The opportunity for growth through diversity

Performance marketing is ever evolving and its channels are often the unsung heroes of the digital world. A message from our sponsor…

Performance Marketing is at the sharp end of digital disruption. It has always had to respond and move at speed to keep pace with technical advances and innovation, to ensure it meets the changing needs of clients. All this intensified as a result of seismic shifts towards performance and e-commerce channels during the pandemic. The broad disciplines and skills that now come together under the umbrella of performance marketing reflect this.

PMW's Performance Marketing Workforce series comes at a critical time and highlights the challenges we face collectively in supporting our people through challenging times. As we emerge from the pandemic, we face a cost-of-living crisis; many people will face difficult decisions once again.

The competition for talented people has never been higher and we are no longer simply competing with our agency counterparts to attract and retain them. This means thinking differently and being bold in our approach to recruitment, our learning and development opportunities and ways of working to meet an increasingly diverse workforce.

Caring to thrive

As a business leader, I see this as a huge positive as we put greater focus on how we better support people beyond the day to day, through wellbeing and creating a more caring and inclusive environment in which people can thrive. As an industry we have made positive strides but there is still a long way to go.

I am passionate about looking outside of the traditional for who and where we recruit to help fuel greater diversity of perspective, knowledge and experience. Whether it’s creating equal opportunities, or retaining older talent – the industry is richer for bringing these perspectives together.

At dentsu we’re proud of the incredible opportunities that exist across the UK within our performance teams, demonstrating that people can have hugely successful careers at the forefront of our industry regardless of where they live. New ways of working identified in the research are allowing people to be much more flexible in how and where they operate.

We’re pleased to be a part of this research that shines a light on how we can all better understand the needs of our people and the issues most important to them. And by solving those issues we enable our people and businesses to flourish.

Steve Buchanan is President Performance Marketing at dentsu UK.