Building a world-class marketing academy
One academy, tailored market by market
Working shoulder-to-shoulder with CMO Paul, the global capability team and senior stakeholders across markets, we co-designed the PZ Cussons Global Marketing Academy; a programme built in their language, grounded in their processes and focused entirely on live business challenges.
We started where the need was greatest: Indonesia, with two practical workshops:
- Unlock Critical Thinking, helping marketers diagnose real problems and shape smarter strategies
- Unlock Amazing Briefs, equipping teams to write tighter, more commercially savvy briefs.
We brought in our signature LockPicking Toolkit to help teams challenge assumptions and sharpen solutions on real business problems. From there, we tailored the same experience for UK & Ireland and Growth Markets, adapting it to local culture, commercial context and brand priorities while keeping the format consistent.
Handing over the keys
The full academy combined pre-work, live workshops and coaching: bite-sized eLearning to give every marketer a consistent foundation, hands-on live workshops to stress-test the tools on real challenges, and follow-up clinics to help marketers embed what they’d learned back in the day job. We also zoomed in on two growth levers that go beyond brand love:
- Shopper Marketing, a two-day deep dive on turning brand strategy into shopper action
- Commercial Skills for Marketers, building financial fluency and confidence in commercial conversations.
No capability programme is complete without a plan for what happens after we leave the room. We partnered with global capability leads James Witter and Martine Darlington on a bespoke Train the Trainer sprint, giving PZ Cussons’ own teams the ability to design, deliver and embed capability programmes long after our involvement ends — because real behaviour change happens when internal teams take ownership of it.
Don’t just take our word for it…
From urgent need to world-class programme
What began as an urgent need to close capability gaps has grown into a world-class programme helping teams think more critically, brief more clearly and lead more commercially — upskilling 90% of the global marketing population in six months, across three markets and ten brand teams.
The feedback has been consistent across every market: in Indonesia, delegates called it “exciting” and praised the practical, real-life case studies; in UK&I, one marketer called it “one of the best trainings I’ve ever done”; and across Growth Markets, teams described sessions as “thought provoking” and said they were directly transferable to real-life challenges. Alex Glenn, Head of Brand at PZ Cussons, put it best: “Another really great session from LockSmith to drive the commercial acumen of the marketing team as a brand building business.”
Do you need help building a world-class Marketing Academy? We’d love to chat.
Book a discovery call
For capability leads or marketing leaders who want to explore options, scope ideas, or sense-check priorities.
Fill in a training brief
Already clear on what you need? Fill in our training briefing template and send it back to us on knockknock@locksmith.works to help us hit the ground running.