Episode 225 / Zach Doty / AT&T / Director, Online Marketing
Revolutionising Talent Development with Pi-Shaped People
Zach Doty, Online Marketing Director at AT&T, believes that one of the best known talent development concepts, that of T-shaped talent, is one of the “worst lies out there.” Instead, his Shiny New Object is Pi-shaped talent, a more nuanced view which adds many facets to specialising in one field.
Knowing only one part of your job really isn’t enough to cut it in online marketing and advertising these days, according to Zach. “Greatness never travels alone” and excelling in only one area limits the effectiveness of your marketing significantly.
Zach’s advice is to take a step back and think about the big picture in your organisation. We’re continually being asked to do more with less and efficiency is taking precedence over investments. At this point, marketers who want to get ahead need to boost their technical knowledge with domain expertise, and then add things like financial planning, analysis, product marketing, and more.
From his experience, Pi-shaped talent helps marketing leaders become stronger strategists and overall stronger contributors to their brand. So, how do you become Pi-shaped and how do you ensure you hire Pi-shaped people? Listen to the latest podcast episode to find out!
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Zach Doty 0:00
Best Practices aren't necessarily the finish line, but they're more the starting line and the delta of impact that you will have in your career. I think that's everything else that you can find and do and discover after you've ticked off those best practices. So that would be my advice.
Speaker 2 0:21
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Tom Ollerton 0:43
Hello, and welcome to the shiny new object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of automated creative, we are a creative effectiveness, ad tech platform. And I'm also the host of this podcast, which I'm very excited about. And every week, we get to interview one of our industry's leaders about their vision for the future of the industry. And this week is no different. I'm on a call with Zach Doty who is director of online marketing at AT&T. So Zach, for anyone who doesn't know who you are and what you do. Could you give the listeners a bit of background?
Zach Doty 1:16
Yeah. Hey, Tom, and thanks. Thanks for having me on today. Excited to be here. So my name is Zach. And I'm a Director of Online Marketing at AT&T. And there are a number of hats that I'm wearing and putting on these days. But I think the most important hat that I'm wearing in terms of what I do at AT&T business is starting up the SEO program or search engine optimization. And we can think of that as the world's largest pose focus group, excuse me, that is Google. And making sure that of the billions of queries each day that happen, that we're front and center, increasingly, where and when we want to be. And I've had a background of 10 years of digital marketing and SEO and primarily on the agency side, starting with a then startup, now midsize agency, then moving on to iProspect. And having a lot of fun along the way and working with... very fortunate to work with some big brands. And that's a little bit about me.
Tom Ollerton 1:16
I think you're possibly one of the first guests we've had with a strong SEO background. I'm sure it's not entirely true. But what not very well represented on this podcast, I'm ashamed to say. So I'm looking forward to what you can share. So you've been a decent length career at this point that, as you said before the show, so I'm curious to know, what advice would you give to smart driven students who are looking to follow in your footsteps?
Zach Doty 2:39
That's a great question, Tom. So I think if I were to walk into a classroom today and be asked that question, my answer to a student or any students would be to be a maker and be a creator. And there's some very specific intention behind that. SEO is a relatively young field, I think, in comparison to some of the other disciplines within marketing and advertising out there. But at the same time, it's reached this inflection point where it's becoming more mature. And if you look out on LinkedIn, I think there are probably millions of people that say they do SEO. That being said, I think the number of people that actually do SEO is quite a bit smaller. And if you keep unpacking those nesting dolls, if you will, the people that do it well, maybe in the 1000s, and people that you would actually want on your team, to partner with you. For myself, that's probably a couple of dozen people. And so when I say be a maker, I think one that allows you to actually do SEO, specifically go out and create a site, go out and create a blog. There's so much practical learning and more importantly, wisdom that you can gain from going out and creating something yourself. And also, too I think being a maker and a creator exposes you early on to the limitations of best practices. And best practices are what they are. They exist for great reasons. But I think what a lot of folks will find especially in SEO is that best practices aren't necessarily the finish line, but they're more the starting line and the delta of impact that you will have in your career. I think that's everything else that you can find and do and discover after you've ticked off those best practices. So that would be my advice.
Tom Ollerton 4:40
I absolutely love that best practices of starting line, not the finish line. I'm totally stealing that.
Moving on from students, just general marketing tips. I don't think we've ever had an SEO tip on this show, so is your top marketing tip an SEO one or is it something else?
Zach Doty 5:03
Well, I think my, my top marketing tip would be general. But I think I think you get the privilege here to determine if we, if we can sneak in an SEO tip as well.
Tom Ollerton 5:16
Yeah, go on, let's do both, I'm intrigued.
Zach Doty 5:19
Awesome. Sounds good.
So I think in terms of a top marketing tip, my top marketing tip would be to embrace the dog fooding approach. And let me, let me quickly unpack what I mean by the dog fooding approach. Put another way, eating your own cooking, I find it perhaps intriguing, or at least surprising. The number of marketers and I have been guilty of this, myself as well in the past, of not using the experience, or not engaging in the experience that prospective customers are engaging in. And so if you apply that to a digital marketing background, get out on your own site, use it on a mobile device, you might find out that your lead form, or perhaps your checkout, when you ask for a phone number, doesn't actually flash up the dial pad, which is funny enough to talk about best practices earlier, potentially best practice to ease user experience. And so I think you know, that dog fooding eating your own cooking management by walking around, there are a few different names for it. But I think that is a highly effective thing. And if you put another perspective on it, Tom, it forces you to adopt the perspective of the customer, at least in part, when you're a busy marketer. And then two, I think it gets you into this interesting feedback loop of doing something that isn't necessarily scalable, but directing that to something that can scale. So if you think about that earlier example, say that you found mistakes in your form experience or your checkout experience as a digital marketer on your site. That time wasn't necessarily a scalable activity, but now you have something that could potentially be global and scale or very impactful for your site. So I think I think in terms of I think, in terms of marketing tips, that's probably got to be up there for the top.
Tom Ollerton 7:28
That's a good one, and the sneaky, quick SEO one.
Zach Doty 7:31
So I think for the SEO tip, I think it is to be the most useful resource that you possibly can be. I feel like Tom, we could probably have a whole episode about SEO, unpacking what it is why it's important, the nuances, the technical aspects of it. But I think if you were to take the balance of material and learnings and subjects within SEO, most frequently, what you will find is that in order for you to appear well in the search engines, or we might call that ranking highly. So when you type something into Google being one of the first results. In order to do that, you have to be the most useful resource: Do you help users accomplish their task? Do you offer a short time to value? I think when you look at creating content, when you look at creating an experience, more often than not, that is about as broad of a tip that can get you the most bang for your buck.
Brilliant. Writing that down, fantastic and always with this podcast, obviously it's about marketing. I instantly think of my own business and that the way it operates and that will also be used in meetings coming up in the near future. So thank you so much.
Tom Ollerton 8:59
This episode of the shiny new object podcast is brought to you in partnership with MADfest whether it's live in London or streamed online to the global marketing community, you can always expect the distinctive and daring blend of fast paced content startup innovation pitches and unconventional entertainment from MADfest events. You'll find me causing trouble on stage recording live versions of this podcast and sharing a beer with the nicest and most influential people in marketing. Check it out at www.madfestlondon.com.
So we're moving on now to your shiny new object, which is pie shaped talents or pie shaped people. What do you mean by that?
Zach Doty 9:45
Yes. Yeah. Great question, Tom. So first, when I say pie shaped talent, I don't mean I don't mean the Thanksgiving staple over here in the US. I don't mean the food. I mean, the mathematical symbol, and a bit more visually and to unpack the concept of pie shaped talent, I think it needs a point of triangulation or a book end. And specifically, when you think about talent development, and people development, I think outside of marketing as well, T shaped talent is probably one of the oldest, if not widely recognized, concepts out there. And it is this strategist's opinion that T shaped talent is one of the worst lies out there, especially in marketing, but potentially out there in business as well. And what I mean by that is that greatness never travels alone. And you can't afford to excel only in one area. And there's an illustration by a gentleman named Ian Lurie. He's a former agency owner in the Pacific Northwest here in the US, and he had a title of a presentation that was a little bit more designed for corporately at agencies. It's a very vivid title: one trick ponies get shot. And, you know, I don't know that we would necessarily tout that title around everywhere. Again, it's very, a very jolting example. But if you think about corporately, how you fit into an organization that at least from my perspective, we're continually being asked to do more with less, especially in this era of seeing monetary policy tightening. cost of borrowing was previously cheap. And now there's a lot greater value, I think, on efficiency. Now, thinking at a personal level. Let's, let's start with maybe a narrow example and expand from there. When you ask, Tom, about shiny new objects, honestly, there are a lot of shiny objects over here. So it was hard to pick one. But, you know, if we think about generative AI, something that has garnered a ton of news attention lately, and a ton of trade attention lately, for good reason. Let's think about that. Let's say that you open Midjourney, a generative AI tool for images. How do you go about that, you have to have two areas of competency in order to make a great image. And specifically, using this midjourney example, you have to have an exceptional creative mind to prompt the AI to prompt midjourney. And you have to be able to give it a well described problem. Or put another way we could say a problem well stated is a problem half solved. And so you have to have knowledge of artistic styles, potentially, of exposures from photography. But at the same time, you have to have this technical knowledge of how do you manipulate the parameters to be effective and to get the output you want. Now, let's exit the tactical view there for a second and think more about a person in their journey. You can't advance your career very far riding on one horse, if we use that that example. Put it another way to get to the insights, you have to go through the data. But to get the action, you have to tell a compelling story. And so the T shaped talent model Tom would tell you focus in on one area and be an expert in that. I think that sets up a lot of definitely Junior practitioners and budding strategies, but potentially mid and senior level managers and leaders as well for failure. If you think about somebody that's more in their mid career going beyond, you know, you have to access the data, be technical, be savvy, but also be an expert in storytelling with your audience to see an initiative through end to end to success. If you think about it at a higher level. You have to have domain knowledge in the area that you're a strategist and practitioner and leader in but at the same time and potentially speaking for myself here as a developing leader. You also have to have increasing expertise say in financial planning and analysis or product marketing. And so I think through that lens, Pi-shaped talent As leads you to be a stronger strategists, a stronger leader, and just an overall stronger performer and contributor to your organization.
Tom Ollerton 15:09
And so, for the people in this this podcast, and they want to develop into pie shaped people, what would be your advice for them?
Zach Doty 15:17
I would say, seek out discomfort. And it's easy for me to sit in this position and say it. But I think if you find areas where you are uncomfortable, there's a saying that the obstacle is the path. And if I think back to a juncture earlier in my career, early in my career, I had a phenomenal manager, leader mentor at that time. And one of his recommendations to me was to take a copywriting course. And I was only a few years out of college at this point, and full of pride, I think and energy. And internally, my ego got bruised a little bit by that, you know, what do you mean, I need to take take a copywriting course. I write just fine. But in hindsight, that was one of the best things that that could have happened to me, I needed to learn to communicate more effectively, more succinctly, not only facing to customers, but also internally, with leaders and stakeholders as well. So finding those areas that are uncomfortable, that maybe hurt a little bit when you press on it. You know whether or not you actively know that it's an area that you need to develop, I would say that's the place to start.
Tom Ollerton 16:40
It's interesting, I'm reading a book at the minute that says the strong emotions you have like the one you mentioned there, when you had that suggestion to do the course is that those emotions shouldn't be there for you to distract yourself. But actually, that's an indication that it is the right thing to do the scary thing, the unnerving thing, the anxiety inducing thing is that's that's an emotion that's actually telling you something that's and there could be value here. I don't mean that like every negative emotion means that, but it certainly in that instance, I like the fact that you responded to that in such a strong way that maybe it's an indication ago, maybe there's something here, maybe I should push myself and it's such a lovely story. To hear that you've done that. So hiring for pie shaped people, how do you spot them?
Zach Doty 17:22
Well, I think it first requires you to have an inclination, if not the development of being a pie shaped person yourself. But I think also Tom, I think it requires you as a hiring manager or if not the hiring manager participant in the hiring process, ask application questions. What I find very frequently in SEO is in going back to that earlier thread, that there are a ton of people out there that say they know SEO, it's kind of like that Matrix moment, right, where Keanu Reeves says, I know Kung Fu and then we find out in the next scene, you know whether he really does or not. And you have to be very deliberate and intentional to really put people through their paces. And yes, in a sense, it is absolutely for you and your team to find the best person possible to add new capabilities or strengthen existing ones, but also to it's an opportunity to see what development opportunities are there for that person or a building experience or learning experience for them? And so a lot of SEO interviews might ask you about what are important ranking factors? Or how would you optimize this webpage? And they're good questions there. They're around for a reason, right? But I tend to think of those more as price of admission or table stakes. And instead, what I might ask somebody is, tell me about the most impactful or most meaningful keyword ranking win that you've achieved in your career? And what all did you do to get there? And so in doing so, Tom, you can force them or you can try to force them to unpack those different legs of their stool, if you will. And so, when you think about the impactful nature or the best win first, it means that they have to demonstrate success, the second it tests those presentation skills, how succinctly, how coherently can they present that idea to you? But further, when you present these application questions as open ended. It also forces them to share their thought process, share their strategy, share the tactics, and in that way, you can expose as much ground as possible and do both your team and the interviewer as much of a service as possible.
Tom Ollerton 20:06
I feel like we could talk for a lot longer. But we are at the end of the podcast, and I apologize. So if someone would like to carry on discussing these topics with you, where's a good place to reach out? And what makes the kind of outreach message that gets you to respond to them?
Zach Doty 20:20
Well, I think they're probably two ways, maybe three, that that would be great for outreach. I'm fairly active on LinkedIn. Or you can just search for my name, and hopefully I'll pop up. Also have a website as well, zldoty.com. And fairly active on Twitter as well. So those are, those are the ways to get a hold of me. And I think in terms of a message that receives response, have a conversation. Ask for perspective, always, always happy to lend those things. And I haven't done a ton of speaking lately. But one thing that I gleaned some years ago from doing some speaking engagements is that you offer the opportunity to reach out, very few people do capitalize on it. So for any of you all out there that would love to learn more about SEO, please, please do reach out. Love to chat.
Tom Ollerton 21:18
Fantastic. Zach, thank you so much for your time.
Zach Doty 21:20
Thanks for having me, Tom.
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