Group marketing director, Boohoo Group
Earlier this year, young fashion brand Boohoo acquired Debenhams, in a deal that Marketing Week columnist Mark Ritson said “makes a tonne of sense” in giving the business access to more affluent customers.
The move will give group marketing director Murray Beckett even more options to exercise the skills he has picked up in a career in digital marketing roles for big name brands. After starting his working life agency-side, Beckett moved through roles at British Airways, Nike and Marks & Spencer, arriving at Boohoo in 2017.
As well as integrating Debenhams, Beckett is likely to be occupied with brushing the tarnish off the Boohoo brand. Its YouGov BrandIndex buzz scores tumbled last year when The Sunday Times reported that workers making its clothes in Leicester factories were being paid as little as £3.50 per hour.
The buzz scores, which record positive or negative things consumers have heard about a brand in the previous two weeks, dropped to -19 when the allegations were published.
Since then, Boohoo has offered customers the opportunity to "look behind the scenes" of its supply chain, and has published its first Economic Impact Report revealing the contribution the group has made to the UK economy since 2009.■
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Murray Beckett
Marketing director for clothing and home, Marks & Spencer
Anna Braithwaite joined Marks & Spencer this summer from Tesco, where she was global brand director of non-food, to take on a role of key importance for one of the country’s most iconic retailers.
Braithwaite joins M&S as it seeks to emerge from the pandemic as a new kind of business. The retailer’s food offer is performing relatively well, and has been boosted by its partnership with Ocado since last year. But on the fashion side of M&S, things look less positive.
A substantial growth in online sales during lockdown was not enough to make up for non-essential stores being closed. M&S cut its marketing spend for clothing and home by £50m and the key Christmas trading period saw sales drop by a quarter compared to a year before.
In order to remedy that, the retailer is working to expand its online capability for clothing and home so that more than 40% of revenue comes from online within three years. It has also started offering third-party brands for the first time. M&S will be hoping Braithwaite’s experience at Tesco - and at Hobbs London, Jacques Vert and John Lewis - can add the appeal it needs.
A 15-year retail marketing veteran, Braithwaite is said to have been instrumental in the success of Tesco's F&F fashion brand, spearheading the 'I Only Popped In For' brand campaign.■
Anna Braithwaite
GENERAL RETAIL
Chief marketing officer, Moonpig
When Kristof Fahy joined Moonpig as CMO in 2019 he immediately undid some earlier changes. These included the return of the brand’s catchy jingle and the reintroduction of its signature pink colour scheme.
Perhaps most noticeably, he has also brought back its brand mascot, a loveable pig. Fahy firmly believes the creature should never have been "retired" in the first place. Now animated, the pig is set to be at the heart of future campaigns for the brand.
There are likely to be many of these. Moonpig’s mission to become a "card-first gifting platform" took a leap forward when many traditional rivals had to close their stores due to lockdown restrictions. The group notched up 150 million orders and in February this year its app was a number one download for both iOS and Android devices.
New gifting ideas - including tie-ups with brands such as Lego, Johnnie Walker and Nivea - are in place for the next stage of expansion. “The reason I’m really confident going into the next phase is because we’ve developed a really strong marketing playbook,” Fahy said.■
Kristof Fahy
Chief marketing officer, Boots
Pete Markey joined Boots early this year as the company’s first CMO. His role replaced those of both marketing director and director of brand and communications, and comes at a time of enormous upheaval across the entire retail sector. The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated an existing trend towards ecommerce and digital communications, with a radical shift in consumer behaviour during lockdown.
Since Markey’s arrival the company has launched new direct-to-consumer services for No7, the Boots-owned market-leading skincare brand, and kicked off a major marketing campaign, 'Feel Good as New'. The campaign not only spans mainstream and digital channels, but includes the retailer's first partnership with popular reality show Love Island.
Prior to joining Boots, Markey was CMO of TSB Bank, where he led a two-year, research-led brand diagnosis to better understand how it can meet customer needs. The process led to the launch of a new customer insight programme, business purpose, brand identity, agency roster and rebrand of its branches, as well as the restructuring and reskilling of the marketing team.
He has also been active in diversity and inclusion efforts at TSB and Boots, alongside wider industry efforts to open up the industry to people from more diverse backgrounds through apprenticeships.■
Pete Markey
Customer director, John Lewis & Partners
The most recent campaign from John Lewis saw a number of firsts for the brand: its first multichannel advertising campaign for its new value Anyday range, and the first to highlight prices on TV, as it hopes to appeal to a broader group of shoppers looking for everyday products. On average, Anyday products cost 20% less than other John Lewis ranges.
Customer director Claire Pointon - who has extensive experience from technology retailers such as Dixons Carphone - says the department store wants to be seen as a place to visit frequently. “The campaign feels different in tone and creative from our usual adverts because we really want to showcase how customers live their lives, and highlight the role we can play,” she told Marketing Week. Meanwhile, digital and social elements of the campaign target younger customers.
At a time of losses and store closures, success for the Anyday range is important to John Lewis as it is seeking to reduce losses by £300m by the end of next year. ■
Claire Pointon
General manager of integrated marketing EU, Amazon
A hands-on marketer who drove around the UK speaking to people to get a feel for the country after moving here from Australia, Ed Smith must surely have learned a lot more about human behaviour over the last year and a half.
Consumers have rushed online to make purchases during lockdown, with Amazon the most conspicuous beneficiary. In 2020, net sales increased by 38% to $386.1bn, compared with $280.5bn in 2019 - a performance that has continued into the first half of this year. It wasn’t just retail that performed well - video streaming service Amazon Prime saw more than 175 million people watch shows over the past 12 months.
As a result, Amazon has retained its place as the world’s most valuable brand, according to the BrandZ global brand ranking from WPP and Kantar. The study in 2020 found that Amazon had increased its value by almost $100bn, to $415.9bn.
Smith was also one of 18 marketers to take part in The Marketing Academy’s Fellowship programme in 2019, a course designed to prepare CMOs to become CEOs.■
Ed
Smith
Chief marketing officer, Sports Direct
Sports Direct is aiming to up its game when it comes to marketing, with the brand's first CMO Beckie Stanion conceding it had been too heavily focused on retail marketing.
“We weren’t doing any brand marketing before,” she told Marketing Week. The retailer ran its first brand campaign last Christmas, followed this summer by another in the run-up to the delayed UEFA European Football Championship. The brand hoped to reach more than 29 million people with the ad - featuring a number of famous footballers - before the final whistle blew.
“This is really about sentiment and changing brand perception,” said Stanion, who credits strong sales with allowing Sports Direct the space to improve its image. The most recent results from parent company Frasers Group (to April 2020) show revenue up 0.7%, for a group profit before tax of £144m.
However, the scale of the challenge is clear: YouGov's BrandIndex tool, which tracks brand health, put Sports Direct’s score at -1.3 for July 2021, compared to a score of 4.8 for rival JD Sports.■
Beckie Stanion
European marketing director, Patagonia
Patagonia is proud of its four-decade history of environmental conservation and activism, and it encourages its customers to feel the same. Its marketing objectives are not necessarily classic ones.
With tactics that include stitching messages inside garments encouraging wearers to ‘Vote the Arseholes Out’ (meaning any politicians who profit from fossil fuel interests) that should be evident.
Speaking at the Festival of Marketing, European marketing director Alex Weller also made it clear that “we don’t pay to fuel a superficial desire for our products in any way. In fact, when we do have the opportunity to amplify our point of view on the product, we typically talk about the reasons why you should question buying things".
All brands will eventually have to become accountable for their environmental impact, and marketers should be using their voices within organisations to ensure they remain viable, he added. Meanwhile, Patagonia seeks to stop the Covid-19 pandemic from drawing attention away from climate change and has been encouraging its staff to support direct action.■
Alex Weller
Chief growth officer, Asos
Robert Birge joined Asos as chief growth officer shortly after the company published several profit warnings. By April this year the group had announced record half-year profits driven by a 24% increase in sales for the first half of the current financial year.
The brand increased its active customer base to 24.9 million shoppers - an increase of 1.5 million in six months - and saw UK sales rise by 39%.
Asos capitalised on the consumer shift to online during lockdown by increasing its marketing spend, paying out £108.9m in the six months to February - around £40m more than in the same period a year before. Asos has also quickly integrated the Arcadia brands it acquired during the year, including Topshop, Topman, Miss Selfridge and HIIT.
The broad experience brought to the group by Birge comes partly from CMO roles - for the likes of IMG, Kayak and Lola.com - and partly from his time at agencies and consultancies. Birge was managing director of the New York office of TBWA/Chiat/Day for more than five years.■
Robert Birge
Chief brand officer, N Brown
N Brown chief executive Steve Johnson said in the group’s full year results published in May, that the past 12 months had been about transforming the group through a "relentless focus" on its five strategic brands, improving its product offering and enhancing its digital capabilities.
All of this means a heavy workload for chief brand officer Kenyatte Nelson, who is responsible for JD Williams, Simply Be, Jacamo, Ambrose Wilson and Home Essentials.
The company has discontinued brands such as High & Mighty, refreshed its creative style and created clearer, more focused propositions. The group has also upped its use of social media, with positive results. The coming year will see a push to bring in new customers, helped by an injection of new equity.
Nelson, who is also a non-executive director of the British Retail Consortium, brings relevant experience from Missguided and Shop Direct to the task, along with the big company know-how he acquired during more than 13 years at Procter & Gamble.■
Kenyatte Nelson
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