general retail
Marketing director, clothing & home
Marks & Spencer
Anna Braithwaite joined M&S in June 2021 with a mission to turn around the clothing and home division’s poor style perceptions and rebuild M&S’s reputation as a fashion retailer.
She oversaw the launch of the ‘Anything But Ordinary’ brand platform in September that year, the retailer’s biggest clothing marketing push since before the pandemic. Twelve months later, the platform was credited with improving style perceptions by 4 percentage points within the total market and by 5 percentage points among M&S shoppers. Value for money perceptions in womenswear have also strengthened by 4 percentage points among the total market.
This effort is paying off with clothing and home sales up 11.5% in 2022, a long way from the 34% clothing sales decline reported by M&S two years ago. M&S also returned to the FTSE 100 index in August, again showing that boosting these brand metrics is translating into commercial success.
Looking to increase style perceptions further, Braithwaite was most recently responsible for securing Hollywood A-lister Sienna Miller as the face of the brand in September.■
Anna
Braithwaite
Group CMO
Moonpig
For Kristof Fahy, who joined Moonpig in July 2019, agility and a sense of curiosity have been key to navigating the last few years of uncertainty. The ability to pivot quickly has been particularly important for the cards and gifting company over the past 12 months, with the high rate of inflation creating a difficult trading environment. Fahy’s challenge has been to adapt his marketing strategy accordingly.
In a bid to reduce marketing spend and increase efficiency, Moonpig shifted away from the ‘always on’ approach to brand marketing it had taken in the year to April 2022, refocusing marketing activity around peak trading periods. The brand says its UK Mother’s Day campaign this year was its most comprehensive cross-channel marketing campaign to date, leading to a record week of sales.
In its 2023 financial results, Moonpig credited its “continued, disciplined marketing activity” with delivering 33% higher revenue from new customers compared to 2019, its biggest pre-Covid year, despite reduced overall investment. The reallocation of marketing spend also helped the business to improve its adjusted EBITDA margin from 24.6% to 26.3%.■
Kristof
Fahy
Chief marketing & digital officer
Wickes
A marketer who believes in blending data with creativity wherever possible, Gary Kibble has spent the last three and a half years developing the data, machine learning and segmentation capabilities of home improvement retailer Wickes. His efforts were last year rewarded when Wickes swept the board at the Marketing Week Awards, winning the awards for retail and ecommerce, best use of segmentation and the top Grand Prix prize.
At the heart of the retailer’s marketing transformation is the Mission Motivation Engine, a machine learning model that turns customer data into insight. That insight was fed into a new segmentation model, which prompted Wickes to overhaul its communications strategy. Product-focused comms were replaced with motivational messages that showed how Wickes could help customers achieve their goals.
Within six months of implementing the Mission Motivation Engine, Wickes had generated more than £7m in incremental revenue. According to Kibble, this is only the “tip of the iceberg”, with 70% of the programme still to come.
Kibble also oversaw the launch of Wickes’ own Ebay store last year, as part of its strategy to become a digitally-led business.■
Gary
Kibble
Pete
Markey
Michelle
McEttrick
Ed
Smith
Matt
Walburn
Peter
Wright
Marketing communications manager (cluster)
Ikea
Kemi Anthony has been the driving force behind Ikea’s UK campaigns for over seven years. In that time the flat-pack furniture giant’s popularity has continued to soar, with total UK sales up 13% to £2.2bn in the year to August 2022.
A marketer who believes in both consistency and avoiding the obvious, Anthony has also been responsible for steering the brand’s 12-year relationship with creative agency Mother London. The duo put Ikea’s product range at the centre of its October campaign, ‘It Won’t Feel Like Home, ‘Til It Feels Like You’, which followed one family’s journey to make their new house their own.
Ikea’s latest UK campaign, which launched in April, tackles the cost of living head on. In a tongue-in-cheek take on an MTV Cribs episode, ‘Show off your savvy’ encourages consumers to find joy in their thriftiest purchases.
Having shown herself to be an effective marketing leader, Anthony last year took on new responsibility for the creative output of additional markets, including the US and the Netherlands.■
Kemi
Anthony
Charlotte
Lock
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Pan-partnership & John Lewis customer director
John Lewis Partnership
Charlotte Lock joined the John Lewis Partnership as its first pan-partnership customer director in February 2022, before taking on additional responsibility for the John Lewis brand 12 months later.
Under her leadership, the Partnership has taken a more purpose-led approach to marketing. Lock helped to create the ‘Building Happier Futures’ programme to support people who have experienced the care system, which became the focus of John Lewis’s Christmas campaign last year. She also led the business through its first agency review in 14 years, with Saatchi & Saatchi’s experience on purpose-led campaigns helping it to win the account.
At the same time, Lock has made mastering John Lewis’s data a core focus for the customer team. The business has made “great strides” in building a single customer view and can now “operationalise” that insight across the customer journey, she told Marketing Week.
Although the Partnership reported a loss for the first half of the year, the group says its performance is improving, with its pre-tax loss 41% lower than for the same period last year, and it expects to see an improvement in its full-year results.■
CMO
Boots UK
The marketing budget at Boots just keeps getting bigger, as Pete Markey continues to prove a commercial return on everything his team does.
The success of the retailer’s 2021 summer campaign secured Markey a 20% budget increase for last year’s ‘Summer Better Be Ready’, which went on to hit all its key metrics and deliver a £2.50 return on investment for every £1 spent. Markey and his team followed up with another powerful Christmas campaign, delivering an ROI of over £4 for ‘Joy For All’ – all of which enabled Boots to launch its biggest ever summer campaign this year.
The marketer is also spearheading a considerable investment into loyalty and price. Boots last year launched its biggest Advantage Card campaign to date, which helped to recruit 1.1 million new loyalty members. A major shakeup to the scheme followed in March, with new discounts introduced to provide customers with more immediate value. All of this appears to be working for Boots, which in June announced a 10.2% sales uplift and its ninth consecutive quarter of market share growth.■
Chief customer officer
Primark
Michelle McEttrick became Primark’s first chief customer officer in September 2022, a year after stepping down as Tesco’s group brand director. Tasked with further developing the retailer’s brand and customer strategy, McEttrick also took over responsibility for its sustainability strategy, Primark Cares.
Although it is yet to launch a full ecommerce proposition, in the months since McEttrick’s arrival the retailer has made big strides forwards in terms of its digital offering. Its click and collect service for childrenswear was expanded to a total of 57 stores in April after an “encouraging” initial trial, and it has since been extended to 2,500 womenswear lines. Meanwhile, the roll out of its improved website, which allows shoppers to check store stock, has driven a 61% uplift in website traffic.
However, according to McEttrick, Primark’s bricks and mortar stores remain its core priority. Creating the right in-store experiences to tempt shoppers out of their homes is key to the retailer’s future, she said at Advertising Week Europe, pointing to the in-store Greggs outlets launched late last year. In the 24 weeks to March 2023, strong footfall drove a 15% year-on-year sales increase for Primark in the UK.■
General manager of integrated marketing Europe
Amazon
Ed Smith has led Amazon’s integrated marketing team in Europe since 2017, overseeing advertising and sponsorship marketing for the digital giant’s retail division, Alexa, Prime and the Amazon masterbrand.
With Smith at the helm, Amazon produced the UK’s second most effective Christmas ad last year. Directed by Oscar-winning director Taika Waititi, the spot told the story of a devoted father who turned his greenhouse into a snow globe to bring his daughter joy. System1 awarded the ad its highest possible score for long-term brand-building potential.
The next few years will see Amazon associated with the rapidly growing popularity of women’s football in Europe, after striking a multi-year partnership deal with UEFA Women’s Football this year. The sponsorship will cover the UEFA Women’s Euro 2025 tournament, as well as the UEFA Women’s Champions League.
Smith has also been an advocate for marketing apprenticeships, following the success of Amazon’s partnership with The Marketing Academy Foundation. “Apprenticeships offer a route for bright individuals from diverse backgrounds to gain access to the marketing industry, which is inclusive, but only when you have navigated your way in,” he said.■
Marketing, ecommerce & customer executive director
AS Watson UK (Superdrug and Savers)
After returning to Superdrug as ecommerce director in 2019, Matt Walburn took on additional leadership of the retailer’s marketing and customer teams in March last year. Together the three teams represent the “linchpin” of the business’s digital plans, he explained to Marketing Week.
As part of those plans, Walburn led the launch of Superdrug’s new online marketplace in November. The marketplace offers customers access to hundreds of partner brands, allowing the health and beauty retailer to better compete with its rivals on product range.
Meanwhile, with the cost of living crisis squeezing consumer spend, Walburn had Superdrug play into its heritage as a value-led retailer last year. The prices of more than 5,000 items were frozen – including 130 own-brand products – alongside the launch of the ‘Shop Smart’ campaign with poverty campaigner Jack Monroe.
By Christmas, the strategy seemed to be paying off. Superdrug’s like-for-like sales grew 16% over the five weeks to 31 December, with weekly transactions up 19% compared to 2021. Following the price freeze, sales of the retailer’s own-brand products jumped 20%.■
CMO
Specsavers
After nearly a decade with Scandinavian furniture retailer Ikea, Peter Wright took over the top marketing job at Specsavers in April 2021. Forced to make significant job cuts during the pandemic, the retailer revealed a strong recovery in the year to February 2022, achieving record annual sales of £3.4bn.
While famous for its glasses, the last 18 months have seen Wright’s marketing team focus its efforts on Specsavers’ lesser-known services. The brand celebrated 10 years of its iconic ‘Should’ve Gone to Specsavers’ strapline last year with ‘Should’ve 2.0’, a campaign series which brought its audiology service under the platform for the first time. In August, a clever twist to the campaign helped raise awareness of Specsavers’ home visits service, with the tagline: ‘I don’t go to Specsavers… They come to me’.
When he joined the business, Wright told Marketing Week future campaigns could raise awareness of Specsavers’ partnership model. That idea came to life in March’s ‘Your Care is Our Business’ campaign, which turned the spotlight onto the local experts who run each Specsavers store.■
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Charities & not-for-profit
FOOD & DRINK RETAIL
GENERAL RETAIL
Media, telecoms & entertainment
PROFESSIONAL SERVICES,UTILITIES, HEALTH & LIFE SCIENCES
TRAVEL, LEISURE & HOSPITALITY
Consumer tech, automotive
& manufacturing
FINANCIAL SERVICES
FMCG
Food & drink
methodology
judges
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analysis