Borrowed Brains: When Marketers Meet

Little Grey Cells Club, The UK’s premier community of brand-side marketing leaders launched ‘Borrowed Brains’ a new initiative, where two CMO/Marketing Directors are paired up. They then both visit each other for a full day of work. Rather than being a silent witness to another individual’s work style, the visitor is invited to contribute to meetings, share best practices and help to troubleshoot challenges. 

This was inspired by community member Alexandra Lewis (Reinsurance CMO, Aon), who went on to participate in the first exchange with Karen Smith (Regional Head of Marketing UK & EEMA, ACCA). Here they compare notes on what they learned from the insightful experience and how they would recommend that any senior-level marketer consider the swap as an option to broaden their horizons and refresh their marketing thinking. 

When you first walked into each other's offices, what did you notice before anyone had said a word about marketing?

Karen Smith (KS): The sheer scale of Aon's offices was impressive, but what struck me most was the energy of the place. Having worked in the City before, there was something familiar about that buzz, and I really enjoyed being back in that environment. ACCA has an equally impressive home in the West End, but with its own very different character and atmosphere. What I found fascinating was the opportunity to step outside my usual working environment and experience another organisation from the inside.

Alexandra Lewis (AL): I’d always wanted to go into the art deco Adelphi Building so entering Karen’s HQ was a magical moment. There was a juxtaposition from this wonderful entrance, stepping back into the 1920s, versus the ACCA’s beautifully modern, foliage-filled offices.  I literally felt at home the moment that I stepped through the door as the team was so welcoming from joining their campaign brainstorm to wrapping up the day in the pub!

What assumption about your own business did your visitors' questions quietly unsettle?

KS: Quite a few! But the biggest revelation for me was that deep organisational knowledge can be an enormous advantage, and also a blind spot. Sometimes it's exactly what you need to solve a problem. Other times, it's the thing preventing you from seeing it differently.

Alex asked some apparently very simple questions that made us stop and explain things we'd become used to accepting. And interestingly, our answers weren't always the same. It exposed places where we thought we were aligned but perhaps weren't, or where something we considered obvious was actually quite difficult to articulate.

That was incredibly valuable. The longer you're in an organisation, the more you understand its history and complexity, but you also inherit assumptions about why things have to work a certain way. Alex hadn't inherited any of those. It reminded me that familiarity can make complexity feel inevitable, when actually it doesn't have to be.

AL: It’s important to challenge stereotypes! I thought accountants were all about calculations and book keeping but Karen brought the profession to life in a new way. The ACCA positions finance professionals as having a strategic role in making business decisions. I thought that was really fascinating and also something that we're trying to do at Aon.

We're shifting the perception of our brilliant reinsurance brokers from purely transactional to strategic advisors, taking a holistic look at an insurer’s goals and bringing in experts from across Aon to help them achieve profitable growth and accelerate performance. There were so many parallels throughout the day where we saw the power of creativity in B2B to make an impact.

Was there anywhere where the two businesses shared the same problem, despite being in different categories?

KS: Far more than we'd anticipated! Accountancy and insurance can both look technical and conventional from the outside, but the things they enable are fundamentally human, things like ambition, growth, confidence, innovation and progress.

With A World Without Accountants, we stopped trying to explain why accountants matter and instead imagined what would happen if they disappeared. At Aon, we turned that thinking around: what wouldn't happen without insurance? Perhaps the world wouldn't descend into chaos, but people and businesses might stop taking the risks that make progress possible.

What struck me was how easily that creative thinking transferred between two apparently different industries. We both face the challenge of making something essential, but often invisible, relevant to people.

And that's really the point. Nobody wakes up in the morning thinking of themselves as a B2B audience. They're people first. We shouldn't lower the creative bar just because we're talking to them at work.

AL: We immediately bonded over two misunderstood industries: insurance and accounting. I loved how Karen saw the value of insurance. Inspired by her amazing A World Without Accountants campaign, she came bursting with ideas around what we would miss out on without insurance. We often dive straight into the benefits in our marketing campaigns without considering what would be at risk without our insights. 

For example, if Aon didn't share data and trends on how natural catastrophes are evolving and impacting our society, what would business leaders do to understand the risk and protect their people and property? It’s not scaremongering, but highlighting potential gaps and the fear of missing out which gives us a different approach to our marketing.

How did it feel to have a respected peer watching your every move? Is there anything you do differently now you've been through that experience?

KS: It honestly wasn't an issue. Alex and I approached it as an opportunity to learn from each other, not to judge how the other worked. She fitted in so naturally that it felt like having another colleague around the table. My biggest challenge was keeping my mouth shut – my team will tell you that's not my greatest strength! I wanted them to make the most of Alex's experience and perspective.

AL: There was a mutual respect driven by curiosity and the ability to learn from each other.  Karen brought laughter to our team meeting and was inundated with questions because she sparked fresh thinking - you can never stop learning! If I did this again, I’d share a campaign brief in advance for a different take and then spend more time unpacking that in person. Equally I shared a marketing email with Karen for her thoughts and she actually said that she was going to use it as best practice with her team! 

Throughout the day, we were making connections across the business and I’d definitely recommend this part of the itinerary. Karen met one of our CFOs, a member of ACCA, and received some incredibly useful feedback for the membership team. For me, I learnt much more about her experience but also realised I was seeing my own organisation from a different perspective too when it can be easy to take colleagues and capabilities for granted.

KS: The one thing I'd change? Try to do less. We packed so much into the day that some of the most valuable conversations ended just as they were getting interesting. Next time, I'd leave more space to follow those conversations wherever they lead. That's where the real magic happens.

Is there anything you've changed, however small, in the way you do marketing as a result of this visit?

KS: One of the biggest things I've taken away is the need to keep challenging whether the story we think we're telling is the story our audiences actually hear.

We're preparing to launch ACCA's redesigned qualification, and Alex joined a creative session exploring how we make that proposition genuinely exciting and relevant. Her questions made us revisit some of our assumptions and think much harder about how we communicate the value, rather than the complexity, of what we're offering. That's thinking we're now taking forward.

I also picked up a brilliantly simple idea from Aon. When sharing research or insights, they lead with two things: 'Why this matters to you' and 'How to make the most of it.' We produce so much valuable content, but how often do we make people work out its relevance for themselves? It's a small change I'm keen to apply.

AL: Karen and her team’s use of humour is absolute genius in their films for social media. Just this morning, someone in our team messaged me to say they’d watched all of Karen's videos and were laughing out loud. How can we balance the gravity of the topics we cover with an injection of humour to make the message memorable - and, crucially, within our brand guidelines? 

We naturally put our leaders and subject matter experts in the spotlight but it was really interesting to see ACCA bring on influencers and graduates to show the power of accounting. When describing complex or technical information, how could one of our school leavers cut through the noise and simply explain a concept to tell our story without the industry jargon?

And then there were three words from Karen’s team that I wrote down: ‘Send and forget’. We're often jumping from campaign to campaign, meeting deadlines, juggling business as usual - but it’s so important to work your assets and make the most of your content rather than simply creating more. That’s when AI is at its best - helping you create derivative content.

If you had to summarise three things that you would take away from this day spent with each other. What might they be? 

KS: The first was about marketing's influence in the business. Alex joined our Brand & Marketing leadership meeting first thing in the morning, and we could easily have spent the whole day on that conversation alone!

Something that really stayed with me was that marketing doesn't just need a seat at the table. It needs something useful to say when it gets there. The seat isn't the objective, influence is. And that comes from understanding the business, its challenges and opportunities, rather than simply being better at explaining marketing.

The second was about creative courage. Both our industries can be quite traditional, and we talked a lot about the pressure to play it safe. But safe marketing isn't necessarily effective marketing. You can satisfy every stakeholder inside the building and completely fail to connect with the audience outside it. I think we underestimate the risk of being ignored.

And the third, perhaps my favourite, was about developing people. I deliberately didn't want Alex spending the whole day with senior leaders. My team had their own 'Ask a CMO' session, covering everything from AI and creativity to careers, leadership and what makes a great marketer.

What struck me was how valuable it was for them to have access to someone else's accumulated experience and judgement. We're pretty good at teaching people skills, but less good at giving them access to the thinking and judgement that comes from years of experience.

As AI makes marketing execution faster and easier, I think that judgement, curiosity and understanding of human behaviour will become even more valuable. AI is going to make mediocre marketing incredibly efficient, but producing more content isn't the same as producing better marketing.

If all our senior expertise stays in senior meetings, we're missing a huge opportunity to develop our people. That's something I'm keen to do more of, both through Borrowed Brains and by giving my team greater access to experienced leaders within ACCA.

AL: Let’s go back to the fundamentals of Borrowed Brains. Be open minded to spending time with other markets outside your sector to bring ideas inside. The more you learn, you’ll be an even better leader. Experience with another business shouldn’t be limited to 16 year olds doing work placements: that should be just the start and something you can benefit from throughout your career.

What advice would you give a fellow member of the community about choosing the right partner for a borrowed brains exchange?

KS: Alex and I hit it off straight away and pretty much decided on the spot to give it a go! You need to be willing to take a leap of faith, have something worth sharing and be just as curious about what you might learn. Alex challenged assumptions we didn't even realise we were making. And my entire team wanted more time with her!

My biggest takeaway? Don't just borrow someone's expertise. Borrow their distance from your problem. Sometimes the most valuable thing isn't the answer, but a question you've stopped asking yourself. Start with the challenge, not the job title, and borrow the right brain.

AL: There was an epiphany moment collaborating with an adjacent industry with similar challenges: we could connect over shared challenges and the potential to take a new direction. Where collabs are rife in B2C - are we missing a trick in B2B and I would love to think there may be an opportunity to work together in the future. Could A World Without Insurance be next? Equally, don’t limit yourself. I think a FMCG and B2B brand job swap could fuel a fascinating conversation to take marketing strategy in a new direction to achieve business goals - and this is what it’s all about.