The
Marketing
Leadership
Masterclass
By Thomas Barta & Syl Saller
Next class: April 2022
Real-time peer group • 100% online • 3 months
Built on the world’s largest studies on marketers’ success, the Marketing Leadership Masterclass gives you the complete toolkit to build your influence and boost your career.
The Marketing Leadership Masterclass.
In a nutshell.
A complete leadership class for marketers
In just 12 bitesize modules, online, over 3 months, learn how to lead upwards, sideways, teams, and yourself—as taught by top global business schools. Built on our world’s largest studies on marketers’ success. Led by world-leading experts Thomas Barta & Syl Saller.
Learn and network together with peers
Join a realtime peer network with participants from the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia/Pacific. Come together on our unique and fun discussion platform. Solve problems, help others. In this class, you are never alone!
Completely flexible, but paced
You are busy. We know. We’ve built this class from the ground up for busy people. All lectures are bitesize, on demand. Learn at your own pace. But no worries: we’ll pace you. In this class, you can’t fall behind. PS: you’ll get a Certificate in Marketing leadership—but there’s no exam.
Joining the class. What’s it going to be like?
12 modules, 3 months: Each week we’ll message you with 2 bitesize lectures, including videos and some readings.
100% online, at your own pace: Take lectures as they come out, binge-watch—you choose.
Live peer discussion: Engage any time. The debate is always on, 24/7. Ask questions, solve problems together.
Workbook: Craft your own personal plan along the way.
Masterclass mentors: Reach out if you need help. Our mentors are there for you.
Live sessions: Problem solve directly with Thomas, Syl, and top ranking guest mentors (we’ll cater for all time zones).
Optional “challenges”: You’ll get to solve four of them.
Certificate in Marketing Leadership: Go for merit or even distinction!
In just 12 modules, become the influential marketer you always wanted to be.
How this class works. All you need to know in short clips.
Success stories. See how the class has made a real difference for our alumni.
“Strongly recommend it for anyone grappling with marketing leadership challenges.”
Chris Kollas
TCS World Travel, USA
“This class is not a Marketing course but a Marketing Leadership course, which is what makes it great.”
Philippe Bertreau
Amcor, Italy
“I now have inspiration, insight and motivation to venture into the world of marketing with real courage!”
Jimmy Bowens
Education Perfect, Australia
“Thanks for such a great course. And to everyone for sharing your feedback and personal insights – all of which were very helpful!”
Louise Wiseman
TUI, UK
“The Marketing Leadership Masterclass is unlike any other course I’ve ever taken. I am so glad I did!”
Villy Nikolaidou
Covestro, Germany
“An eye-opening experience. Very important and insightful lessons!”
Beverly Travasso
Emirates, Dubai
“I loved every minute and I’m applying my learnings day to day.”
Diana Simon-Bruns
Asahi, The Netherlands
“If you are looking for a course which is inspirational, packed with useful tools, the Marketing Leadership Masterclass is for you! “
Louise Grace
Nomad Foods, UK
“For the first time in a long time, I remembered how transformative and inspirational an educational experience could be.”
Ricardo Campos
HSBC, Mexico
“I highly recommend the Marketing Leadership Masterclass to anyone looking to better inspire and influence change.”
Shannon Winter
Atlassian, USA
“It has overthrown some of my old beliefs and myths about what marketing leaders should be!”
Olivia Sham
HSBC, Hong Kong
Learning redefined. You aren’t just watching—you’ll join the debate.
We’ve built one of the world’s most interactive learning platforms to help you learn from your peers.
Step 1: watch. We’ll release fresh lectures every couple of days, with bitesize videos and readings.
Step 2: discuss. For each lecture, there’s a lively discussion. Share ideas, ask questions, support each other—24/7.
Step 3: apply. With the help of questions and your workbook, build your plan and make change happen—right next day.
You’ll learn a lot from the course. But the real magic happens when you team up and solve problems together with your peers.
Guest mentors. Learn from top-ranking leaders during our fireside chats.
Fall 2021
Meghan Farren
Asda, Chief Customer Officer
Fall 2021
Mark Phibbs
Cisco, Vice President Marketing, APAC
Fall 2021
Ljubica Radoicic
Autodesk, Director, Revenue Marketing APAC
Fall 2021
Natalie Truong
Mercer, Chief Marketing Officer & Partner
Fall 2021
Sarah Warby
Nando’s, Chief Customer Officer
Spring 2021
Rory Sutherland
Ogilvy, Vice Chairman and Creative Director, UK
Spring 2021
Wendy Walker
Salesforce, Senior Director Marketing Asia Pacific
Spring 2021
Mark Sandys
Diageo, Global Head of Beer, Bailyes & Smirnoff
Spring 2021
Jackie Lee-Joe
Netflix, Former Global CMO
Fall 2020
Katharyn White
T-Systems, CMO
Fall 2020
Ann Pickering
Telefonica / O2, Former CHRO & Chief of Staff
Fall 2020
Luca A. Zerbini
Amcor, Vice President and General Manager
Fall 2020
Alexander Knigge
Emirates, SVP digital
Fall 2020
Johannes Floors
Para sprinter, world record holder, gold medalist
Fall 2021
Mark Evans
Direct Line, Group Managing Director, Marketing & Digital
Get personal support. Our Community Mentors look forward to working with you.
Meet our Fall 2021 Community Mentors. Jimmy, Louise, Olli and Veronica can’t wait to help you learn, connect, inspire. Successful marketers and previous Masterclass participants, they know what it takes to make marketing leadership work.
Jimmy Bowens
Head of Brand/Product Marketing, Eduction Perfect
“I’m inspired by people who forge success from self-belief. Being a Masterclass mentor means I get to collaborate with people who are acting to create successful professional journeys.”
Louise Morley
Marketing Manager, Unilever
“The best thing about mentoring is seeing the network in action. The richness of all the different backgrounds and experiences that give everyone a totally new perspective!”
Oliver Bowie
Product Marketing Manager, Marketing Leadership Masterclass
“Supporting participants to drive change in their organisations, and then hearing the resulting success stories, is why I’m always so excited to be a Masterclass mentor.”
Veronica Dumitrescu
Head of Enterprise Campaign Marketing EMEA, Adobe
“I am excited to support participants grow their skills, make better decisions, and gain new perspectives on their lives and careers — help them focus on what it is they want to achieve.”
Learn marketing leadership. In 12 pathbreaking modules.
Leading marketing isn’t the same as doing marketing.
You love marketing. You have a passion for customers. But you realize, for success, doing marketing isn’t enough. For real business impact – and a rocking career – you need the support of bosses, clients, colleagues. We call this leading upwards and sideways (see our McKinsey Quarterly article).
For this Masterclass, we’ve designed a world-class 12-module curriculum. Learn practical tools of organizational psychology, motivation, and change. Get access to the insights from the world’s largest studies on marketers’ success. Each module has bitesize lectures with videos, questions for your Power Journal, further reading, and a lively peer discussion!
1 UPWARDS
Find your Value Creation Zone
Study time (fast track): 4h
Think like a CEO. Serve both customer needs and company needs, to claim your seat at the top table.
What you will learn:
- Building Value Creation Zones
- Stakeholder needs analysis
- Big picture thinking
- Convincing stakeholders
- Asking to lead
2 UPWARDS
Deliver returns, no matter what
Study time (fast track): 3h
For your marketing idea, for your change project: what’s the return? Stakeholders care—and need to know.
What you will learn:
- Setting expectations
- Building your investor brand
- Using success metrics
- Explaining indirect effects
- Budget strategies
3 UPWARDS
Become irresistible
Study time (fast track): 4h
Let’s talk about your personal brand. As a leader of change, build your reputation as someone everybody wants to have on their team.
What you’ll learn:
- Reading personalities
- Speaking up in meetings
- Mastering the right language
- Avoiding jargon
- Working with strong partners
4 SIDEWAS
Align the silos
Study time (fast track): 3h
As a marketing leader, you’ll never have all the power. You must find ways to mobilize the people who don’t report you.
What you will learn:
- Surviving in a matrix
- Colleagues as customers
- Building idiosyncrasy credits
- Walking the halls
- Usual (and unusual) suspects
5 SIDEWAS
Start the movement
Study time (fast track): 4h
When everyone joins in, projects become movements. For your work, how could you start one?
What you will learn:
- Opening windows for change
- Crafting change stories
- When to let others lead
- Bitesizing Issues
- Starting of Movements
6 SIDEWAS
Grab the ball
Study time (fast track): 4h
Storytelling is nice. Storydoing is better. Marketing leaders involved and create real results.
What you will learn:
- Customer Feed Forward
- “Get me on of those”
- Ways of pushing back
- Getting to the font line
- Going first
7 TEAMS
Get the mix right
Study time (fast track): 2.5h
To make change happen, your most powerful marketing team has distinctive skills and sings the same tune.
What you will learn:
- Finding distinctive skills
- Selecting personality traits
- Aligning team goals
- Writing a team mission
- Agreeing on how to behave
8 TEAMS
Give them wings
Study time (fast track): 2.5h
Help your team ask for forgiveness—not just for permission. That’s the path to innovation. Great teams have trust and confidence.
What you will learn:
- Displaying professionalism
- Building intimacy
- Taming your ego
- The “forgiveness rule”
- Being the Chief Mood Officer
9 TEAMS
Let the Outcomes Speak
Study time (fast track): 2.5h
Your team doesn’t get rewarded for effort—but for outcomes. How could you create a climate that attracts the top performers?
What you will learn:
- Peer accountability
- Outside focus
- Agreeing on what “not” to do
- Evaluating without bias
- Letting people go
10 YOURSELF
Know how you inspire
Study time (fast track): 3h
No matter how high you rise, you’ll never have all the power. Your best bet is to inspire people.
What you will learn:
- The power of inspiration
- How you inspire today
- What’s under the waterline?
- Why you do what you do
- Inspiring as a leadership tool
11 YOURSELF
Do it your way
Study time (fast track): 2h
Your influence grows once you find your own change leader path—and spread your own truths.
What you will learn:
- Unfollowing people
- Finding your own truths
- Effective authenticity
- Challenging job descriptions
- What your real job is
12 YOURSELF
Aim higher
Study time (fast track): 4h
What’s your vision for success? The most effective marketing leaders have a dream and know why to be brave.
What you will learn:
- The importance of bravery
- Why you must be brave
- The power of a vision
- Charting your own path
- When it’s best to quit
How it all started: The world’s largest ever study on marketers’ success.
What makes an effective and successful marketing leader? Thomas Barta and London Business School professor Patrick Barwise wanted to know. To find out, they conducted the world’s largest ever study of marketing leadership, involving over 68,000 executive assessments. For the first time, their research revealed 12 essential traits that can make or break marketers’ business impact and career success. Read the details in the #1 leadership book for marketers: The 12 Powers of a Marketing Leader
The Marketing Leadership Masterclass takes all learnings to a whole new level—including brand new insights from top global business schools and C-suite leaders.
Thomas Barta
Thomas is a former partner of McKinsey and an organizational psychologist. Founder of the Marketing Leadership Masterclass, he conducts groundbreaking research at the intersection of marketing and leadership – including the world’s largest study – with over 68,000 assessments – on what makes for an impactful marketing officer.
Thomas has created the Marketing Leadership Masterclass in 2016. The aim? Help build the next generation of influential change leaders.
His and Patrick Barwise’s book, The 12 Powers of a Marketing Leader, has set the new standard for marketing leadership. As a dean of the firm’s highest-rated internal program, Thomas trained over a thousand McKinsey leaders on driving change without authority. To date, thousands of executives have attended his marketing leadership classes.
Thomas is Marketing Academy leadership dean and an Honorary Fellow of the Marketing Society.
His work appears in Forbes, Marketing Week, and on his TryThis.Blog.
Syl Saller
Syl Saller CBE, is among marketing’s preeminent global leaders of our time.
In her role as Chief Marketing and Innovation officer for Diageo, owner of iconic brands like Johnnie Walker, Guinness, and Smirnoff, Syl led all global marketing, media, design, innovation, R&D, and reserve—Diageo’s luxury division. Her experience ranges from luxury goods to FMCG and retail/franchisee models, and she has a deep understanding of both developed and emerging markets.
An experienced Board member, Syl is President of the Marketing Society, sits on the board of the Marketing Academy, and is an Executive Coach for their Fellowship program. She has been a Non-Executive Director of Domino’s Pizza Group plc, on the executive committee of the World Federation of Advertisers, a Trustee for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and Chairman of Distill Venture’s Investment Committee.
Syl has been consistently recognized for her service to industry. She was awarded Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the Queens 2020 Honour list in recognition of her services to business and equality in the workplace. She has been Marketer of the Year and one of WFA’s Top 5 Global CMO’s, Debrett’s 500 Most Influential People in Britain, Campaign’s Top 5 Marketers, Ad Age’s Women to Watch, and Forbes 50 Most Influential CMOs.
Answers to your questions
Participants
Who is this Masterclass for?
We welcome all skill levels. The Marketing Leadership Masterclass is for everyone who wants more impact and career success. If you want to make change happen, this class is for you.
Experienced leaders will learn how to shape the top agenda, influence throughout the firm, and build powerful teams that ask for forgiveness, not for permission.
Emerging leaders will discover why projects sometimes get stuck and what the world’s best influencers do to win.
Agency executives will gain the skills to influence the people who matter and become their clients’ most trusted advisor by helping them achieve real impact.
Career movers will learn how to plan their next gig, get ready to ask the right questions, set the right priorities, and hit the ground running.
What exactly is included in the Marketing Leadership Masterclass?
- 12 modules, seeded over 12 weeks, covering all aspects of marketing leadership
- Networking with peers on our 24/7 discussion board, where you can ask questions and help others
- 50+ videos, exercises to trigger your thinking, links to articles and speeches …
- … bitesize insights, perfect for busy people
- 100 days overall access to the platform
- Weekly email updates, SMS reminders (optional)
- Interactive live sessions with Thomas, Syl and a panel of guest speakers
- Becoming part of the Marketing Leadership Masterclass Alumni network
Read the full brochure.
Can I take the class in my time zone?
You absolutely can. First off, we have participants from around the globe. All modules are available on demand, 24/7. For the live sessions, we’ll try and match all time zones. In case you can’t join at that particular time, you can always watch the recording. No matter if you live in the Americas, APAC, Africa, Europe—the class is there for you at your own time.
Are there exams? Will I receive a certification?
The Marketing Leadership Masterclass is a rigorous, comprehensive course. It holds powerful strategies to help you tackle real life issues. You’ll get to discus with peers. You’ll work on your personal plan. We’ll put on 4 fun challenges. But there are no exams. You don’t need people to check on your knowledge. Your real exam is life. That’s what we are helping you build.
Upon completion you will receive your Certificate in Marketing Leadership. We’ll award pass, merit and distinction, depending on how much you have contributed to the class discussion and how many challenges you have handed in. The Certificate also confirms the average total hours of professional learning (currently 38).
What's the real time commitment?
You have a lot of freedom to decide your time commitment.
If you are looking to experience the full Marketing Leadership Masterclass depth, devote 3-4 hours per week. If you are very pressed for time, 30 minutes a week will allow you to attend all lessons and discuss with peers.
Here is a simple 1-2-3 rule. Each week, watch 1 lecture, ask 2 questions, and answer 3 questions from your peers. If you can do that – and that’s easy, right? – you’ll take your skills to a whole new level.
How does the discussion platform work?
On the Marketing Leadership Masterclass platform, you can collaborate with participants from different companies, across the globe. Form groups – start new topics – join powerful debates. We have mentors to help direct the discussion—as needed. Thomas and Syl will reply to your questions during the Q&A sessions.
How much does the Marketing Leadership Masterclass cost?
The standard tuition fee for the full 12-week course, all material, the live sessions, and 100 days access to the collaboration platform is 1,095 € + VAT for companies, where applicable. That’s less than your average couples’ weekend trip.
Booking for a team? Contact us and we’ll get you a great group rate.
Read the full brochure.
Is the Masterclass good value?
The Marketing Leadership Masterclass differs from almost any other class you can take. At its heart is intense peer discussion. You can interact and learn with others, debate, and form groups. In this Masterclass, you’ll work on real-life issues—based on rigerous research and proven leadership strategies. If you fully embrace it, this class will be transformational for your career.
When can I start?
We run open Marketing Leadership Masterclasses about twice a year. Read the full brochure.
If you have a team of 100 or more, we may put on a class specifically for you. Just message us at [email protected]
Why is this risk free?
You’ll join a group of very engaged peers from around the globe. The Masterclass get’s top student ratings. It’s important to us that the class – and the timing – is right for you. That’s why we offer you the following:
- If your plans change before or early on in the class, we’ll happily book you on the next class
- If you have attended the full class, and – after you graduate – believe it wasn’t worth your while, we’ll refund you the full fee
Interested? Read the full brochure.
Learning professionals
How does the Marketing Leadership Masterclass differ from other classes?
Leading marketing isn’t the same as doing marketing. The Marketing Leadership Masterclass doesn’t teach functional marketing. This class equips participants with core principles of organizational psychology. How to mobilize for change. How to lead growth—inside firms and with clients.
In the world’s largest ever study on marketer’s impact and career success, Thomas and Prof. Patrick Barwise have proven: marketing leadership skills trump functional marketing skills. Marketing—and perhaps all future-focused work—is uniquely challenging and personally risky. There are three reasons:
First, much of marketing is about an uncertain future—the exact opposite of accounting. The future focus creates intrinsic trust gap within the top team.
Second, for a firm to deliver a market-leading customer experience, most of its functions—way beyond marketing—will need to get involved, creating an inherent power gap.
Third, almost every day brings a new—tactical—marketing tool, making it hard for marketers to keep up to date. This creates a permanent skills gap.
No other class in the world (to the best of our knowledge) is teaching exdcutives the art of mobilizing bosses, colleagues, clients, teams, and self—to achieve what really matters: making business growth happen.
Read the full brochure.
Where does this class fit in our learning schedule?
The Marketing Leadership Masterclass teaches marketers organizational psychology. It complements standard firm trainings.
Most firm training calendars include A) functional training (e.g. product management, pricing, digital, finance), B) company training (e.g. ways of working, culture, processes), C) generic leadership training (e.g. leading teams, mindfulness, purpose).
Typically, none of these trainings focus on organizational psychology and prepare marketers for the unique challenges of the role.
The Marketing Leadership Masterclass complements standard trainings. Participants learn how to bridge the important trust and power gaps—and how to lead bosses, clients and colleagues to actualize change.
Participants will benefit most if they work inside an organization and/or lead clients. We welcome all skill levels.
Shall I send a team?
Absolutely: yes. Our participants leave the class equipped with powerful strategies for change. Imagine what could happen when an entire team joins. People will start to speak the same language, ask similar questions, draw on joint learnings. We believe in the power of team learning and we highly encourage it.
When a team joins the Marketing Leadership Masterclass, we’ll assign a dedicated mentor to your group. The mentor will constantly observe the group dynamics and can work with you to maximize success.
We also have attractive group rates. Just contact us for the details.
Is this only for people from the marketing department?
What’s a marketer? In our view, a marketer is everybody in the business of change. The Marketing Leadership Masterclass is for people who market a product, a service, or simply an idea. This class is about mobilizing people for change—a broad skillset that’s going to be useful for most leaders.
We have a broad range of participants from B2B firms, consumer goods companies, consultancies, agencies, technology firms.
Check out some of our past participants here.
Without exam, how can we be sure people have learned?
You want to invest in training the delivers results. We agree.
But how to find out? Many courses end with exams. Instructors check on people’s learnings—often via a multiple choice test or a final paper. That can be useful. We want to go further.
For over a decade, Thomas has lead the highest rated learning programs for McKinsey and other firms. He’s also the dean of the Marketing Academy CMO Fellowship. During many years of practice, he made a stunning discovery: success in business had little to do with people’s exam results. A much better success-predictor were the quality of their contributions in the classroom (1) and their ability to reflect and make a real plan for change (2).
The Marketing Leadership Masterclass builds exactly on those two pillars. We award pass, merit, distinction, based on a participant’s contribution to the debate (1) and their handing in of the reflection papers (2).
We are confident: if someone leaves the Marketing Leadership Masterclass with a distinction, they truly are distinctive.
Read about some of our top participants here.
Are you offering company programs?
We believe in team learning. Doing this with us is easy.
For groups of less than 70 people, the most powerful option is joining one of our open programs. This way, everybody will benefit from the live debate with peers from around the globe. We’ll assign your team a dedicated mentor who can help steer the group’s success.
If your team is larger, we can put on a dedicated program. It’s an easy 3-step process:
- Together we’ll agree the learning goals and the participant profiles
- We’ll build your tailored learning platform (questions, workbook, schedule, live sessions)
- Your team works with dedicated mentors throughout the program. (We’ll also put on a farewell gig to celebrate together)
Booking for a team? Contact us for details.
Is the Marketing Leadership Masterclass accredited?
Accreditations are useful for certain types of standard courses. The badge helps the course stand out. It also helps learning professionals avoid errors. It’s about norms.
We are taking a very different approach. Instead of keeping everything standardized, we develop each Masterclass to be the best version it can be. Each day, we monitor participant engagement. Every participant is different. Every cohort is different. For example, we add or remove lectures as we go, based on what participants need. We don’t target norms—we target impact. We believe our participant’s success is proving us right.
Based on participant contribution, we will award a Certificate in Marketing Leadership. Participants can achieve three levels: pass, merit, and distinction. The Certificate also confirms the average total hours of professional learning (currently 38).
Can we pay by invoice?
Joining the class is as easy as buying a conference ticket. Our platform takes all major credit cards and you’ll get an invoice momentarily.
We are offering invoice payments for groups of 15 or more participants, as long as payment is received by the start of the class.
A letter to your boss
The Marketing Leadership Masterclass is more affordable than your average conference ticket. Furthermore, most companies support employees who take the class. Here’s some inspiration for a letter to your boss or HR team:
Dear ____,
I like to take the world’s leading course on marketing leadership: the Marketing Leadership Masterclass. I’d be thrilled if you sponsor me.
As you know, I’m working on several important projects for our firm. I’ve developed my functional skills. But you also know, making change happen inside organizations can be tricky. It’s about getting support from decision makers, colleagues, clients/customers. That’s what I need to learn now.
The course I’d like to join is the Marketing Leadership Masterclass. It’s taught by one of the world’s foremost marketing leadership experts, Thomas Barta, and world-leading marketer Syl Saller CBE, Executive Coach, NED and Marketing Society President. The course has a rigorous curriculum and teaches the essence of leading change inside organizations.
Previous participants have said the course has “completely transformed my leadership” and has “lasting impact for both professional and personal life.” I can apply these change-skills directly to my work. The class is highly flexible—compatble with my demanding role.
The next class starts soon and I’d love to sign up by _______.
I believe the Marketing Leadership Masterclass is the training I – and perhaps our entire team – need right now.
The class costs less than a conference ticket. Would you support me and reimburse the training fee?
Best regards,
