CMO to CEO: Sportsbet’s Barni Evans on the trappings of the top job
Former marketing leader and now chief executive officer shares lessons learnt 18 months into the top role, and what it takes for marketing to elevate its executive standing
That doesn’t mean Evans hasn’t taken the opportunity to put his stamp on being CEO. The first thing he did was devise a new set of values for the organisation. To do this, he took the leadership team offsite to talk about the future, what was changing environmentally and economically, and what values Sportsbet needed to succeed in the next 2-3 years.
“The most important thing we added was ‘reflect, learn, improve’ – this is specifically designed to be willing to critique your own and your team’s performance objectively,” Evans explains.
“It’s about not just looking for success, but elements of failure and learnings. If you are willing to look for underperformance, your learning will be much faster. Then if you’re willing to share that with colleagues and peers, their learning will be faster as well.
“Collectively as a team, we had some great successes and we had stuff-ups too. Recognising those as part of our learning I hope has brought the team closer together.”
One such learning was during the Spring Carnival, when Sportsbet faced substantial technology outages, and its core mobile app crashed a couple of times. Evans admits that hurt the business.
“For a short while, people were down in the dumps and wondering what the implications would be. It took a while for us to convince ourselves that in world where we reflect, learn and improve, we should take it on the chin, not point fingers and have each other’s backs,” he says.
“People will only publicise their failures if they know the organisation will support them in doing so. They need to know the organisation has their back. When we went through those tech issues last year, everyone got behind their colleagues and team members, and I feel we are stronger as a result.”
On the celebration side, the Australian Sportsbet team has built out a highly successful product called ‘Same Game Multi’, a revolutionary way to place bets on sports. It was developed and delivered by technology, trading and product teams, then picked up by the CRM and marketing teams.
Today, it has many manifestations and is a massive differentiator for Sportsbet. It’s also been exported globally, with European and US colleagues now using the same platform.
“That’s become an incredibly strong proposition for us locally and globally, and it was developed in Melbourne,” Evans says.
As he points out, Sportsbet Australia is part of a global organisation. Earlier this year, the global entity rebranded from Patty Power BetFair to Flutter Entertainment, a move designed to reflect significant industry change and get itself on the front foot.
“Part of that is marking a desire to behave more effectively as a global organisation,” Evans says. “I’m spending much more time with my EU and US counterparts than my predecessor would have done.
“As all operations develop, and we are confronted by the same headwinds, our position as a global operator should be a real asset. I should be making a valid contribution globally, but I should also derive value from the global entity back into the Australian market.”
Gaps preventing CMOs becoming CEOs
Ultimately, what’s stopping CMOs from getting to the top job is both commerciality and an ongoing emphasis on proving something worked, Evans says – even when most executives know you can’t possibly get things right 100 per cent of the time.
“You need to have the integrity to analyse your work effectively, then the numeracy to decipher forensically whether something worked or not, and if it did, how, or if not, what didn’t work so you can change it,” Evans comments.
“CEOs, CFOs, boards, just don’t trust marketers enough. And it’s because they know not everything does work.”
For Evans, breaking this mould requires marketers to foster a relationship with executives and boards built on commerciality and honesty. He believes it’s not only doable, but beneficial to all and paves the way for the experimentation marketers need to take big, bold bets.
“I knew several times a year, I’d need the board to trust my instinct on something. Quite often we’re doing something for the first time, which means there is no precedent,” Evans says by way of example. “I’d have to say to the board, we’ve got some data, done some modelling and have some insights. But truth be told, the margin for error in predicting how it’ll go is so wide, you’re going to have to trust my judgment.
“In that moment, they’ll only say yes if you’ve accumulated a track record of reporting faithfully to them on what is successful and what wasn’t.”
So how does this impact what Evans now wants from his own CMO?
“Our natural tendency is to want our successors to do and say and behave exactly as we did. But that’s really bad for two reasons,” he responds. “One is that the world is changing and we need to get better at different stuff. Two, people need to play to their strengths.
“If my CMO doesn’t have the same strengths in capabilities I did, but has strengths in other areas, then I need to be mindful of that. It’s another reason why I spent less time with the CMO – he needs to find his own space and rive his own agenda.”
Forward looking
Meanwhile, Evans’ top-line priorities for the next 12 months are to deliver the best product, value and marketing in the gaming and betting sector. Specifically, this includes launching a new iOS app, its first in five years.
“The app is the most important distribution channel we have. So that’s really important and a major product offering,” Evans says. “Personalisation is also really important. We have more than 1 million customers, so giving them a relevant experience to them is critical. That’s very data heavy and a technology heavy task.”
Then there’s continuing to provide value for money. Given the extra $115m in tax Sportsbet paid this past financial, driving growth and remaining profitable while driving value for money is vital, Evans says.
“The worst thing is to pass all that tax on to customers - they’d be getting a materially worse deal. So finding the balance between driving growth, profitability and customer value is a massive challenge,” he adds.
In the third and final episode of our 3-part CMO50 video series exploring modern marketing and why it’s become a matter of trust, we’re delighted to be joined by Telstra’s former CMO and now digital services and sales executive, Jeremy Nicholas, and Adobe VP Marketing Asia-Pacific and Japan, Duncan Egan.
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