A lot of marketing today is efficient.

Campaigns are optimised. Processes are automated. AI can generate creative, insight and media recommendations at extraordinary speed.

But efficiency and effectiveness are not the same thing.

At MG Unlocks, Anna Braithwaite, Chief Customer Officer at John Lewis, offered a challenge that cut through much of the conversation around modern marketing:

“The most expensive cost to a company is average marketing.”

It is a wonderfully sharp sentence because it cuts against the usual instinct. Most organisations think the risky thing is the bold campaign, the uncomfortable decision, the idea that might attract criticism, the leap before everyone around the table feels entirely ready.

But average marketing has a cost too, it just tends to arrive more quietly.

It shows up in work that nobody hates, but nobody remembers. In plans that are technically correct and commercially underwhelming. In decisions that feel safe because they have been made before. It rarely creates a crisis, but also fails to create much else.

That was one of the strongest themes to come out of our live The Places We’ll Go conversation at MG Unlocks with Anna Braithwaite, hosted by Mark Evans and Ritchie Mehta. The session used themes from CLIMB, Mark and Ritchie’s new book on career growth, to explore Anna’s journey from John Lewis graduate trainee to Chief Customer Officer, via Tesco, M&S, Hobbs, Jacques Vert and, in her own words, at least one career blip.

It became a conversation about careers, but also about marketing itself: how to keep learning, how to build momentum, how to create visibility without simply becoming louder, and how to stay brave when the work becomes public, pressured and occasionally painful.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why average marketing is the real risk: Bold work can miss. Safe work can disappear entirely. Anna’s point was not that marketers should be reckless, but that mediocrity is its own commercial cost.
• How careers are built through action, not perfect planning: Anna’s career has not been a straight line. It has been built through curiosity, sideways moves, messy roles and the willingness to keep learning before the next step feels fully mapped.
• Why visibility is about ownership, not volume: Standing out is not the same as being the loudest person in the room. It comes from taking on the difficult work, asking for the opportunity and making your ambition visible before someone else has to guess it.
• What the first 90 days should really be for: In a senior role, the temptation is to arrive with answers. Anna’s approach is to listen first, understand where the real problems sit, and only then work out what needs unlocking.
• Where AI helps, and where human judgement still leads: AI can accelerate media, creative, briefing and process. But people still need to connect the dots, understand the customer and decide what should be done, not just what can be done.
• How brave work survives when things go wrong: The answer is not blind risk. It is a culture of testing, learning, honest conversation and leaders who do not retreat into average the moment something uncomfortable happens.
• Why curiosity remains the biggest career unlock: Marketing changes too quickly for any skill set to stay fixed for long. The people who keep moving are the ones willing to stay curious, step forward early and learn in public.

DISCOVER THE FULL EPISODE

Discover the full episode here, where Mark, Ritchie and Anna explore what it really takes to build momentum, create opportunity and stay brave in a marketing landscape that keeps rewriting the rules.