Consumer Goods Tech & Automotive

Consumer goods, tech & automotive

CMO, Europe Samsung Since joining from Audi UK in 2019, Benjamin Braun has driven Samsung Europe’s sustainability agenda. Last year, the brand released its solar-powered TV remotes – which Braun believes solve both an environmental and consumer problem – and started incorporating recycled discarded fishing nets into its phone parts. He cites these as examples of how the brand is taking action “at scale”. During Cannes Lions in June, Braun used Samsung’s partnership with the United Nations Development Programme, Generation17, as a platform to highlight how technology and creativity can empower the global community. Since lockdown, Samsung has redoubled its efforts to drive digital change, making progress towards digital channel integration. Braun states that automated decision making powered by machine learning has enabled better optimisation and campaign success, with a recent three-week product launch seeing a 160% increase in click-through rates from tailored ads to Samsung’s website. He also believes, as a consequence of Covid, the conversation between the CEO and CFO has “matured”, with marketing being seen as a “proper sales channel” better able to prove its value.■

Benjamin Braun

International brand marketing director LinkedIn Since joining LinkedIn as corporate communications manager in 2011, Darain Faraz has risen up the company’s ranks, becoming international brand marketing director in 2021. Faraz has been particularly active in championing LinkedIn’s drive towards diversity and inclusion. This year his team sought to promote equity for women in the working world through a global partnership with International Women’s Day in March. This push was supported in April by the launch of ‘#FlexibleIs’, an integrated campaign running across the UK, France, Germany, India and Australia aimed at challenging the biases around career flexibility. Next, LinkedIn made its sports sponsorship debut as national sponsor of the UEFA Women’s Euro 2022 tournament, creating the ‘#FollowInHerFootsteps’ campaign to celebrate leaders in women’s football at all levels of the game. Faraz said the sponsorship supported the company’s “sustained commitment to making the world of work work for women”. Meanwhile, People Like Us, the not-for-profit networking event Faraz co-founded in 2020, recently joined forces with the England & Wales Cricket Board to shine a spotlight on the underrepresentation of BAME people in marketing and communications.■

Darain Faraz

Darren Bentley

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Head of marketing, global business solutions, EUI TikTok A former Facebook and Instagram marketer, Trevor Johnson joined TikTok in 2020, leading a function consisting of creative lab, partnership solutions, B2B marketing and comms, brand strategy and creator solutions. He has played a key role in forging successful brand partnerships, including securing TikTok’s alliance with the Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team in July 2021. The social media platform has maintained its interest in sport, becoming the official entertainment platform of this summer’s UEFA Women’s Euro 2022 tournament. This year has also seen the app branch out with new features. The latest is TikTok Now, which sends users a daily prompt to capture a 10-second video or static photo of what they are doing in a given moment, the idea being to encourage authenticity. Johnson champions diversity and inclusion within the marketing industry, holding advisory roles across several organisations, including as a trustee of UK-based charity Ideas Foundation, which works with students, schools and agencies to promote diversity in the creative sector. He is also an independent non-executive director of the Professional Footballers’ Association.■

Trevor Johnson

Director commercial operations, UK Volvo Nicole Melillo Shaw was promoted to her current role in June 2022 after two years as Volvo’s UK consumer director, where she was responsible for the company’s brand and consumer experience. Her new role sees her take overall responsibility for transforming Volvo’s national sales company into a consumer-centric organisation and accelerating growth. She now manages a team of 60 across sales delivery, product and offer, as well as fleet and remarketing. Melillo Shaw joined Volvo from GlaxoSmithKline, where she was global marketing director for medicated skin. She has made her mark at Volvo UK, helping to reinvent the consumer experience as automotive sales and consumer interaction moved towards digital channels, a process accelerated by the pandemic. Volvo moved to selling its fully electric products exclusively online, the intention being to shift half of sales online and ensure 50% of its output is fully electric vehicles by 2025. By September 2021, Care by Volvo - Volvo Cars’ DTC subscription service, which launched nationwide in September 2020 - was claiming almost 15% of all retail sales.■

Nicole Melillo Shaw

Tony Miller

Vice-president of growth and performance marketing WW Tony Miller joined WW/WeightWatchers in April 2020 after nearly five years at The Walt Disney Company. His remit spans brand, PR, omnichannel performance marketing, content, social, customer experience and partnerships. Miller believes Covid helped WW identify how the organisation can best reach consumers, as well as underlining the importance of being agile. After pausing physical meetings as the pandemic hit, the brand restarted its workshops virtually within six days. The company has also moved from functional messaging to a more emotional tone, resulting in reduced cost per acquisition and increased conversion rates, click-through rates and sign-ups. According to Miller, the engagement rate of WW’s marketing is four to five times higher than the benchmark. The pandemic prompted WW to build new features into its app to further the emotional connection, an approach which underpins the brand’s current personalisation strategy and its goal to provide experiences to individual audiences. Earlier this year, Miller confirmed WW is collaborating with partners to build up its first-party data in a bid to own the direct relationship with the customer.■

Nishma Robb

Senior director, brand and reputation marketing Google UK Nishma Robb started as head of ads marketing at Google UK in 2014 and is now responsible for leading brand, reputation and industry marketing for the company in the UK. She is the driving force behind many of Google’s acclaimed projects and campaigns, including 2021's ‘It Starts With You’ and ‘The More We Learn’. The latter, which is fronted by Marcus Rashford, pointed out why asking questions about things we don’t understand – from cultural differences to complex emotions – can be unifying. A champion for diversity in business and regular keynote speaker, she is passionate about inclusivity and the empowerment of women. A former chair of Women@Google, Robb also works to inspire girls about careers in tech. In July 2022, she became vice-president of WACL, the organisation for senior women working in advertising, communications and media, committed to accelerating gender equality in the industry. Robb is also a WACL mentor, a scheme which to date has mentored more than 500 women across 2,000 sessions. Robb is also a board director at the School of Marketing and a fellow of the Marketing Society. ■

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Marketing director, UK BMW Michelle Roberts has spent more than 20 years at BMW, having worked from graduate level up to marketing director at BMW Group UK in May 2018. She has seen huge changes in the industry, with the shift towards electro-mobility and increasing customer interest in sustainability and cleaner vehicles. To support its electrification agenda, the car marque invited golf fans to experience its range of electric vehicles at the BMW PGA Championship in September. The brand is also working to engage next-generation consumers. In August 2021, Roberts’ team joined forces with esports organisation Fnatic on the ‘Drive is the Difference’ campaign, which followed two esports stars as they embarked on a weekend away inside a BMW M3 Competition Saloon. The campaign featured a 10-minute documentary-style hero film and four supporting 45-second videos. Beyond leading her team, Roberts seeks to support the next generation of female leaders. In September, BMW teamed up with female community AllBright on ‘iPitch With Purpose’, an event celebrating early-stage female founders building businesses that are striving for social, economic or environmental change .■

Michelle Roberts

Vice-president, EMEA marketing Bumble Since joining Bumble in 2018, Naomi Walkland has launched and scaled the brand in more than 10 markets, including the UK, France and Germany, setting a marketing strategy aimed at driving growth and international expansion. In March, Walkland’s team created a 90-second film of women from around the world delivering a heartfelt speech on inequalities in dating and relationships. The campaign is rooted in what Walkland describes as ‘the Romance Gap’, when women worry about being either too keen or hesitant in a budding relationship. Speaking on the campaign’s launch, Walkland explained the goal is to establish a vocabulary for the Romance Gap, adding: “An unexamined Romance Gap limits us, with almost one in two people agreeing that it makes it difficult to build equal relationships.” Last year, Walkland was selected for the 2021 Marketing Academy Scholarship, one of 30 emerging leaders chosen to develop their leadership capabilities through a year of coaching, bootcamps and mentoring sessions. She is also client advisor to the IPA’s Effectiveness Leadership Group, which aims to promote a marketing effectiveness culture within brands and agencies.■

Naomi Walkland

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CMO, UK Ebay Eve Williams joined Ebay in November 2020 after seven years at Asos, assuming responsibility for all UK marketing activity, from brand building to campaigns and content. In April, Ebay launched a campaign to promote its credentials as the platform of choice for more than 300,000 small businesses using the strapline ‘There’s a small business for that’. The creative promoted the message that companies of all sizes can reach global markets. Then in May, Ebay became the first pre-loved fashion partner to sponsor ITV’s Love Island. The sponsorship was informed by consumer research, which found a fifth of Brits are buying more second-hand fashion than two years ago. The sponsorship resulted in a 700% increase in searches for ‘pre-loved fashion’ on Ebay, while Google searches for ‘Ebay preloved clothes’ rose by 756%. The business has since signed up Love Island finalist Tasha Ghouri as its first ever ‘pre-loved ambassador’. The brand also teamed up with Steven Bartlett on the ‘Wintern’ campaign, which offered SMEs on Ebay the chance to win the Dragons' Den star as an intern for the day.■

Eve Williams

CMO Ufurnish.com Toni Wood was a member of the founding leadership team when Ufurnish.com launched in June 2020. With the pandemic boosting consumers’ confidence in buying online, as well as prompting a surge in interest in DIY and home improvement, Wood said the search engine for furniture and furnishings grew “exponentially” in the year to November 2021, offering consumers access to 1.4 million products. Since October 2020 the site has doubled the number of retailers selling on the platform to more than 100. By November 2021, Ufurnish.com had tripled its Instagram following, while its email database was up 20 times on the year prior. Wood said the company also sustained open and click-through rates, driving the size and strength of the database for the Ufurnish.com community on email and social media. “We haven’t seen any dilution and that constantly reassures me we truly solve a problem for consumers,” she said. Wood describes the brand's marketing strategy as fluid, focused on the fundamentals of brand building and finding a path to profitability by investing in user acquisition and retention.■

Toni Wood

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