My Best Marketing Tips #20: Zurich Insurance / Monika Schulze / Head of Customer & Innovation Management
After 20 years working at Unilever and a stint heading her own consulting company, Monika has spent the past 13 years in the insurance industry working on improving customer experience and finding ways to consistently foster innovation.
Building a culture of innovation relies on convincing everyone in the team that there is something to be gained by achieving innovative results together. If you can get everyone’s buy-in, anyone can become innovation-minded.
What would be your best marketing tip?
If you have a bit of experience, I think the best tip is: Rely on your gut feeling.
We spend too much time analysing and strategizing. Yes, you can post-rationalise a decision, but we need to turn strategy into action and move things along.
What marketing tips does the industry need most right now?
Whenever we launch something new, we need to look at the basics as well as the “sexy new stuff” to make sure the customer experience will be good enough. But people think getting the basics right is boring, so they try to get away from that. One of the most important tips is: “Don’t tell people that fixing the basics is boring!”
If you make it just as important and interesting, it will become part of what you deliver.
What is the marketing tip you give most often?
If you don’t get feedback anymore, you’re in trouble. This happens especially when you become more senior and it’s why I’ve really welcomed being at home with my family a lot during the pandemic. In a family, you get feedback a lot more than in your job, and feedback is a gift. So my advice is to seek it!
Listen to Monika talk about how international travel helped shape her identity and priorities, as well as her interest in augmented reality glasses and what they mean for marketing, on the latest episode of our Shiny New Object podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/03SUtq4qPFOhz0MYTAdOTX
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