food & drink retail
Matt Atkinson
Chief membership officer, The Co-operative Group
With a seat on The Co-operative Group’s executive committee in his role as chief membership officer, Matt Atkinson describes himself as a “new world” CMO driving “change, growth and innovation in a highly challenged market”.
Last year, for the first time, the group united its food, insurance and funeral care marketing with a £10m ad campaign that launched a new line: “It’s what we do”. The activity aimed to show how The Co-op invests in local communities and benefits members, “not just a small group of institutional investors”.
According to its annual report, the group returned a total of £76m to members and local causes in its 2019 financial year. Last year, the group had 4.6 million active members, but said its focus on attracting younger people drove a 36% increase in new members aged 35 or under.
When the coronavirus hit in the spring, The Co-op decided to pull its Easter ad campaign and switch to a message encouraging customers to support food banks. Alongside setting up a phone-ordering service, the grocer donated food worth £1.5m via charity partner FareShare to help those most at risk.■
Chief customer officer, Tesco
Alessandra Bellini knew she “had arrived” when she posed for a photo at a Tesco checkout after joining the supermarket in 2017. Since then, she’s gone from strength to strength, being named Marketing Week Masters Marketer of the Year in 2019 and pushing on further with a relentless focus on understanding customers.
Part of that involved helping to rebuild Tesco’s reputation with a campaign celebrating its centenary, aiming to put its “great value” to the forefront. Bellini also masterminded an overhaul of Clubcard, which now includes a subscription element designed to drive loyalty.
In its annual report, Tesco said its value perception had increased 14.9 points to 21 over the past five years, with NPS rising 19 points to 29 during the same period.
Like other supermarkets, Tesco had a boost during the coronavirus outbreak, with sales rising 11.7% in the 12 weeks to 16 May, after expanding its online offering during lockdown. Bellini revamped Tesco’s ‘Food Love Stories’ ads, asking customers to film their own cookery dedications to family and friends in a campaign that was turned around in under 10 days. ■
CHARITY & NOT-FOR-PROFIT
consumer goods, tech & luxury
FINANCIAL SERVICES
FMCG
Food & drink
FOOD & DRINK RETAIL
GENERAL RETAIL
MEDIA & TELECOMS
REGULATED INDUSTRIES
TRAVEL, LEISURE & HOSPITALITY
BACK TO TOP
meet the judges
TOP100 hOME
methodology
The top100 list
Alessandra Bellini
Sharry Cramond
Marketing director (food and hospitality), Marks & Spencer
Sharry Cramond has the plum role of running marketing for M&S Food. The past year has seen her launch a co-branded range with Marmite, introduce a new ‘re-Marks-able’ value positioning and celebrate M&S Simply Food being named the UK’s favourite retailer in a study by consultancy OC&C in December 2019.
While other supermarkets have been in the ecommerce game for a while, M&S was quick to strike a deal with Deliveroo at the onset of the Covid-19 lockdown, enabling customers to order essentials such as a Made Without Wheat food box.
The company has an ambition to double the size of its food business, which will be aided by the launch of its Ocado partnership this month, making thousands of M&S products available for delivery.
In its annual report, the retailer said its food business had “outperformed the market” as sales increased by 2.1%. M&S credits this growth to changes in the range, better value and customer communications, including its sponsorship of ITV’s Britain’s Got Talent.■
Chief marketing officer, Burger King UK
Welcoming creativity, wherever it comes from, has been key to Burger King’s popular marketing while Katie Evans has been UK CMO. From avoiding formal processes to welcoming creative pitches from its agencies, the approach has led to work that reaches consumers across different channels and looks outside the fast-food sector.
“There is no doubt creativity makes marketing more effective. It makes a campaign much more memorable, much more disruptive and it connects with consumers on a different level,” says Evans.
She credits this creative stance with allowing marketing to help solve wider problems than just attracting customers. ‘The Meltdown’ campaign, for example, saw Burger King calling on customers to donate unwanted plastic meal deal toys – from any brand – so that it could recycle them into play area facilities in its restaurants.
Evans was also at the heart of Burger King UK’s reopening strategy post-lockdown, using PR, broadcast and social media to communicate the phased opening. Understanding consumers’ desire for a taste of the familiar, she put the Whopper front and centre of the marketing, focusing on the use of fresh ingredients made to order. ■
Katie
Evans
CLAIRE
FARRANT
Marketing director, Lidl UK
Claire Farrant has been marketing director at Lidl UK since 2015, overseeing strong growth at the discount grocer. She has put the focus firmly on the quality and range of its product, talking less about price in a bid to convince shoppers Lidl can be a destination for the big weekly shop.
“We want to make it really clear that we are big on quality, and it’s a quality that can be found in everything that we sell, the things that people really care about, not just the occasional product,” she says.
Farrant also has a laser focus on understanding customers, employing social anthropology to understand how they feel about Christmas and creating a campaign that tapped into new traditions. Likewise, in January Lidl removed cartoon characters from cereal packaging to “encourage healthier choices”.
That focus is paying off despite coronavirus and the shift to online grocery shopping. Lidl came third in YouGov BrandIndex’s annual barometer of the top brands in the UK and is seeing some of the fastest growth in the market, with sales up 15.7% in the 12 weeks to 9 August. ■
Chief marketing officer, KFC UK and Ireland
A commitment to adopting a growth mindset and taking calculated risks has seen Meghan Farren prosper at KFC. After a period of enforced lockdown, the fast-food chain came back with a bang with a campaign showing customers how much it had “missed them”. The ad featured images from the #RateMyKFC social media campaign, which encouraged people to make their own versions of KFC chicken wings and post them on social for the brand to critique. The social campaign alone garnered hundreds of tweets and an engagement rate of 101% among its followers over a six-week period.
Next, KFC pushed out its ‘Don’t be a tosser’ message, urging consumers to bin their litter, and committed more team members to regular litter picks around its restaurants.
Farren’s modus operandi is sometimes described as brave, but she cautions that fear of failure can itself be the limiting factor, asking “What’s the worst that can happen if you screw up?”
A career that has moved from banking to fast food, via management consultancy, suggests that being open to new challenges may be a liberating professional strategy. ■
Meghan Farren
Martin
George
Customer director, Waitrose
Martin George joined the John Lewis Partnership (JLP) in 2017 initially as customer director for the Waitrose brand. He has since worked with his then John Lewis counterpart Craig Inglis on bringing the two brands closer together, including their first joint Christmas campaign featuring Edgar, an excitable dragon who keeps ruining Christmas moments because he can’t control his fire breathing.
When Inglis left the partnership in March, George took on a joint marketing role across the two brands in a restructure that aimed to deduplicate roles. At Waitrose, he was responsible for campaigns that promoted the quality and provenance of its food, while at John Lewis, marketing was about showing the department store was in tune with modern living.
However, in a slight reversal of that restructuring, JLP is giving more autonomy back to the individual brands. That means George has reverted to his role as customer director of Waitrose, as the grocer prepares to end its 18-year relationship with Ocado and convince shoppers to shop with it, rather staying with Ocado and its new partner Marks
& Spencer. ■
Chief marketing officer, Sainsbury’s, Argos, Nectar and Tu Mark Given was appointed to the Sainsbury’s board in June after being promoted to chief marketing officer the year before, in a move new chief executive Simon Roberts said would “ensure that we really understand how customers are feeling, what they’re thinking and how this affects the way they shop.”
Given has marketing responsibility across the supermarket, as well as its Argos, Nectar and Tu brands. In October, he celebrated Nectar’s position at number one in the Android and Apple app stores after a proposition revamp. The new platform had more than 3.5 million unique users as of February.
Given also had oversight of Sainsbury’s ‘The Big Night In’ appeal in April, a campaign that was produced in under a week and ran across TV, social, press and outdoor.
Like other supermarkets, Sainsbury’s enjoyed a boost at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, with sales up 11% year-on-year in the 12 weeks to 16 May. The supermarket hired thousands of staff to help deliver online shopping during the period and is rolling out till-free, contactless shopping to more than 100 of its convenience stores.■
Mark
Given
Hannah Squirrell
Customer and marketing director, Greggs
Given that Greggs was named Brand of the Year at the 2019 Marketing Week Awards, and its marketing was credited with a key role in boosting profits, it’s no surprise to see Hannah Squirrell on the Top 100 list.
In March, Greggs chief executive Roger Whiteside hailed exceptional sales growth of 9.2% and credited innovations, including a new mobile app and vegan menu items, for the performance.
Squirrell says that a tight marketing budget has forced her team to think and behave differently, after she was appointed in 2017 to bring new skills to the Greggs brand. PR messages celebrating the launch of Gregg’s vegan sausage roll in 2019 reached 69% of UK adults, while a whopping 8 million people watched the launch film as the brand boosted social engagement and its share of voice against rivals. Nine out of 10 customers said their perception of Greggs had improved.
Despite its outlets being closed for most of the second quarter due to Covid-19, Greggs has seen sales bounce back to 72% of the 2019 level since re-opening, which it credits to the brand’s “broad customer appeal”.■
Chief marketing officer, Deliveroo
Inés Ures joined Deliveroo as its first chief marketing officer in January last year, overseeing (among other things) brand strategy, acquisition and retention, in-house digital marketing, subscriptions and customer insights for the food delivery app across 13 markets. In Ures’ own words, she’s “helping to deliver the definitive food company”.
Deliveroo has also delivered during the pandemic. The company hit its target to supply 500,000 free meals to NHS keyworkers, teamed up with Visa to announce a support package to help SME restaurants and introduced a new ‘Table Service’ feature, allowing customers to order in restaurants, pubs and cafés via the Deliveroo app.
Ures also led Deliveroo’s ‘Here to deliver’ campaign, a TV ad that reminded people that restaurant kitchens were still open and featured staff holding hand-written signs that they posted on social media.
The business also announced a partnership with Morrisons to deliver essential items during the coronavirus lockdown, which shoppers could receive in as little as 30 minutes. The partnership had the potential to reach 6.8 million of the supermarket’s catchment.■
Inés
Ures
BACK TO TOP
food & drink
Has the pandemic accelerated a digital shift, or is it a temporary blip?
Why marketing transformation is taking on new urgency
Unified data: the key to understanding post-lockdown consumer trends
Has the pandemic accelerated a digital shift, or is it a temporary blip?
Why marketing transformation is taking on new urgency
Unified data: the key to understanding post-lockdown consumer trends
Food & drink retail
General retail
Media & telecoms
Regulated industries
Travel, leisure & hospitality
Charity & not-for-profit
Consumer goods, tech & luxury
Financial services
FMCG
Food & drink
meet the judges
TOP100 hOME
methodology
The top100 list
CHARITY & NOT-FOR-PROFIT
FOOD & DRINK RETAIL
GENERAL RETAIL
MEDIA & TELECOMS
REGULATED INDUSTRIES
TRAVEL, LEISURE & HOSPITALITY
consumer goods, tech & luxury
FINANCIAL SERVICES
FMCG
Food & drink
Food & drink retail
General retail
Media & telecoms
Regulated industries
Travel, leisure & hospitality
Charity & not-for-profit
Consumer goods, tech & luxury
Financial services
FMCG
Food & drink
FURTHER READING
Sponsored by Salesforce
FURTHER READING
Sponsored by Salesforce
TOP100
TOP100
judges
Judges
methodology
methodology
analysis
analysis
TOP100
TOP100
judges
Judges
methodology
methodology
analysis
analysis