's all got a lot easier.
I think all working from home has actually made Arizona much closer, and Sydney much closer, although I will say the time zones have been a massive challenge, because finding a time that works for my colleagues in Arizona and my colleagues in Sydney and me in London requires me starting at 4.30am, and I'm not a great early riser. So, yeah, that's been a challenge.
Ayo Abbas: 13:38: I know. That is the downside of working globally, isn't it? It's fantastic in many ways, but you're like, "No, really, I am at 7.00am; I am here".
Caroline Copland: 13:47: 7.00am? That's a late start!
Ayo Abbas: 13:50: It's not a late start! So, in terms of your marketing overall, what is it that you tend to do as a team; is it more thought-leadership-led, is it more project-led? What's the approach that you tend to take?
Caroline Copland: 14:05: Well, as I say, we are sector focused, so our experts are focusing on what it is that their sector audience needs, our sector clients need. So, for example, in our education sector, we work with lots of schools and academies, the Condition Improvement Fund, being given by the government, is a fund that schools and academies need to apply for. Our marketing is focused around showing our schools and academies clients how we can help them win that funding.
So, it's not just about we will improve the conditions in your educational buildings, it's about the whole cradle-to-grave service. It's about saying, "Actually, we can come in right from the beginning, we can help you win the funding, we can then do the work for you, and then we can take it onto the next phase as well". So again, it's about having experts within our organisation within our marketing team that really understand what the Condition Improvement Fund is and how our clients want it and what their problems are, what their challenges are, and running campaigns to put that message across.
Ayo Abbas: 15:15: I guess with that whole full cradle-to-grave kind of service as well, it's much more of a bigger business opportunity then, isn't it, rather than just the construction and design side? It's actually, "We'll get you the business case, we'll get you over the line, we'll get it delivered".
Caroline Copland: 15:28: Well, yeah. That comes back to the solutioning, what keeps your clients awake at night; how can you resolve those problems? We've also got, the whole country's talking a lot about levelling up at the moment, and actually, today, we're at UKREiiF, and really talking about all our experience and how we have brought work to certain areas and how we are really engaged in the levelling-up conversation.
In fact, Gretta Starks, my colleague, Gretta, chaired the first session on the levelling-up stage this morning. She was chairing a session with Andrew Kerr, CEO of Edinburgh City Council; Marvin Rees, Mayor of Bristol; John Walsh, the CEO of Belfast City Council; Kellie Beirne, Cardiff. So, a whole wide range of really influential people, and Gretta's there chairing it, really using her leadership, her thought leadership. It's great that we're able to do that.
We've also, at UKREiiF, got Ann Bentley with her Construction Leadership Council hat on talking about the construction playbook and social value, and Sarah Draper, who's our exceptional Head of People and Culture, talking about how to be inclusive in the workplace. So, again, campaign-wise, putting three very strong women on the stage in UKREiiF in Leeds this morning feels pretty good.
Ayo Abbas: 16:58: I was going to say, property needs more women, that's for sure.
Caroline Copland: 17:00: Yeah. We've got some very strong women leaders at RLB, and it was quite fun making sure that, in the whole levelling-up conversation, we have three leaders, three female leaders.
Ayo Abbas: 17:12: Absolutely.
Caroline Copland: 17:14: Where they belong, on the main stage.
Ayo Abbas: 17:16: You've got to see the change, haven't you, in front of you to make it happen for everybody else? So, it's such a huge thing to be championing and I think, as an industry as well, we need more of that; that's for sure.
So, in terms of your marketing, are they are any particular channels that have been working well for you and your team? So, you've talked a lot about thought leadership and pulling that out; or is it more of a direct approach you're taking with clients nowadays?
Caroline Copland: 17:39: It is a direct approach. Marketing's always been about getting the right message to the right audience at the right time through the right channels for the right results; that's my mantra. The job is about understanding the message, understanding the audience, understanding the timing and understanding the channels.
The channel, at the moment, I think, is talking to people, it's face-to-face, it's round tables, it's engaging face to face. We've been out of that marketplace so long and we're just coming back into it, and I think people have got very used to working on Teams, working on technology, but I don't think there's a substitute for actually, now we can, going out and meeting people.
As I say, we've got a big team at UKREiiF today and they were all playing, I think it was golf last night, it's darts tonight, we've got dinners thrown in there as well. That's classic B2B stuff.
Ayo Abbas: 18:36: They'll come back snoring!
Caroline Copland: 18:37: It's about relationships, isn't it, and it's about building those relationships; at the same time, having the gravitas to be on the main stage and actually make sure that what you're talking about on LinkedIn are your clients' problems, not just, "We, we, we".
There are an awful lot of companies that go out there and say, "This is what we've done. This is how good we are", but actually, going out there and saying, "This is what we recognise is the problem in the education sector at the moment. This is what we recognise are the challenges for infrastructure. This is what NHS Ambulance Trust in the South Coast needs from us right now". The more you share that, the more people understand that you are about solutioning, you are about finding the answers.
Ayo Abbas: 19:36: I guess a lot of that as well is you giving them the narrative and the messaging to take with them and those stories, isn't it? To support those conversations, that relationship-building, it's them, I guess, knowing how to express it and what's the key messages coming through at the moment as well.
Caroline Copland: 19:51: Yeah, and using examples of when you've done it before, because people want to know that you've done that before; and the solutions to their questions might be slightly different, but knowing that you answered a question and you've added value. Our technical teams are brilliant at that and our job, in the marketing team, is to tease out that information.
My question I'm always asking is, "Where did we add the value?" and I'm like, "Well, we just did the job and it was what the client wanted". "Well, yes, and how did that add value?" We've always added value, but it's just teasing out that information and then positioning that in the right place so that your audience knows that that's what you're doing and you're doing it well.
Ayo Abbas: 20:32: That's such an interesting thing. So, how do you define success for marketing in your team?
Caroline Copland: 20:40: Working together; that sounds a bit trite, doesn't it, but it's true. That collaboration piece is so important; you can't work in silos. I say we're sector-led, but what we're doing in healthcare really feeds into what we're doing in education, and our team has to work together. We have training in a hub office every quarter, usually CIM-led, which is a way of bringing everyone together with a focus on extending our skillsets.
What defines success for marketing? As I say, I'm very focused on where I am at the moment, which is all about the teamwork. The brand is about the people as well, and I think that's something I've definitely experienced since I've been here, the people piece.
Ayo Abbas: 21:35: What have you learned in this role that you're going to take forward when you do go?
Caroline Copland: 21:40: Just before I answer that, I just want to go back and talk quickly about a campaign. When I said it's all about the people, we're doing this fabulous An Employer of Choice campaign at the moment, which is where people are talking to camera about why they love working for RLB. That's been a really fun, very easy campaign to do, which then comes back to, "What have I learnt from this role and what will I take forward?" It is that whole bring-your-whole-self-to-work thing and be who you are; I've felt that more at RLB than anywhere else.
Funnily enough, on my first day at RLB, which I should actually qualify is Rider Levett Bucknall, and we are very much Rider Levett Bucknall. I'm tripping RLB off my tongue, as you do as well, because that's what we're known as in the industry, but we are Rider Levett Bucknall. Anyway, on my first day at Rider Levett Bucknall, there was an internal campaign about just this, about bring your own self to work, and I forwarded it to my friends and family with a laughing emoji saying, "Do you really think they mean it? What have their let themselves in for asking me to bring my whole self to work? Can they cope? Can they cope, really?!" I think my sister said, "Yeah, tone it down a bit!"
But I have been accepted for everything that I am, I've learned to show the empathy and compassion that I have, perhaps, in the past, kept in another compartment of my life, rather than within the workplace. And as you said to me once, Ayo, these are classic leadership skills, and you're right.
Ayo Abbas: 23:23: They are, yeah.
Caroline Copland: 23:25: I've learnt at RLB that you get the best out of people when you really listen to them and understand their challenge as much as what they have to give. In fact, that's pretty much what I was just saying about clients, isn't it? If we listen to our clients and understand their challenges we'll have the best outcomes; I've learnt that from the people I've worked with.
Ayo Abbas: 23:41: It's the same for the internal workplace.
Caroline Copland: 23:43: Yeah.
Ayo Abbas: 23:44: Absolutely, it's exactly the same. What advice would you give to others looking to take an interim role or project?
Caroline Copland: 23:52: I would say don't see your interim as someone to keep a seat warm while a colleague is away. Look at what you can gain from that individual; look for the jigsaw pieces that they bring with them from other experience and other organisations; listen to them; meet them at their level and you'll get the best from them. Understand that they won't understand the culture and it'll be a bit scary, because when you're an interim, you need to pick things up pretty quickly, so a bit of compassion around that. I would say just allow them to be who they are and bring their experience because you've probably got a lot to gain from that.
Ayo Abbas: 24:36: I guess you'd give the reverse advice to an interim who's come in, right?
Caroline Copland: 24:41: Yeah.
Ayo Abbas: 24:42: Or, would it be any different?
Caroline Copland: 24:43: Be yourself, absolutely be yourself. Find that jigsaw piece that might just fit. I think also, it's about the brief. I think, as an interim, ask for the brief. If you don't understand the brief, ask again. And as a business leader taking on an interim, an interim wants to make a difference so give them a clear brief, tell them what you want, and then let them deliver it with all those jigsaw pieces and their experience that they have at their disposal.
Ayo Abbas: 25:19: Okay, so on to the very final question, so what one tip would you give to business leaders looking to make their mark in marketing in 2022, or what we've got left of the year? It's crazy.
Caroline Copland: 25:34: I know, we're in May! I'm not meant to be here anymore actually. I was meant to leave on Friday; my contract was up last Friday, but I'm still here, just for a little while longer.
I go back to the fact that marketing is fundamentally about getting the right message to the right audience through the right channel; and of course, that's starts with the right message, and that goes back to the listening piece, particularly at the moment. We've got so many challenges. So, what does keep your client awake at night and how can you solve that? That's back to meeting, talking, building the relationship. Yeah, really understanding the problem and answering the question. I think it's always been about that in marketing, and it goes across all industries.
Ayo Abbas: 26:21: It's funny how it sounds so basic, but actually people haven't always done it very well, have they?
Caroline Copland: 26:28: No, I think because we're often very focused on telling people, telling people who we are and what we do. Marketing used to be about throwing toppings on pizzas, I always say, and if the pepperoni is the brand, you hope that the pepperoni lands on the right slice, the right slice being someone who's hungry enough for it. But now, it's about throwing arrows at bullseyes, and our job in the marketing department is to identify the bullseye, sharpen the arrow --
Ayo Abbas: 26:59: And go for it.
Caroline Copland: 27:00: Yeah, and go for it. We sharpen that arrow by doing everything we do a little bit better than anyone else. It's that aggregate of marginal difference that I think is so important.
Ayo Abbas: 27:10: Yeah, that's such a great point on focus. I think the one job I had where it was the most focused marketing role I had was, "We have a list of ten projects that we wanted to win in the next five years", and it was that specific.
Caroline Copland: 27:23: And go and get them.
Ayo Abbas: 27:24: But we knew that. So, every piece of work we did over that few years -- I mean they were massive projects initially, but at least you could tie it back to, "Is this getting me in front of those clients? Is it doing what we need to do?" and the company was focused --
Caroline Copland: 27:37: Yeah, singular focus. It's the singular focus, nothing else matters.
Ayo Abbas: 27:43: Yeah, and it just helps to drive your marketing in the way that you actually need to go, yeah. Thank you so much for being an awesome guest.
Caroline Copland: 27:50: My pleasure. Thank you very much for having me on your podcast.
Ayo Abbas: 27:56: And good luck in the future, whatever you do once you leave.
Caroline Copland: 27:59: Thanks very much.
Ayo Abbas: 28:05: Thanks so much for listening to the latest episode of Marketing in Times of Recovery. 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.
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.
