Marketing & Communications Leader Series ep.1: Bee Patel

We are pleased to be launching EMR's Marketing and Communications Leader Series, where we dive deep into the journeys of exceptional senior marketing and communication practitioners. Join us as we take a closer look as to how they got started in marketing and the strategies that led them to success in their industries. 

To kick off the series, EMR's MD Tom Brockton interviews Bee Patel, who currently holds the position of the Global Director of Brand & Communications at AlphaSights. Find out more about Bee's path to success and some tips and tricks for your career. 

Can you describe your journey to becoming a leader within the marketing and communications industry? 

 My journey, wow, I have to cast my mind back 18 years. Yes, I've been working for 18 years. So I fell out of university as most do, extremely poor. I had a really great time. I graduated with a degree in business management. and decided I needed to get a job that could help pay off my debts. With no real plan in mind, I went for the highest-paying job, which was recruitment, interesting enough. So, I fell into IT Recruitment and I did that for about 18 months, and then decided I've taken a real sort of liking to marketing, having sat next to a contractor within the firm. 

I made the move into marketing, starting within that recruitment firm, really just learning the basics on how to build a website, how to keep content updated on the website, and off I went really. So from there on in, I joined a large technology organisation having worked in tech recruitment and have really just worked my way up, being completely honest with you, everything from running events to running large exhibitions, demand generation programmes, working with European leaders right through to managing and heading up a European function in my previous roles. And that brings me to today, stepping into the world of professional services, and I manage a global team, really heading up all things communications and branding.   

How do you approach decision-making and strategy specifically to your current role? 

I think...in terms of decision-making and strategy, the starting point for me is always understanding the business strategy, like understanding the business goals, business objectives, the strategic direction that we are taking as an organisation. Equally as important, why. Understanding "the why" helps me to bring in the team, get that buy-in from my team in terms of the marketing goals and strategy that we set. 

Outside of that, once we set the goal and the vision on how marketing is going to support us on our business journey, it's really looking at where we've run specific campaigns or planning of that description in the past, what's worked, what hasn't and why hasn't it. And then in parallel with that, also looking at what is it our competition is doing, whether that's direct or indirect, what are they doing? And most importantly...What are they not doing? Because there is a tendency in our trade and industry to benchmark and essentially to keep up with the competition. But we're in a day and age today where it's not good enough just to be benchmarking and mirroring what your competitors are doing. It's a case of what are they not doing that we can get ahead and cut through the noise and get the attention of our decision-makers. 

Finally, and most importantly, is what's available to us, right? What platforms are available to us are relevant to the audiences we're trying to connect with? And then what resources, what experience do we have in the team? What resources and budget do we need to bring in?