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Unexpected Skills Required by Marketing Leaders in 2025

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Unexpected Skills Required by Marketing Leaders in 2025

​The ever-increasing pace of change in the wider world means that marcomms leaders need to constantly evolve their skill sets to keep up with emerging technologies, changing customer demands and other fragmented factors that help to shape their roles. This is particularly key for heads of functions who must be able to navigate these ever-changing waters, whilst also ensuring their teams are up to speed too.

But with this in mind, what are some of the unexpected skills required by marketing leaders in 2025?

Evergreen skills

Many of the top traits required by marcomms heads are evergreen, and will always be sought after by employers regardless of their industry, location and organisational culture. These include strong written and verbal communication skills and the ability to pair creativity with strategic and tactical nous in order to gain a competitive advantage. Equally, few professionals will get far in their careers without strong numeracy attributes and - as most readers will likely resonate with in the current climate – the ability to multitask and prioritise effectively.

An eye for design and branding acumen will also remain critical traits for the foreseeable future, as too will commercial expertise.Recognising how marketing impacts revenue, and therefore how each action can either positively or negatively affect organisational growth, and the ability of other departments to achieve their objectives, is another skill that most marcomms leaders will always possess. The best professionals know how marketing impacts almost every other aspect of the business, from the bottom line through to the ability to recruit and retain staff, and develop plans that incorporate all these other elements accordingly.

And of course, it would be remiss not to mention the role of technological skills in what is an increasingly tech-backed discipline. While we still see many professionals who are by no means digital experts, it’s becoming ever-more critical that the best leaders can understand how their tech stacks work and interact with each other, and with different parts of the business.

These are attributes that most perhaps already know that marketing leaders need to possess, however, there are other, less recognised – but potentially more valuable - traits, that really set the best function heads apart from the rest of the competition.

What are the unexpected skills required by marketing leaders?

We spoke to some of our specialist team about the qualities they see in the best leaders that they work with that few outside of these positions might be aware of.

Jack Pascoe, Recruitment Consultant

“A really valuable trait that we see in the top 5% of marcomms heads is a strong grasp of psychology; not just for internal teams, but also in being able to appreciate their audiences’ emotional triggers and develop plans accordingly. Possessing psychological expertise is one thing, but being able to be brave and speak to those triggers throughout campaigns – whether that’s brand awareness, reputation building, or converting sales – is equally critical.”

Jack Pascoe, Senior Consultant at VMA GROUP

“We all recognise the role that emotional intelligence (EQ) plays in modern marketing, but far fewer are aware of cultural intelligence (CQ), which you could argue is just as valuable. CQ is the ability understand and adapt to different cultural norms and varying contexts. It’s particularly beneficial for international teams targeting audiences in other countries and parts of the world, and enables directors to lead diverse teams effectively and craft campaigns that resonate, while avoiding mis-steps in tone or messaging.”

Gabriel Charles, Senior Consultant at VMA GROUP

Gabriel Charles, Recruitment Consultant

Indeed, as international borders become increasingly blurred – until Donald Trump has his way at least – having high levels of CQ can add significant value and aid improved performance. However, it’s less common than you might think, and even the biggest organisations often highlight their lack of cultural nuance. Part of the problem is that businesses usually won’t realise they are lacking CQ until it’s too late. McDonald’s for example, relied on its Portuguese marketing team to develop a campaign promoting their new strawberry ice creams to a UK and Irish audience with the tagline ‘Sundae Bloody Sundae’, which obviously wasn’t met with much approval. And in the 1970s, the US computer manufacturer ‘Wang’ ran into problems in the UK with its slogan Wang Cares’ because it sounded like a swear word – which we won’t explain – that wasn’t as commonly used on the other side of the Atlantic. The list goes on, and marketing leaders that don’t possess this type of cultural intelligence can do serious damage to their brand reputation if they’re not careful.

Finally, if you asked marketing leaders about AI as recently as two years ago, most would have shrugged their shoulders. However, that’s changed, and the growth of large-language-models like ChatGPT, CoPilot, DALL-E and the increasingly significant role they play in day-to-day life – which will only grow following recent announcements by the UK and US governments – now means that expertise in this field is increasingly valuable. AI literacy allows leaders to leverage tools for personalised marketing, predictive analytics and more. Currently, the main uses in marcomms will be largely related to boosting efficiency, without needing to overly rely on specialist teams, but its role will only become more apparent in the coming years as tools are refined further. Those who can develop these skills ahead of the rest of their market will set themselves apart in an increasingly competitive job market.

We could go on and touch on aspects such as data-backed storytelling, the ability to navigate complex data stacks, conflict resolution, foresight, narrative empathy and more. Put simply, the best marketing leaders have something that separates them from their competition.

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If you would like to speak to our team about standing yourself out from the crowd in order to secure game-changing career opportunities, get in touch with our expert team.

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