How CMOs can accelerate progress for women
For this episode of The CMO Show, we’re joined by Anita Manchester, Head of Marketing at Stella Insurance, and Katrina Troughton, Vice President & Managing Director ANZ at Adobe.
In the spirit of International Women’s Day, the pair joined Mark to discuss this year’s theme: ‘Invest in women. Accelerate progress.’ Press play to hear about ways CMOs can continue to champion women through their campaigns, in the workplace and through society at large.
Achieving gender equality and women’s well-being in all aspects of life is more crucial than ever if we want to create prosperous economies and a healthy planet. It’s a big goal and there’s a long way to go, so how are organisations across APAC working toward it?
For Anita Manchester, Head of Marketing at Stella Insurance, it starts with understanding the nuances involved with a female audience.
“It’s not a one-size-fits all. In an era of data personalisation and customer obsession, you need to understand which women are a part of your target market? Half the population is not your target market,” she says.
“Use data, use insights, use whatever research you need to look at which segments you really want to talk to. What are their preferences? Needs? Pain points? Where does the relevance kick in? Then, you can really start to speak to your true audience in meaningful, personalised ways that truly resonate.”
Similarly, Katrina Troughton, Vice President & Managing Director ANZ at Adobe, urges CMOs to think about their stories, both internally as a team and externally to the world.
“You have to truly tease out the stories within to make sure your team understands your purpose – if your team doesn’t understand your purpose, you can’t expect your wider audience to,” Katrina says.
“Have open conversations, share stories, understand different backgrounds and learn about how someone’s experience might differ from yours. If you’re intentional about your listening, your team will follow suit strategically.”
If you want to hear more from Anita and Katrina this International Women’s Day, listen to the episode above. Enjoy!
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Credits
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The CMO Show production team
Producers – Rian Newman & Pamela Obeid
Audio Engineers – Ed Cheng & Daniel Marr
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Transcript:
Hello, I’m Mark Jones and you’re listening to The CMO Show, a podcast made for and made by marketing professionals, proudly produced by ImpactInstitute in partnership with Adobe.
Recent revelations on gender pay disparities, workplace sexual harassment and underrepresentation in leadership show that there’s still a long way to go in our journey toward comprehensive gender equality.
This year’s theme for International Women’s Day is “Invest in Women: Accelerate Progress”
We’ve been reflecting on it and believe it holds profound implications for all leaders, and particularly for marketers.
On today’s show we welcome two very special guests who show how a marketer’s skills and influence can extend far beyond the boardroom.
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Mark Jones here and you’re listening to The CMO Show. How you are well?
Today, I am thrilled to introduce a new panel format welcome two remarkable women for a chat about the fusion of marketing leadership and gender empowerment.
First up is Anita Manchester, Head of Marketing at Stella Insurance. Anita and her team understand that a women-first mindset isn’t just a buzzword—it’s a catalyst for innovation, customer engagement, and sustainable growth.
Our second guest also knows a thing or two about breaking barriers and championing diversity. It’s Katrina Troughton, Vice President & Managing Director ANZ at Adobe.
Katrina shares how when marketers prioritise women’s perspectives, they unlock fresh insights, tap into new markets, and create lasting impact.
It’s a great conversation, so dive in!
Mark Jones:
Thank you both for joining us.
Katrina Troughton
Thank you very much. Looking forward to it.
Anita Manchester
Thanks for having us.
Mark Jones
It's so good to be here. I'm really excited about our theme today. We're going to talk about International Women's Day and the theme for International Women's Day is Invest in Women Accelerate Progress. This is a really big topic and I'm keen to understand what it means for both of you. So can I just go to you first Anita? By way of introduction, what have you been reflecting on with the theme for this year?
Anita Manchester
Look, International Women's Day for a brand like Stella is something that is always on our calendar. We're a female focused, purpose driven insurance brand that has a very big vision to balance the gender equalities that exist for women. So International Women's Day really does put a focus on that for us. But as a brand, we like to see International Women's Day as a day that people do refocus on equality for women, empowerment for women, and how they can be doing that within their organisations, for their customers and also for themselves personally.
Mark Jones
Katrina, what about you? So you've got a really fascinating role at Adobe because there's an incredible team within the organisation, and I'm not just saying that because I've worked with you guys for a long time and then of course the external facing role. So what's your take on International Women's Day?
Katrina Troughton
Well, I think the opportunity to think about it from two perspectives. I mean, first and foremost as the leader in a business where I want to see and personally, deeply believe, but also work for an organisation that deeply believes that every person has and should be given the opportunity to be their very best. But I think more broadly than that, for me and especially as a woman who's worked in tech all her career, it is about the amazing opportunity that tech offers women and how we can get more women engaged. And that's because it is growing fast, that creates opportunities, it's well paid. It can truly change people's overall opportunity across life, and I think that's what International Women's Day helps reflect.
Mark Jones
What do you think has changed in the last 5 to 10 years? I'm going to date myself. So late 90s, I was a tech journo. So I've actually seen this for decades now where it was hardly any women and it wasn't ever thought about. So I think this story of it being a really lucrative career regardless of your gender, I think is something that we need to keep working on, don't we?
Katrina Troughton
Look, absolutely. I mean, tech in Australia offers amazing opportunity because we simply don't have enough people. So it always starts with the opportunity for us to engage more people into the industry across many different areas. But I suppose especially around International Women's Day, it's about how do we get people excited earlier about tech? How do we get women engaged in it? So one example I was just reflecting on that I think is a fantastic crossover between marketing and the impact marketers can have, but also for us at Adobe has been a big investment in really developing some of our talent. It's a program that we ran called She Takes the Stage and what we reflected on is we do a lot of external speaking, we do a lot of events, but we weren't always seeing the proportions of presenters at our events that mirrored our organisation.
So we created a program to really focus on up and coming speakers, gave them some really great training, but I think more than anything, a bit of a support group to go, "Hey, you can go do it." Aiming to get to 40 to 50% of all of our external events, having men and women presenting and just been great to see the incredible talent we've got and people really taking on that opportunity. So I think it's this nice opportunity of where marketing can really influence external image, but also we're investing in talent and developing opportunity for women.
Anita Manchester
I think what's really interesting about that is insurance and financial services suffers the same imbalances around women in leadership, women in representation of and decision-making roles within those industries as well. So International Women's Day is a time to highlight some of those imbalances and how organisations are looking to change that. So a business like Stella over indexes in that completely to go, how are we promoting, supporting and empowering female leadership within an industry that is quite male dominated to build a proposition that's relevant for women?
So I think that that is something that we are seeing a shift in and it's great to see that that's happening across tech, financial services and insurance as well because they're categories that often don't attract amazing female talent because of that taboo of how they'll have a voice, whether there's imposter syndrome and a lot of these challenges.
Mark Jones
What I noticed in both your stories is what's in your control. So bringing an environment where women can step up and get some confidence in the Adobe story and then your website at Stella, one of the words that I love in your content and your messaging is unapologetically for women I think is words to that effect. But the unapologetically word. When we think about the strategies that we use, messaging is part of it, creating environments that you know will make a difference is another part of it. What else do you do internally in terms of your own team and how your own team operates?
Anita Manchester
Yeah. Great question. So for us at the core of everything that we do at Stella is putting women first. So having that approach means that every decision, whether that's through marketing strategies and campaigns, hiring of employees, how we work together as a very small team is focused around that one goal and more specifically how we are catering to the needs of women and understanding what women want from their insurance provider.
So look, we are very egalitarian in how we work, which is great. We're a very, very lean team and our approach is really to look at everything and make sure that from research, data and feedback from our customers, we're making sure that that experience or that product or that message is relevant, connects and emotive and is really relatable to women. We really try to look at our different audience segments to understand a little bit more around their preferences, what's important to them, and how we can ultimately present that back to them and engage with conversation to create something that is more authentic and relevant for our customers.
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Mark Jones
Katrina, you must have such an incredible list of stories to draw on. And if I can just, bit of a shout-out here from your bio, recognition as CEO of The Year at the 2021 Australian LGBTQ Inclusion Awards. And that in itself must have been an incredible experience. Whether it's that or Adobe, what's your take on the best way to think about this from a strategic perspective?
Katrina Troughton
Again, I think it starts with the base belief that everybody has a voice and everybody has the opportunity to create their best career, create their best self, and the job of a leader is to help support and shape the environment for people to be able to do that. And I think you've got to attack it or look at it from a number of different angles. So first of all, where you have minority groups, you have to give a voice so that they can tell their stories. There's so much of our understanding that comes from stories. I think having that ability to have an open conversation, share stories, understand a little more about background and what makes a difference is really vital. Especially as you then start to think about where barriers that you may never see might exist for others and therefore what you might be able to do about them.
Mark Jones
I don't know whether you think of that as a second order thinking, but it's the stopping for a moment and saying what we could do or what we should do or maybe how we can maybe think a bit more broadly about the opportunities we're creating. There's a nuance here that I think a lot of people find quite challenging. I suspect Anita, it's probably not too difficult in your environment. Having said that, I think the opportunities would be equally relevant for you. What are the challenges you find in balancing the need to create this space, but you've also got to get a job done, have the best person do it and drive growth. So none of this is actually easy.
Anita Manchester
No, it is definitely a challenge. I think our approach to when we're looking at who comes into our teams and the roles that we're fulfilling really sits around a couple of things. So obviously there's skill set, but then there's a real alignment of values and how they sit against our vision and mission. So for us, that means that bringing somebody in will have a sense of authenticity around how they buy into what Stella's about and without having that values alignment, and that could be anybody, it doesn't have to be a woman.
We do get a lot of really passionate men as well who do believe in equality and want to see and shape what the future of work looks like and also the future of what equality looks like for women. So for us that is a really important part of understanding who they are as an individual as well as what their ambitions are with an organisation like Stella who is growing and shaping and challenging from a very different standpoint and how they would fit into that. So I think beyond that skill set, it's really looking at that passion that sits behind their values.
Katrina Troughton
And I just want to add to that because I think you're so right. Core values play such an important part. At the end of the day, often it is your values framework that will drive your decision making.
You also touched on the fact that our workplaces are not just women and they're not. We are seeing so many more men empowered to take their paternity leave, to take their time off, and every time that happens, that actually empowers another woman. So I think the fact that there is more equality, that people are stepping up as allies at times is really super important to some of the shifts we're seeing.
Mark Jones
We've been talking a lot about internal cultures and how we think about ourselves. Another thing that fascinates me is the stories that we choose to tell about ourselves as leaders and on behalf of the company, which of course is the marketing challenge. Something that I'm really fascinated to understand from both of you is this idea that women can be treated as a monolithic group or a monolithic audience or a monolithic customer base. So what's your take on how you've thought about this monolithic versus some other way of segmenting women in an appropriate way these days? I honestly don't know. I'm really keen to learn from both of you.
Anita Manchester
We live in an era of data personalization and customer obsession, you have to really understand the nuances around women as an audience. We are over half of the population. Is that whole population your target market? I think it's really starting to understand and use data and insights to start to really look at which segments you want to talk to. What are their preferences? What are their needs? Pain points? And really start to drill into that and go, where does the relevance kick in here? But then how do we speak to them in meaningful ways that connect and resonate?
So one of the approaches that we took with our It Takes Boobs campaign was looking at the stories of 9 to 10 different women with very different stages of life needs, relevance to their insurance journey or their life story and really taking that and representing them in a very authentic way, which potentially not everybody would necessarily relate to, whether that's a domestic violence situation or a certain sport that they play. But the layers of that message really sat around what courage means, what determination means and things like that.
Katrina Troughton
It's hard to add a lot to that, isn't it?
Mark Jones
What do you think the role of CMOs and leaders within organisations will be from a gatekeeper point of view in years to come? Do you think that's going to be a key role for the CMO? Is that kind of conscience check, do you think?
Anita Manchester
Absolutely. I think they're going to be held very accountable to making that feel consistent throughout the internal organisation and external because there's too much information out there, there's too much access to understand what's happening. It's a two-way conversation between customers and employees and everybody in between that without having that sense check that there is consistency. I think we will see brands fall over in that space.
Katrina Troughton
I would say it is a core role of any CMO and to some degree always has been, but perhaps it's more evident and we are living in a time where what you hear and see may not be what was said. And so as we think about the way AI can truly impact everything we do and will have some incredibly positive benefits across really driving change in the way people can work, changing the opportunity for creatives to have the time and space to experiment more and create even better work, and enable people to spend their time on how they think and do their work versus some of the menial tasks that AI can take away. At the other end of that scale, we have the really important role of ensuring that content is authentic.
Mark Jones
Correct.
Katrina Troughton
And thinking about how you ensure that you are creating the transparency, creating the right ethical framework, assessing those things, using technology in the right way is going to come to the fore even more.
Mark Jones
So there's a big conversation out there around cognitive bias meets machine learning bias, which is a huge issue. I see that part of the CMO gatekeeper role. One of the fascinating things about tech, by the way I've seen years ago as a tech journalist happens many times over, is that every new form of media or tech that comes along eats the content from the previous one. So TV did that to radio. We are seeing that now with the Internet did that and then now we're seeing it with this sort of AI generation where it's eating up all of the content. If the content is so heavily male biased, and of course it's going to come through. It's just sort of how it works. What's your thinking around AI and the decisions that we can make to really be true to our aspirations? How do we make sure we keep moving in the right direction, do you think?
Katrina Troughton
Well, first and foremost, you absolutely have to check for bias. It's just like we want in our culture where we might give people some bias training because all of us have some level of bias, it does come down to the data you choose to train your AI with. You can do things to really ensure and do everything you possibly can to ensure you are not using bias data. In fact, you can even use this to start removing some of those biases if we think of it in a positive way.
Mark Jones
That's true.
Katrina Troughton
And I do think there's a big opportunity for us to shift things that way. But making sure that for us as Adobe, as a vendor who works so much in this space, being responsible, having transparency, being accountable and empowering people to be able to understand the journey of that content is actually also just a foundation. And I think we need to continue to inform everyone that they should be leaning in, learning and making sure they understand it so that they can make the assessment of content as they move forward.
Anita Manchester
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's also as we are all learning and dipping our toe or jumping right into the AI experience and journey and the role that plays within marketing teams, it's also about utilising partnerships, data sources, and I guess relevant information that's out there to verify a lot of this as well. So we do a little bit of both. We still use some traditional methods. We make sure that things are very much grounded in research that's accessible to people as well.
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Mark Jones
There's two things we want to talk about next. The first thing we have to talk about is the Taylor Swift economy because she's in town at the moment.
Anita Manchester
Yeah.
Katrina Troughton
We know.
Mark Jones
Well this is for the listener.
Anita Manchester
Yes.
Mark Jones
At the time, how could you miss it? To connect a couple of threads to that, I want to talk about what we're learning from her and then think about what we can do to create campaigns that get the right balance between advocacy and just being true to who we are. So I think there's a couple of things to dance on here, but let's just start with Taylor. What is it about her that makes her so universally appealing, do you think, to all people?
Anita Manchester
I think what she's done is build a brand around being accessible, approachable, and for good. And I think having some of those pillars around what she does outside of her incredible music and her talent that she has. Little Swiftie here. I think what she's really tapped into is also how she connects with people, how she tells those stories. So she creates things like the friendship bracelets and being able to be authentically yourself and show up as who you are and ways to connect her fans together that go well beyond just the music that she does. And she has a real way of bringing that together.
I think Mia Freedman wrote a great article the other day around going to one of the Melbourne concerts and that she really felt that it wasn't just the show that was so spectacular, but it was around how Taylor's brought people together and the kindness and the safe space that she's created for her fans to come together that even if you're not a hardcore Swiftie, you felt very much included and inclusive within that space. So I thought that that was a really nice summary of how she's changing the way she's connecting people.
Katrina Troughton
Well, yeah, and I mean I think that whole piece of you have a great talent and then how do you engage with your fans and how do you create a journey and how do you create stories? And I think that's part of the magic here. Even things like this, there's clear next steps always offered when she won her recent award stood up and said, and first thing out was, "I've got another album coming."
Mark Jones
Something I prepared earlier.
Katrina Troughton
It just continues to inspire that journey.
Anita Manchester
Yeah, that's a great point.
Katrina Troughton
And I think that's definitely a key part of it.
Mark Jones
And I'll tell you what also I've noticed is that OG fans, there's a pride there of like, "Well, I was a fan when she was in the country days, so don't talk to me about these newbies." But I think looking at this through the marketing lens, we really do yearn for that sort of loyalty, passion, sense of connection to this-
Katrina Troughton
Belonging.
Mark Jones
Any brand really I think, isn't there? So I know that there's a very obvious connection there. I wanted to then think in that context about when we are creating new stories or pushing our narrative even further, part of us should be thinking about where we've been, how do we bring those customers along and how do we attract new ones? From your point of view as leaders, how would you think about the strategy involved in our next campaigns and how we grow? And I mean obviously there's a listening piece, there's nothing new there, but what's that sense of responsibility like that you carry for? How do we nurture this story forward in a way that's going to continue to work? How do you think about that, Anita?
Anita Manchester
Yeah, look at Stella, we took the approach of putting women at the centre of everything we do. That was our starting point. We've used research, insights, customer feedback to help shape what our brand should look like. We had 3 iterations and evolutions of our brand within 6 months of launching in 2020 because we really got quite specific feedback around what resonated, what didn't. From there, we built our brand platform, which was unapologetically for women, and what does that mean from product, customer experience, content, advertising campaigns and everything else in between, and how do we stay consistent to that? Then there's an evolving story that comes from that. And I think to your question, it's for us, we do really tap into the needs and priorities of women. So a lot of our roadmap sits around, all right, what's an insurance product that hasn't been disrupted, that is really irrelevant, that has a lot of pain points for women?
We can then there get insights, whether that's from industry studies, our own research, speaking to our own customers to start to build upon how we then build out a long-term strategy and a view on how we can shape what we deliver back to our customers. I think what's interesting is you build long-term strategies, but you have to be adaptable within those to make sure that you're still relevant and connecting back to your audience. And I think that's something that we use as an approach to how we deliver on that relevance, but also that retention piece as well.
Mark Jones
What's your take, Katrina?
Katrina Troughton
Yeah, look, I think Adobe is fascinating. It's a 40-year-old company and it comes from roots of creatives and designers, and I think that always thinking about being in their shoes and what drives value and enables them to be even better is core to it. And what you see or what I think we've seen over that time is the people who might've started at some point, maybe as a photographer in Photoshop, some of those people will then go, "Oh, but I need to do more video and I need to do more." And we have this opportunity to grow with our customers. In some cases it's being a bit ahead of them and showing them what's possible and then they come along and in other cases it's them pushing us on what else is there?
And having come from that roots of who our creatives are, I think even now, a much bigger organisation with a lot more offerings, it still comes down to having a mission and living to it around we want to create incredible digital experiences for our customers and for their customers. And so that becomes the unifying opportunity to continue to stretch to what's possible.
Mark Jones
Going back to the theme in Invest in Women Accelerate Progress for International Women's Day, what are the, I guess, points of hope? And maybe if there was one thing you would say to CMOs in that context, these are people we've been talking about with incredible levers of change in their control. What would your advice be to CMOs in that context? People who can really make a difference?
Anita Manchester
I think for me, it's a couple of things. The role of marketing has changed so much within organisations and how that can tap into, I guess, the power of what it can deliver back to business outcomes is really important and often gets looked at as the colouring in department and things like that. So I think the role that the CMO and the team play can be really crucial to successful business outcomes. So I think that's the first thing is understand how you can have that seat at the table and be influencing positive decisions.
Secondly, for me, from an International Women's Day standpoint and what that means, you have control of how you shape the strategy, the key messages, how you look to represent your audiences and understand them. You have access to all of that. I think in this era of AI and digitization, we do have new ways to test and learn a lot quicker, a lot of access to bigger audiences. So there is a real opportunity to also consider women as a huge part of that audience for many organisations and how you can tap into them and understand them better because that will also ultimately help your business outcomes, which will drive those successes for you as a CMO.
Katrina Troughton
I think we are all here to make a difference, and I think at the heart of what most people who come to work every day want to do is know that they can make a difference and be adding value. So I say to the CMOs, take that opportunity. What is it that you can do that's going to help change internally culture, but importantly, that massive stage you have externally and the influence that you have? It's massive. So yeah, I'd say take the stage, step up to it and help accelerate that progress.
Anita Manchester
And I think a leader within that space, you have an opportunity to lead from the front with that and demonstrate your expectations and confidence that you want to instill in your team to drive that mentality and that culture within your teams as well.
Katrina Troughton
I certainly absolutely believe that having a diverse workforce is what drives better decision making, it is what drives higher performance, you've got to be intentional about making sure that you're creating that diverse workforce, creating the environment for people to be able to speak up, hear stories, learn from it, and then of course, really take the opportunity to make the change and accelerate the progress.
Mark Jones
This has been such an inspiring conversation. Thank you to both of you. Katrina Troughton, Vice President and Managing Director ANZ at Adobe and Anita Manchester, Head of Marketing at Stella Insurance. Thank you so much for joining us on the CMO Show today. All the best with celebrating International Women's Day, and look forward to seeing you soon.
Anita Manchester
Thanks for having us.
Katrina Troughton
Thank you.
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That was Anita Manchester, Head of Marketing at Stella Insurance, and Katrina Troughton, Vice President & Managing Director ANZ at Adobe.
On this International Women’s Day, and through my chat with Anita and Katrina, we’re reminded more than ever of the power of collective effort in striving for gender equality.
A huge thank you to Anita and Katrina for joining me on today’s episode of The CMO Show, which is brought to you in partnership with Adobe. Thanks for joining us – until next time!