Edyta Malesza-Malatrat, the CMO of Symfonia, shares her leadership playbook, drawing on experience from Procter & Gamble, Cisco, and SAP. She discusses the challenge of proving marketing’s value beyond just leads and the modern dilemma of balancing creativity with efficiency.
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Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- The Modern Marketer’s Dilemma: Balance Creativity with Efficiency. A leader’s core dilemma is running an efficient, data-driven team without losing the creativity that truly differentiates the brand.
- The Biggest Challenge is Proving Value Beyond Leads. B2B marketing’s greatest challenge is showing its full value, as the impact of brand building is not captured by narrow MQL and SQL metrics.
- True Growth Can Mean Leaving the Big Names Behind. After building a foundation at major corporations, a smaller, more agile company can offer the accountability and creative freedom needed for the next stage of career growth.
Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your role at Symfonia?
I’ve been in marketing for pretty much my whole career. I spent most of it in the UK, building my experience at big, well-known brands like Procter & Gamble, Cisco, and SAP. After 4 years at SAP UK, I was offered a position in Eastern Europe and moved back to Poland, my home country.
About two and a half years ago, I decided to leave the big corporate world. I had already worked for the big names and wanted to do something different. I felt I no longer wanted to receive commands from a headquarters; I wanted to own marketing end-to-end. Symfonia, a fast-growing SaaS company, offered me that position, and it has been a phenomenal decision.
Looking back at your experience at Procter & Gamble, what key lessons from your early marketing days still guide you today?
P&G shaped me as a marketer. It was known as one of the few companies in the world that gave you the real training for what it is to do marketing, and it was very difficult to get into.
The most amazing thing I learned there was how to look at strategy holistically. As a brand manager at P&G, you run a business; you own the full P&L. This is something that most B2B marketers don’t get to do. Having that background in P&L and metrics like value share gave me a commercial savviness that helps me go beyond just the communication part of marketing that we often lock ourselves into in the B2B world. It was a very tough and demanding five years, but I often think back to what P&G would do in a certain situation.
What is the most challenging thing about being a CMO today?
If I had to choose one, it is proving the value of marketing to the business. In B2B especially, we close ourselves too much into a lead discussion. It’s unavoidable because we don’t have many other ways to measure our impact, but I think it’s unfair. It doesn’t capture the impact of the brand we are building.
I often repeat very openly to my CEO that focusing only on MQLs and SQLs is too narrow. A customer might come to us as direct revenue because they saw an advert, and we will never capture that as a lead. Our impact goes way beyond just the leads we can meticulously count.
What future challenges do you see for marketers?
We couldn’t have this conversation without mentioning AI. It is a powerful force and a big help, allowing us to do more with less. But it is also changing everything. It’s changing how people search for information, which in turn impacts how we need to build and create content.
This ripple effect is happening now. At Symfonia, we are already experimenting with AI search and have a steady source of traffic coming from different models, but this is just the beginning. The impact on our customers’ behaviour and on the competencies we need as a team is something we are actively rethinking.
Many CMOs today balance creativity with data. How do you approach this?
Data is the foundation; you cannot be creative or efficient without it. For me, the real dilemma for a marketing leader is balancing creativity with efficiency. They are slightly contradictory, but they have to go hand in hand.
The more you grow as a business, the more you need to have both muscles. My constant question is: how do I run an efficient team without losing the creativity that is and will be the most important differentiator and value creator for my team and the brand?
What is the best part of your job at Symfonia?
The best part of my job is that I have the best team in the world. Behind every great leader stands a great team, and I wouldn’t be able to do what I do without their trust and hard work.
The other best parts are the accountability and creativity. We are our own bosses. I don’t have a headquarters telling me what campaign to launch. Of course, I consult with my CEO and the board, but when it comes to deciding on the best marketing campaign, we own and drive what we think is right. I can honestly say I’ve never been as creative in my entire career as I am now.
You’ve been described as a people mentor. What does mentorship mean to you personally?
Mentorship is about sharing your experience and specific knowledge to help and empower people who want to receive it. It’s different from coaching.
I’ll give you an example. A few years ago, I mentored a senior director from a bank who was a phenomenal leader but felt a bit shy about building her presence online. My mentorship was to help her see, step-by-step, how she could do that. I was passing my specific knowledge of using platforms like LinkedIn to someone from a very different background so she could become a bright star on social media as well.
What is the marketing initiative you are most proud of at Symfonia?
I am very proud of how we have refreshed our brand strategy while keeping the core essence of the brand. We’ve built a series of campaigns that are very consistent with each other.
Symfonia has a very distinct green branding, and our campaigns have all played on the theme of a “green light.” This consistency has maximised our voice and reach in a noisy market. Our brand recognition is phenomenally higher, our website traffic has gone up threefold, and I hear it from our customers and partners.
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