Marketingmag.com.au had a chat with Rod Curtis – strategy and planning director and partner of Twenty20 Communications. If you would like to see a certain
marketer profiled, please email your suggestion to Sean Greaney on [email protected].

What do you do?


Co-founder and partner of Twenty20 Communication Group, a marketing and communication strategy consulting and outsourcing company. I work within the management team as strategy and planning director, working closely with our clients’ senior leadership to integrate their business strategy and brand/marketing strategy.
 


What was your first job?


Started out as a dispatch junior in an advertising agency. I would fetch proofs from The Herald and The Age, back in the days of hard copy. A character-building first job while I was at school. 
 


What did you study?


Completed secondary school at Melbourne High School while playing a few Victorian Football League games for Richmond Football Club, before re-thinking  my professional football career and studying Advertising at RMIT. 
 


Describe a typical day?


Typical day for me: 
 


• Alarm goes off at 6.00 am. Have breakfast early. Organise kid’s school preparation, some mornings this can mean an early drop off for school sport. Some mornings I am off early for a T20 staff or management meeting. Some mornings I am off early to the airport.
• 

Client and or internal meetings throughout the day. This means rarely eating out at lunchtime,  a salad at the desk is a favorite for me while checking out Business Spectator (it’s my home page), local newspaper sites (to keep up with the local comings and goings), The Wall Street Journal (a must read) and the Richmond Football Club site (for masochistic reasons).
• Conduct planning workshops for clients, including a client Board Strategy session. Dig for analytical and insight ‘gold’ as part of the planning process. Constantly work on business development.
• 

Head home between 6.00 pm and 7.00 pm for our family evening meal (I am blessed to have the world’s greatest home ‘chef’ preparing our meals).
• 

Help with the kid’s homework (if it’s at my level). Continually marvel at the insight and knowledge of two teenage and one soon-to-be teenage girls. Regularly realise I’m out of my depth. 

 


• Assist at a minor level with my partner’s new web business, and get some one-on-one time to discuss the day’s events (family/business/political) with her.


• Get on to the domestic duties. Sit down at the laptop at some stage when it’s all quiet (like now!). Television hardly gets a look in at night for me. 


• Get prepared for tomorrows work load.
• 

Crash out into bed around 11.00 pm and get ready to do it all again. 



What is on the agenda for next year? 
 


Refine the T20 marketing outsource capability and develop the analytical firepower of our firm. Including expanding our digital knowledge, promoting our brand and improving our creative output. Travel. Learning. Learning some more.



What Brand do you love the most? Dislike the most?


Firstly, in the context of this article I would rather use the term ‘admire’.

Secondly, let’s make sure we get the definitions right. A brand is not a brand unless its users can define what added value that brand gives them on a personal level.


In that context, even though I don’t use one, I have to admire the Apple brand. They have convinced their users that they are being more creative when they use one. That coupled with outstanding design, smart marketing and constant, constant innovation makes them unbeatable.



What don’t I admire? Any retailer, who believes that all they have to do is spend, spend, spend on repetitious, routine product-and-price advertising. Take away this regular diet of unimaginative, non-engaging, old fashioned interruptive dross and what have you got left? Surprise, surprise – nothing. No brand.



What do you believe has been the most significant moment in the history of marketing?


Tough question… not sure if there has only been one. At different times different events were profound, broadcast media being a standout last century. Of more recent times it has to be the rises and rise of the online world and the real time marketing opportunities it presents. Delivering the right product, in the right place at the right time is changing marketing overnight.



Where can people find you? 
 


• Linkedin
• Company website: www.twenty20.com.au