When newsprint brands are suffering atthe expense of their digital counterparts,it helps to get inside knowledge on board.In a ‘poacher turned gamekeeper’ turnabout,former Google and YouTube marketer AnnaBateson joined Guardian News and Media(GNM) as its first chief customer officer in 2017.
Bateson hasn’t so much switched sides asbecome the glue that brings them together.Her role is to manage partnerships withGoogle and Facebook as well as overseeevents, brand, syndication, subscriptions andall Guardian marketing.
She’s already seeing the fruits of the newreader-centric policy that encourages themto become ‘supporters’ by making voluntarypayments, and has stewarded a radicalredesign of the newspaper and website.Revenues are up 1% with digital up 15%,overtaking print for the first time.
Anna Bateson
CCO The Guardian
2
Once the retailer by which all others were judged, a number of missteps saw Tesco’s fortunesfall a few years ago. Alessandra Bellini is in charge of reversing that trend.
An experienced FMCG marketer with two decades at Unilever, Bellini has an instinctive feel forwhat makes customers respond to brands – and what drives them away. Since her appointmentin 2017 she has undertaken a complete overhaul of the company’s messaging as well as itsown-brand positioning. But above all, Tesco will have to live the values she is bestowing on it:“We always say you don’t talk yourself out of a problem, you behave yourself out2.”
Alessandra Bellini
CCO Tesco
3
Once the retailer by which all others were judged, a number of missteps saw Tesco’s fortunesfall a few years ago. Alessandra Bellini is in charge of reversing that trend.
An experienced FMCG marketer with two decades at Unilever, Bellini has an instinctive feel forwhat makes customers respond to brands – and what drives them away. Since her appointmentin 2017 she has undertaken a complete overhaul of the company’s messaging as well as itsown-brand positioning. But above all, Tesco will have to live the values she is bestowing on it:“We always say you don’t talk yourself out of a problem, you behave yourself out2.”
Lara Burns
CCO Tesco
8
When newsprint brands are suffering atthe expense of their digital counterparts,it helps to get inside knowledge on board.In a ‘poacher turned gamekeeper’ turnabout,former Google and YouTube marketer AnnaBateson joined Guardian News and Media(GNM) as its first chief customer officer in 2017.
Bateson hasn’t so much switched sides asbecome the glue that brings them together.Her role is to manage partnerships withGoogle and Facebook as well as overseeevents, brand, syndication, subscriptions andall Guardian marketing.
She’s already seeing the fruits of the newreader-centric policy that encourages themto become ‘supporters’ by making voluntarypayments, and has stewarded a radicalredesign of the newspaper and website.Revenues are up 1% with digital up 15%,overtaking print for the first time.
Zoe Burns-Shore
CCO The Guardian
7
With 20 years’ service in the Amazon machine, Dave Clark has witnessedevery transformation from the day it branched out beyond books to itsstatus as the behemoth marketplace we see today. It recently recordedrecord quarterly profits of $2.53bn (£1.9bn).
With his LinkedIn CV at the company beginning from a role based“wherever I was needed10”, Clark now heads up the retailer’s globalsupply chain and logistics. In today’s environment of incredibly highcustomer expectations, this is a field that may not receive the plauditsand attention of other business functions, but which is clearly crucial todelivering consistent customer experiences.
Dave Clark
SVP Amazon
6
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Marketers across the UK are doing outstanding work to create growth for their businesses and value for their customers. But to be one of Marketing Week’s Top 100 requires them to go even further than their peers.
Over the past six months Marketing Week has searched out the most effective marketers in the country to form a comprehensive long list. We then presented this to a prestigious panel of judges, consisting of some of the marketing industry’s most respected names and the leaders of its key trade bodies.
The marketers in the Top 100 deserve recognition for their unique personal achievements, yet at the same time it is clear many of them share key attributes in the eyes of our judges. These are the traits that set them apart from their peers and allow them to have an exceptional impact on both their companies and their wider markets.
“The great marketers that we see are changing the way their organisations operate,” says Ashling Kearns, vice-president of UK and Ireland marketing at Salesforce, and one of the 15 Top 100 judges. “They’re bringing companies together, they're bringing departments together, they're bringing their customers together.”
Doing this is no mean feat, Kearns recognises. It means “joining dots across their organisations”, recognising where innovative work is being done in other departments and harnessing it to achieve strategic goals.
“They understand that innovation doesn't happen in a silo, doesn't happen within their own team. Innovation is happening across multiple areas of the business, and the really smart and effective marketers are joining those dots and actually pulling together that innovation to deliver against the company strategy and against the company vision.”
Andria Vidler, CEO of Marketing Week owner Centaur Media and another of the judges, singles out the characteristics that enable marketers to perform this task of uniting a company and making it more than the sum of its parts.
“They're collaborative,” she says. “They're open-minded to new ideas and they accept ideas that can come from anywhere - from internally or from externally, from any level of person.”
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What sets the Top 100 marketers apart
TOP100 Judges
Thomas Barta
Marketing Week columnist and marketing leadership expert
Lindsey Clay
CEO, Thinkbox
Helen Edwards
Marketing Week columnist and founding partner, Passionbrand
Ashley Friedlein
Founder Econsultancy
Tom Fishburne
The Marketoonist
Paul Geddes
Former CEO,
Direct Line Group
Kathryn Jacobs OBE
CEO, Pearl & Dean
Mark Ritson
Marketing Week columnist and consultant
Sherilyn Shackell
CEO, The Marketing Academy
Suki Thompson
Chair, Oystercatchers
Phil Smith
Director general, ISBA
Dame Cilla Snowball
Portfolio director
Andria Vidler
CEO, Centaur Media
Stephen Woodford
CEO, Advertising Association
Ashling Kearns,
Vice-president of UK and Ireland marketing, Salesforce
The top marketers also know their role is to deliver growth for their companies and actively facilitate the wider decisions that move them towards it.
For Advertising Association CEO Stephen Woodford, marketing “should be the tip of the spear of the whole company”.
What became apparent to him during judging was: “The attributes that set the best marketers apart from their peers are translating the vision that they have about how they're going to serve their customers better into some really compelling marketing activities.”
The marketers he voted to name in the Top 100 were the ones bringing their whole organisations along in support of “attention-grabbing, imagination-seizing work” that they were doing to achieve their brands’ objectives. He adds that the strength and depth of the Top 100 shortlist is readily apparent in the marketing those individuals have created, and how memorable and recognisable it is.
“Really great leaders somehow manage to be able to do more” than their peers, notes Suki Thompson, chair of Oystercatchers. They contribute in remarkable ways to their organisations, their industry and the people within it, as well as doing what’s right for their customers.
Of the Top 100, she says: “I think that what we see is leaders that are able to bring teams of people to communicate a strategy, a vision, a brand message that's really integral to the business.”
But being able to prove the results of this effort is also key. The best marketers are those who are clear about what they are trying to do for the business and can measure the success of the outcomes directly, says Thompson.
Ultimately, the thing that matters most for the Top 100 marketers is the customer. Without giving them what matters most from a brand, no amount of internal influence or impressive campaigns will help them succeed.
The best marketers “are the custodian of the customer and the customer experience”, says Salesforce’s Kearns. Even more than that, it’s their fundamental purpose: “Your reason to be is to deliver for your customers.”
“The best marketers are the custodian of the customer
experience.”
Ashling Kearns, Salesforce
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meet the judges
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The top100 list
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The top100 list
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State of the Connected Customer Report
State of Marketing Report
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Jan Gooding
MARKETING
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State of the Connected Customer Report
State of Marketing Report
further reading
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What sets the Top 100 marketers apart
What sets the TOP100 marketers apart
podcasts
SPONSORED BY SALESFORCE
hOME
hOME
meet the judges
meet the judges
methodology
methodology
analysis
analysis
TOP100 hOME
TOP100 hOME
meet the judges
meet the judges
methodology
methodology
analysis
analysis
Garteth Helm
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Syl Saller
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David Wheldon
MARKETING
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Garteth Helm
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Syl Saller
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David Wheldon
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