The Path to Executive Leadership for Marketers

At Tribe's The Path to Executive Leadership event, hosted by Suzie Gates, senior marketers and heads of marketing came together to explore what it really takes to move from the marketing function into executive leadership. Joining the conversation were Todd McLeay, Chief Executive of Smart Environmental, and Wendy Rayner, Managing Director NZ of Coca-Cola Europacific Partners, two leaders who each made the journey from marketing into the top seat. Tribe's own CEO, Bruce Pilbrow, also joined the discussion, adding his perspective as another executive who came up through marketing.

The evening challenged a comfortable assumption: that marketing is a stepping stone. The panel reframed it as something more powerful, a genuine launchpad, if you're willing to use it that way.

Marketing as a Superpower

The conversation opened with a simple but provocative idea: marketing is a superpower that most marketers forget they have.

At its core, marketing teaches you to understand humans, what they want, what drives them, and how to shift behaviour. As Todd pointed out, that's not so different from leadership. Running a business is, in many ways, the same exercise: understand your people, know what you want to unlock, and create the conditions for them to do it.

Wendy added another dimension. Marketers are trained to brief well, to give clear direction within a framework and then trust others to deliver. That skill transfers directly to leading a business. Getting really good at articulating what you want, and then giving people smarter than you the space to execute it, is essentially the job.

Marketing also gives you a licence that other functions don't always have, to get close to customers, to move across the business, and to bring energy and insight into teams that don't always get to see how their work lands. That cross-functional visibility, built over time, is exactly the kind of breadth that prepares someone to lead at the top.

Building the Launchpad

For senior marketers with bigger ambitions, the panel was direct: waiting for the right role is the wrong strategy.

Todd's view was that the people who get ahead are the ones who over-contribute in the role they already have, not because they're angling for something, but because they're genuinely committed. That kind of contribution doesn't always pay off immediately, but it compounds.

He also made the case for deliberately expanding your network beyond your own world. When you spend time with people who know nothing about marketing, engineers, scientists, operators, basic marketing thinking can seem revelatory. Those loose connections, built over time, become the unexpected opportunities you couldn't have planned for.

Wendy's advice was more pointed: make the CFO your best friend. Learning to write business cases, understanding ROI, speaking the language of finance, these are the things that build commercial credibility and open doors. Do the same with sales. Understand how hard it is to face customers every single day, and figure out what marketing can do to make their job easier. All of a sudden, you've got two allies on the exec team who want you to succeed, and eventually, who might want you to lead them.

Commercial Fluency: What Actually Matters

When asked for the commercial metrics every senior marketer should know, the panel kept it simple.

Wendy's three: ROI (being able to prove it, not just talk about it), operating profit or EBITDA, and cashflow, particularly important in shareholder-owned businesses, where the impact of marketing spend on cash position is more significant than many marketers realise.

Todd added the lens of capital efficiency, what return you're generating on the funds deployed into the business. In capital-intensive environments, that framing changes how you think about every investment. It also forces creativity. Some of the best growth his business achieved came during a period when they had no access to capital at all. Constraint, it turned out, was a remarkable creative brief.

What Erodes Credibility

The panel also turned the question around, not just what to do, but what to stop.

Wendy's answer surprised the room. The thing she'd change looking back? Not asking for help sooner. Having advocates is powerful, but you have to be willing to use them, and more importantly, to advocate fiercely for yourself. That confidence came later for her than it should have. Don't wait.

Todd's advice was about mindset. Stop taking it personally when people in other functions are dismissive of marketing. Be proud of what you do, because it's a great pathway. And stop staying in your lane. The box that marketing sits in is largely imaginary, most organisations have far more room for marketers to add value across the business than people realise. The upside of pushing out almost always outweighs the risk of staying put.

AI: A Leveller, Not a Replacement

On AI, both panellists were pragmatic. Todd's honest admission: no one in his organisation has been made more productive by AI than him, though he's kept that quiet. He's also cautious about the cost assumptions underlying the idea of replacing people with AI, and wary of a culture where people use it as a substitute for thinking. The output is only as good as the thinking that goes in.

Wendy framed it more openly. Change is constant, and AI is just the current version of that. Her approach: treat it like a hamburger. You bring the idea, the bottom layer, feed it in, and use AI to help build the structure. Then you do the real work: adding the thinking, the nuance, the judgment. You haven't outsourced the substance. You've just made the setup faster.

Both agreed: be curious, not fearful. Learn to prompt well. And don't mistake AI fluency for original thought.

What It Actually Takes

When asked for practical takeaways, the conversation shifted to something more fundamental than tactics.

Wendy was clear: being a CEO is not for everyone, and that's genuinely okay. It's an extraordinary privilege, and it's hard, in your business and in your personal life. Be honest with yourself about what you're actually after. But if you do want it, get commercial, get curious, and reach out. New Zealand is a small place and people are almost always willing to help.

Todd pointed to something he believes is the most underrated skill for anyone heading toward senior leadership: the ability to build a highly engaged team, and to replicate that across an organisation. He shared how Smart Environmental had moved from the 8th to the 80th percentile in employee engagement over six years, not through a single initiative, but through a systematic commitment to listening, measuring, and following through. That skill, he said, is transferable anywhere. If you have two people working for you, start there.

A View from the Top

Bruce Pilbrow, joining the discussion as Tribe's CEO and another marketer-turned-executive, reflected on what the shift actually feels like from the inside.

His take: it's a bit of a demotion. Not in status, but in the nature of the work. You move from being a specialist, someone who owns brand, customer experience, and all the interesting things, to a generalist who has to create space for other people to shine. The job becomes getting out of the way.

Surround yourself with people who'll tell you the truth. Lean into what you don't know. And find a mission you genuinely love, because without it, the hard days aren't worth it.

He also landed on something that resonated across the room: to be a great marketer with a budget is one skill. To get the same impact with no budget, that's when the real marketing chops come out. Go back to your organisations with that mindset, and people will start to see you differently.

Key Takeaways

• Get commercial. Learn the language of finance, build business cases, and make the CFO your ally. Commercial credibility is what opens the door to broader leadership.

• Use marketing as the launchpad it is. Customer understanding, human insight, and the ability to brief and influence are leadership skills. Own them.

• Over-contribute before you're asked to. The people who get ahead give more than the role requires, for the right reasons. It compounds over time.

• Build loose connections deliberately. Expanding your network beyond marketing puts you in rooms where your skills are rare, and that's where unexpected opportunities come from.

• Ask for help and advocate for yourself. Find sponsors, use them, and back yourself louder than anyone else will.

• Learn to build engaged teams. If you can systematically lift the culture and performance of a team, you have one of the most transferable skills in leadership.

• Be curious about AI, not fearful. Use it to accelerate the setup, not to replace the thinking.

• Know what you actually want. Executive leadership is a privilege and genuinely hard. Be clear on whether it's the path for you, and equally clear if it's not.

• Find a mission you love. Without it, the hard days aren't worth it.

The Biggest Payoff

The conversation ended where it probably should have started.

The reason to push for the top seat, Todd suggested, isn't the title or the authority. It's the chance to create exactly the kind of organisation you always wanted to work in, to choose your people, shape your culture, and build something that actually means something. That's the payoff.

And for marketers willing to be curious, commercial, and a little brave about leaving their lane, the path to executive leadership is closer than they might think.

If you’d like to further discuss the ideas shared in this session, or you’re ready for your next challenge in evolving your career, please reach out to Suzie or the wider team here at Tribe Group.

If you'd like to watch the full recording of the event, we have provided the link below.