Because She's Savvy with Meredith Cranmer - CoFounder & MD of Because XM Sydney
Meredith Cranmer, CoFounder and Director of Because ANZ. Image Supplied
“I try to take this attitude with my team: to coach them to take one step at a time towards the end goal: be comfortable with what isn’t always known at the outset”
Meredith Cranmer is the Co-founder and Managing Director of Because Australia and New Zealand - a global agency specialising in experiential marketing - connecting brands with people in extraordinary ways. She’s a passionate advocate for female owned businesses, advancing women in leadership and proud of multicultural family - herself born in New Zealand, her husband from the UK and both their children born and raised in Australia.
Meredith is an award-winning, entrepreneurial and passionate marketeer who in her early 20s took the call to London looking for new experiences and a bigger market. Spending 10 “amazing” years in London, with dream clients Heineken, Eurostar, Durex and Jim Beam, Meredith says “my first taste of experiential marketing working with global clients allowed me to see first-hand the real power of face-to-face engagement”.
With the lure of establishing an office in Sydney, Meredith has been able to apply her global experience to the local market, producing creative ideas that deliver measurable value to their clients - testament to the value her team delivers is their listing on BRW's Fast 100 start ups and winning B&T Experiential & Promo agency of the year in 2019!
You are clearly a passionate leader with a love of creating new and engaging experiences. What ignites the fire in your belly?
I am a proud female founder of a small, independent brand experience agency. Personally, I would like to play an even bigger game in business. When I look at the agency I lead, I see brilliance; a stellar, loyal client list; an amazing team.
Undoubtedly we are successful but I think that for what we do, we should be bigger. When I read about Bec Brideson’s research and the Women With Agency initiative, I was shocked (but not surprised) that less than 1% of global procurement contracts go to female-founded businesses.
I have seen first-hand that businesses on the one hand can actively promote your business on their intranet, but not place any work with your agency. This happened to us with a large finance company - we jumped through procurement hoops to become an approved supplier, we were championed as a diverse business on their list - including an interview and Q&A - but the result was almost no business at all.
These experiences led me to think that whilst there is a lot of talk about levelling the playing field, diversity has become nothing but a “tick the box” without any real return on our investment, and this fills me with incredible frustration - and passion.
You’ve had so many great, and big, wins in your career. What’s been just one of your greatest accomplishments to date and what impact did it have on you personally, or on the people around you?
Starting Because. With a little naivety, I moved countries from the UK where I spent most of my 20s, to Sydney to start Because. I had been an employee at the agency and had put out to the world (well our Founder at least), “I’d like to start the agency in Australia”.
I knew and loved the business, but had never run a business before - nor worked in Australia.
I was very fortunate to have our Global CEO and Founder Sharon Richey as my mentor, we agreed a very motivating deal to enable me to become a primary shareholder in the business, once the capital investment was paid back. It was in my interest to borrow as little as possible, and get the company into profit as quickly as possible.
What I hadn’t factored in was just how hard it is to start out with no network - I literally spoke to myself and a white board most days in that first year!
People talk about resilience: I honestly believe the very lonely first period of starting the business prepared me for what it takes to succeed. I met, networked and leveraged every single relationship I could to establish myself and start the ball rolling, winning briefs and pitches.
I would say the biggest impact it had was believing I should back myself to make it happen, even when we really aren’t sure what we’re doing. I think Marie Forleo’s view that “‘everything is figureoutable” is just so, so true. I try to take this attitude with my team, to coach them to take one step at a time towards the end goal: be comfortable with what isn’t always known at the outset.
Starting a business is a brave move and comes with many challenges. What’s one of the biggest challenges you’ve experienced, or overcome, in your journey so far?
I think it was finding my own leadership style, feeling a little bit like an imposter in the beginning. To be honest I still have so many doubts.
Identifying my values was a very important exercise, which helped me understand what I wanted to see in my team and flow through to the clients we work with. What behaviours we will / won’t tolerate was a really good starting point.
I think it’s natural in the beginning of a business life: you can try to please everyone and in doing so you become very stretched, and somewhat resentful towards others, even yourself and what you’ve created. At times I felt as though the business owned me!
I’ve worked with various coaches over the years to help me see that I’m actually in control of my own destiny. More recently I’ve been quite honest with my senior team on what I want to do more of and what I want to do less of, which links back to what I’m really good at - which for me is about being the lead on business development - I love meeting people, finding out their challenges and connecting them with my brilliant team to help them.
This all sounds very simple in practise, but the reality can be quite different. Finding what I’m really good at, and enjoy, helps me feel in control!
Being a leader can often feel lonely, as we strive to protect staff and in some cases our families from being concerned about the details they don’t need to know about which could in turn get them down. Who do you turn to for guidance, advice or support?
Sharon Richey our global founder and CEO. As I know I mentioned earlier, I feel very fortunate that my business partner is also our global founder. She is a true entrepreneur who always focuses me on the business, and ensures we have the right balance between people, talent management and the numbers - because (no pun intended) without a profitable business we have nothing.
Agency folk typically are driven by creativity, so there can be a lot of smoke-and-mirrors about our success stories, but they aren’t all profitable businesses.
No matter what the problem is, I know I can talk to Sharon about it and I know that she has probably faced it before and come out smiling. She is the first person to remind me that I’m tough, and I have a lot to be grateful for.
Thank you for your honesty and simplicity. We can all take some valuable lessons in what being a leader looks like when times get tough. If you had to summarise your view on leadership, “A leader is someone who …”
A leader is someone who brings out the best in others and has a strong sense of their own personal values that they live and stay true to everyday.
Connect with Meredith on Linked In and the team at Because Sydney online and Instagram.