For this, my first article of the year, I struggled hard to think of a great topic to write about. Both so much and nothing at all has happened between holiday festivities and the return back to the office.

That was, until I read a great piece from the Australian media, marketing, and agency publisher Mi3 and Australian Marketing Institute CEO Bronwyn Heys on getting marketers better training so they have better pathways for growth.

Her thesis focuses on evolving marketers’ skills across insights, customer experience, strategy, brand, and digital. Then, she suggests measuring the level of skills with a competency tool that generates personalised feedback to help with improvement.

It’s a great thought, one I support, and one I’d like to extend further.

I would argue a dynamic training tool would also be of immense value for commercial editors or writers who contribute in any way to sponsored content in publishing.

Personally, I’ve felt the pain of no formal training in content writing before. One of my first roles involved writing bylines on behalf of a client. Despite my best efforts to write in the same tone of voice about the quality of a new data centre, my efforts were repeatedly rejected by my account manager.

I didn’t last long in that role. It lacked a gold standard of training, which, as commercial writers, would have helped improve our quality of work.

This training or tool doesn’t have to be as rigorous, in-depth, or AI-powered as the competency tool or a five-year degree. However, it should be something to help aspiring writers improve.

The training would also give media companies a baseline certification of skills. They would know how to articulate the value of partnership content using a standard recognisable to all potential advertisers.

And, to the counterpoint, while cadet programmes exist for journalists (as do numerous other individual initiatives such as those through LinkedIn Learning), these don’t directly address commercial writing at scale. Nor do they set a baseline standard for the work we can do.

So, I’ll close my opening piece of 2025 with a question: How are you training and investing in your skills to constantly improve this year?

Certainly, I am trying to answer that too.

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