Paul Dervan, who was voted Marketer of the Year in 2022 for his work as chief marketing officer of the National Lottery, is offering a number of free places on a new AI course he is about to run. As CMO at Premier Lotteries Ireland, Dervan took charge of the lottery’s marketing activity, including brand development and effectiveness, in which he is a specialist.
He also worked as a marketing consultant for FCB Huskies and in search marketing at Interactive Return, the agency which later merged with Captivate to become Radical and part of Core. He won MotY for his work in rebranding the lottery, for consolidating and reinventing its product portfolio and, crucially, for driving revenues.
Dervan’s strategy rested on six behaviours.
Firstly, be hard on the work, easy on each other – raise the quality bar while being kind to colleagues. To succeed, work hard. Critical thinking was next in line, along with a need to be skeptical – not cynical. Humility is a behaviour marketers need to nurture as ego gets in the way. Strong opinions, weakly held means changing course when evidence shows.
Nonsense
Any talk of AI replacing marketers is nonsense, Dervan insists. “But marketing roles will change a lot, and for the better. I’d love for as many marketers as possible to embrace it and become fluent. Time is the biggest blocker, so I’m hoping this course will help jumpstart marketers and show them what is possible.
Experts
“I’ll add a bunch of things to try, copy and keep. I’ll share lots of links and point folks towards experts that I think are worth keeping an eye on,” he added. The course opens on Monday, September 21. Participants can do it in their own time. Dervan will add each module every two weeks and then leave the content there for anybody who wants to source it later.
Interested marketers can register at runwithfoxes.com/course
