Financial Services

financial services

Chief customer officer Saga Saga’s marketing has changed dramatically in Stuart Beamish’s five years with the brand. Carrying out an £8.5m relaunch in October 2021, with new brand platform ‘Experience is Everything’, the pivot reflected a shift towards long-term brand building and increased consideration. At the time, Beamish said: “We’re trying to support the growth strategy and really open more of the market to Saga.” With a growing population of adults aged over 50, Saga is continuously aiming to align its brand with the modern mindset of older adults in the UK. And this is something the Saga is focusing on internally too, having introduced a host of internal policies aimed at keeping older adults happy in the workplace, such as grandparental leave. “This comes back to us as a brand valuing the vital role that older people play in society,” he said. Beamish has been vocal about making Saga a ‘superbrand’, as a company that aims to raise the bar for how older adults are perceived. In March, Saga bolstered its market research capabilities by acquiring The Big Window, a research firm focused on understanding the ageing process.■

Stuart Beamish

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Former CMO Nationwide After six years as Nationwide’s top marketer, industry stalwart Sara Bennison, stepped down from her role in July 2022. She said she arrived at the building society with a “personal mission” to “turn the ‘best brand story never told’ into something very different”. She cites initiatives such as its ‘Pay Day, Save Day’ campaign, the ‘Together Against Hate’ initiative and the ‘Scam Checker’ service as having helped to grow the building society’s membership. Indeed, under her watchful eye, Nationwide’s membership has grown by more than 1.5 million. The business credits Bennison with having helped strengthen Nationwide’s brand and bolster its reputation for service, as well as building a “highly effective” team around her. Talking about her time at the brand, Bennison said: “It was clear to me that there was no need to concoct a marketing-devised brand purpose. We just needed to crystallise what was already there into a memorable phrase: building society, nationwide.” As she prepares to make her next move, her legacy at the financial brand is clear.■

Sara Bennison

Marketing director UK & EMEA Xero John Coldicutt is one marketer paving the way for B2B’s creative shift. In his two years at Xero, he has been building up the company’s in-house capabilities with internal creative agency, the Hub, and in-house digital agency, the Digital Centre of Excellence, both of which are central to his brand-building mission. Under Coldicutt’s watch, the company launched a product commercial last May featuring comedic personality Rhys Darby explaining how Xero’s products can help small businesses manage their finances. The company wanted to create a distinct brand identity, based on the insight that accounting and book-keeping aren’t a quick fix, so it's crucially important to stay in control. Then in August, Xero launched a second campaign, also featuring Darby, reminding small firms about keeping their business on track and how its products can help them master their finances online. Coldicutt said: "Many small businesses will be finding ways they can not only survive, but also thrive in the coming months. These businesses are the lifeblood of the economy, so post-pandemic recovery will depend on it.” Xeroʼs FY22 revenue grew 29% to $1.1bn (£1.02bn), with 3.3 million subscribers.■

John Coldicutt

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CMO Confused.com With four years at Confused.com under his belt, Samuel Day’s most recent project was forging the price comparison site’s partnership with ITV soap, Emmerdale. The sponsorship deal started in July 2022 and gives accreditation on all broadcast episodes of Emmerdale, as well as all classic episodes of Emmerdale on ITV3. Day said the tie-up offered an opportunity for the brand to “help people see the entertainment” in everyday life, “rather than feeling stressed or overwhelmed”. It followed the launch of Confused.com ‘Worlds of Confusion’ campaign last September, building on its successful ‘From Confusion to Clarity’ brand platform. A series of films was developed centred around insights into how humans make decisions, focusing on both the overall brand and the savings Confused.com can deliver on car insurance, as the platform continues to balance efficiency and effectiveness under Day’s marketing leadership. Day said: “Life is full of everyday confusions, and we wanted to take these potential challenges and position them as a force for good, showing that there can be value in questioning things.”■

Samuel Day

Managing director, global head of marketing Goldman Sachs Asset Management Anouschka Elliott joined Goldman Sachs Asset Management in April 2022. Prior to becoming the firm’s marketing boss, she led a transformational change agenda within the global marketing function at UBS Asset Management, shifting marketing away from supporting sales to driving growth. Elliott internally repositioned marketing as a key driver of business growth by prioritising the development of an end-to-end target operating model for marketing, joining its channels together and enabling the business to drive automated, dynamic personalised content. At the same time, surveys showed that B2B brand metrics needed a lift, so Elliott worked to gain stakeholder support for further investment, using data to prove the value she was looking to achieve through its brand campaign. She won the buy-in to invest long term, and UBS’s first brand campaign launched in September 2021. Then in November last year Elliott revamped the company’s digital storefront, with the new website featuring on-demand content, connectivity between thought leadership and its products, and the ability to compare products.■

Anouschka Elliott

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Managing director of marketing and digital Direct Line Group Mark Evans joined Direct Line Group more than 10 years ago and is now responsible for brand, communications, CRM, insight, digital and data. He is also executive sponsor for the BAME element of the group’s diversity and inclusion activity and sits on the board of Direct Line Group Legal Services. One of the company’s recent stand out moments under Evan’s tenure is its ‘We’re On It’ campaign, which won Grand Prix at the Marketing Week Awards last year, after driving both long- and short-term business impact and surpassing the success of its previous campaign ‘The Fixer’. The TV campaign was found to be 20% more effective at driving quotes and sales than its predecessor, and drove sales across the entire portfolio, despite not featuring specific product messages. Meanwhile, among small business audiences, We’re On It has significantly lifted spontaneous awareness by six points and first choice consideration by two points, according to YouGov’s BrandIndex. The campaign also saw the company improve brand association scores for ‘best at solving problems’ (+3.8 points) and ‘goes beyond what you would expect from an insurer’ (+4.7 points).■

Mark Evans

CMO NatWest Group Margaret Jobling has been CMO of NatWest Group since 2020 and under her leadership has given proper purpose to its marketing, with a focus on customers’ financial wellbeing and the environment. She and her team followed the launch of NatWest’s ‘Tomorrow Begins Today’ brand platform with a campaign highlighting how the bank is working to help the next generation manage their finances. This focus on reaching younger consumers is paying off, with YouGov’s BrandIndex showing awareness of its advertising among those aged 18 to 49 is climbing more steeply after each execution. NatWest has also introduced tools such as carbon trackers for retail customers and sustainability toolkits for business customers, while increasing emphasis on green mortgages with preferential interest rates. Jobling believes advertisers have a “massive responsibility” to drive consumer behaviour change when it comes to tackling the climate crisis. “It is a collective responsibility; no brand can solve this in isolation. Climate change is everybody’s problem,” she said. Beyond NatWest, Jobling took on the role of president of ISBA in July, following seven years as a council member.■

Margaret Jobling

CMO Sage Cath Keers joined Sage in 2020 with responsibility for the company’s global strategy and governance across all of the brand’s marketing. Waving the flag for B2B innovation, in April this year Keers oversaw Sage’s brand refresh, launching a brand platform, ‘Helping business flow’, to reflect the changing needs of small- and mid-size businesses globally. Keers said: “The way we support [businesses] has changed and the refresh will enable us to reflect that consistently across all our markets.” This was followed in May by a new above-the-line advertising campaign, with Keers stating that Sage needs to be with its potential customers 100% of the time, not just when they are in the market to buy. Its global brand campaign launched on TV, supported by out of home, digital and social, and ran across multiple markets around the world. The campaign allowed Sage customers to relay their own stories about how Sage software has helped them overcome challenges. According to Keers, the new platform positions Sage’s customers as the heroes, while also emphasising the human advice and expertise the business offers.■

Cath Keers

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CMO HSBC UK Promoted to CMO in January 2021, Becky Moffatt has been at the centre of the reorganisation of HSBC’s marketing team following the June 2020 announcement that it would cut 35,000 jobs globally due to shrinking profits. The marketing team, which handles its own retail banking brand, as well as First Direct and M&S Bank, is now leaner, with the creation of centres of excellence that drive greater collaboration across the business. Breaking down barriers is central to HSBC’s marketing message too. It unveiled its new purpose last year, ‘Opening up a world of opportunity’, an effort to position the brand as more culturally relevant to its customers. It was supported at the time by the ‘Opportunity Doesn’t Do Borders’ campaign featuring comedian Richard Ayoade, before the roll out of its new ‘Open Questions’ brand platform this September, which touches on themes including inclusion, sustainability and diversity. Moffat and her team have also looked to remove barriers via a number of other initiatives, such as helping people without a fixed address open bank accounts through a partnership with Shelter, to funding scholarships for black students at Cambridge University.■

Becky Moffat

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Group brand director Pheonix Group Joining Phoenix Group in June 2021 to take on the newly-created role of group brand director, Ben Rhodes was tasked with developing the business’s first group-wide strategy. Nine months later a new multi-brand strategy and architecture was unveiled, reflected in a modernised look for the corporate brand. The aim was to help build a stronger corporate reputation, boosting awareness outside the capital markets, with the corporate brand using its scale to advocate for positive societal change. The business also wanted to retain its six individual brands, with Rhodes stating its consumer facing brands, Standard Life and Sunlife, are where the group is looking to “deliver real growth”. Each brand has kept its name, but now with the added moniker ‘Part of Phoenix Group’. Rhodes has been vocal about the issue of ageism within marketing, telling Marketing Week earlier this year how Phoenix Group is changing its internal processes when it comes to recruitment and training. “We want to actually live up to the things we’re talking about in the media,” he said.■

Ben Rhodes

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