How to Create a Culture of Innovation in Your Marketing Team

How to Create a Culture of Innovation in Your Marketing Team In today’s marketing landscape, innovation isn’t just a “nice to have.” It’s become a necessity for growth. Tech and consumer choices change so frequently and rapidly now that companies must actively pursue innovation to remain profitable and stay ahead of the curve. That’s why 97 percent of respondents to PwC’s 27th Annual Global CEO Survey reported having taken steps to change how they create, deliver and capture value over the past five years — through reinvention and innovation, especially with the emergence of gen AI and how it’s poised to disrupt work as we know it. But innovation isn’t just coming up with new ideas and products without producing results. Today’s marketing teams must infuse innovation into everything they do with a structured approach anchored in business reinvention, value creation and differentiation. So, how do you achieve this? Know What Innovation Really Means To harness the full power of innovation, you need to move out of the mindset of innovation for innovation’s sake. Instead, rally around how McKinsey defines it: “Innovation is the systematic practice of developing and marketing breakthrough products and services for adoption by customers… to increase value and drive growth.” To pursue effective innovation, make sure that your efforts to do so meet some, if not all, of the following criteria: Help your company grow. Be relevant to the industry and business. Align with a client, business and/or market problem — i.e., be outcomes-focused. Bring your company to the forefront and build brand awareness. Establish an Innovation Framework Your innovation framework will need a few variables. First, reserve time, space, and the ability to focus. Ensure anyone involved has both comfort and safety when meeting. Prep work will need to occur beforehand. Innovation thrives under constraints, rather than freedom, so ensure your team has a focus and constraints. Define success metrics for each innovation and how to consistently give progress updates. Implement evaluation and validation processes. Finally, intentionally invest once you know which ideas are good. Create Innovation Guilds In the Middle Ages, guilds were associations of people with similar interests or pursuits — for instance, craft guilds for artisans and merchant guilds for traders. Apply the same idea to innovation now. Assemble cross-functional teams that can focus on a specific innovative idea for a specific period of time. Instead of having one team dedicated to innovation, have several teams dedicated to innovation. Bring in folks with different marketing specialties and functions or even from outside departments altogether. You may want to consider including people with different personality profiles if you use this in your company. Each guild will be accountable to investigate an area related to a problem, explore different options, develop prototypes and tests and report on results. Run Innovation Hackathons Most people in tech are familiar with the idea of hackathons. To infuse innovation into your company culture, use the same concept of these hackathons for innovation and follow the same guidelines. Set aside two to five days of dedicated focus on a clear innovation theme. Brainstorm ahead of time. Work with a team you already know (i.e., other members of your innovation guild). Scope your ideas, select the one to work on and develop a proof of concept (POC). Then, identify which recommended ideas to continue after the hackathon and know what you’ll test. Set Up an Innovation Sandbox Whether virtual or somewhere physical, you’ll want to have one dedicated area where you can house innovations that have been created, are in progress or are just ideas waiting to be acted on, like a backlog. This repository can serve as a main area to capture the challenges of your clients, business or marketplace and then demonstrate how you’re using innovation to solve them. You can lean into tech to track this — for example, using a project management system, your internal company intranet or collaboration apps like Miro or Figma — or even having a wall or room if making it visual in an office setting. Ensure Psychological Safety For innovation to flourish, your guilds will need to feel safe. That way, they aren’t afraid to take risks or fail. Risk-taking and failure are necessities for true growth and change to happen. One way to do this is to consider the four stages of psychological safety as defined by Timothy R. Clark in his book of the same name. Steward your teams through each of the four stages. In the first stage, inclusion safety, you’ll want your teams to feel included and welcomed. After your teams feel included and welcomed, they’ll move onto to the learner safety stage. During this stage, feedback from all sides will be provided and encouraged. Then, each guild can move onto stage three, contributor safety, where each person feels they have purpose, meaning and can proactively contribute. Once the teams move past stage three, they’ll enter stage four, challenger safety. This is where magic happens for innovation. In this stage, your teams must be willing to be vulnerable. Everyone should be open to learning from mistakes in an arena where the reward outweighs risks. Divergent thinking should be encouraged — even if constructively challenging senior leaders. In this stage, true innovation will occur. Unleash Marketing Potential Through Innovation Innovation is the lifeblood of successful marketing in today’s rapidly changing landscape. By fostering a culture that values creativity, cross-functional collaboration, and a willingness to take calculated risks, marketing teams can unlock their full potential. Implement structured frameworks, dedicated spaces, and processes that empower individuals to challenge the status quo and explore groundbreaking ideas. Celebrate failures as stepping stones to success, and embrace an outcomes-driven mindset. Only through continuous innovation can marketers deliver exceptional value, differentiate their brand, and drive sustainable business growth. The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the contributor and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the ANA or imply endorsement from the ANA. Alex Bloore is the VP of product and data at Goodway Group. He has over 15 years of experience in software and product leadership in many industries from medical software to PropTech to ad tech and marketing. An executive leader of award-winning cross-functional product and data teams, he’s driven strategic technical innovation across Goodway Group’s diverse client base.