Claire – 00:00:00:
What it ultimately comes down to is culture, trust, accountability, but also having a voice at the top table. I think that’s really important as well. My experience when I joined Sainsbury’s Bank, back to the last question actually, was that marketing was seen as a delivery function only. And actually the team had lost a lot of credibility in that respect, but a lot of confidence as well, because that’s how they were used to operating. And then that was the culture that they were in. So for me, when I went in, I was really keen to enable a change. And to do that, I had to build strong relationships at an eco level, at a board level, across the teams, and importantly with my peers as well.
Intro – 00:00:46:
Welcome to the Time for a Reset Marketing Podcast, insights from global brand marketers, brought to you by CvE Marketing Consultancy, hosted by Fiona Davis. Each episode dives deep into the minds of senior marketing leaders from around the world. Join us as we explore what they want to reset in an ever-changing landscape and uncover strategies that drive successful brand transformation.
Fiona – 00:01:15:
Welcome to Time for a Reset. I’m Fiona, I’ll be your host for today from the Overline team. And today I’ve got with me Claire Moyles from Sainsbury’s Bank. Welcome Claire, it’s lovely to have you on.
Claire – 00:01:25:
Yeah, really nice to be asked to come on actually.
Fiona – 00:01:29:
Great to have you. And just by way of background for all of our listeners, Claire’s basically, she’s a marketing director known for shaping impactful customer-focused strategies that deliver real results. That’s what we love at Overline. We like to talk to people that are in the business of getting stuff done. So Claire’s got expertise in brand management, digital marketing. She’s worked with some of the UK’s most recognizable financial services brands. She’s worked at Tesco, NatWest, and now she’s heading out the marketing team at Sainsbury’s Bank. So Claire’s main focus is strengthening customer relationships, growing brand loyalty, all while driving commercial performance, something that’s pretty important for most of our clients actually. Her smart use of data, brand, and digital insights played a key role in accelerating the customer growth at Sainsbury’s and deepening the loyalty program there as well. So welcome, Claire. We’re really looking forward to hearing your insights. So we always like to ask the question at the beginning of our podcast, what would you hit the reset button on, Claire?
Claire – 00:02:26:
Yeah, and by the way, what a great question to ask. Fundamentally for me, what I’d really like to hit the reset button on is how do we break down silos within organization so that actually we can work really collaboratively to solve for brilliant customer journeys, brilliant customer experiences. And I think all too often what I see in organizations is the different silos are absolutely brilliant at what they do, but fundamentally they’re not working effectively enough together to really solve for the customer, whether it be pain points or whether it be opportunities. And actually marketing can be so much more efficient when you join up. You have a great proposition driven by the best data. We have a fantastic off-site to on-site experience for the customer. So fundamentally, the join up across silos makes marketing even more powerful. So I think unlocking that and hitting the reset button on that for me would be a real game changer for a lot of organization.
Fiona – 00:03:35:
Yeah, and your sort of marketing is in a pretty unique position, isn’t it, Claire? In a lot of organisations, there’s very few functions that get to see that cross-functional interaction and get a real view of everything that’s going on across all the different business units. So it is uniquely positioned to kind of help to unlock some of that, definitely. You touched on the silos. I want to kind of dive a little bit more into that. And obviously you’ve worked in lots of organizations. So I’m sure you’ve seen this in lots of different places. Organisational silos hindering customer journey. What are the primary drivers behind that siloing? Is it structural? Is it cultural? Is it a lack of shared objectives or something else? And how does that internal separation typically manifests in disconnects between marketing and other critical functions like product development or the commercial side of the business.
Claire – 00:04:22:
So again, another great question. I mean, I think in terms of the primary drivers itself, it’s very dependent on organisation. You mentioned there that I work with lots of different organisations. We’re really fortunate for brilliant brands in that way, a really big organisation. But then Tesla is used by smaller. And actually, my experience, the drivers have been quite different, dependent on the organisation. So in some, I have seen organisational structure being a real barrier, and that’s probably more in the larger organisations. But also, I don’t think you can underestimate the culture, the values. And then I think a really important thing is leadership as well. So for me, leadership has the opportunity to be great in terms of role modelling, collaboration to break down silos. But equally, I’ve seen it quite disrupted as well, where leaders of large functions don’t necessarily get on. And actually, the teams within those functions will take their lead from the leader at the end of the day. So I think that we can’t underestimate how powerful that is. Teamwork and collaboration is absolutely essential for breaking down silos and having the culture, the leadership, the values in place to support it, I think is really important.
Fiona – 00:05:44:
And also, do you see budget as a barrier? Like we often see, maybe not necessarily in a bank, but in a, like a CPG, they’ll have individual business units with their own budgets, not necessarily with joined up thinking. So do you have some similar challenges to that in a bank where you’ve got different product sets?
Claire – 00:06:02:
Yeah, definitely. But I also think it’s about where does the budget sit? So sometimes what you see is actually the budget sits in commercial, the marketing budget will sit and by commercial. And I think that’s where marketing can sometimes end up being a bit of a delivery function because they have to take their instructions from commercial. So I fundamentally believe that actually the budget sitting within marketers is incredibly important because as experts, we need to be seen to be thought leaders, just teach it and really gaining that credibility and trust and where we should be spending the money in order to drive the right outcomes for the business. I think just one last thing that I probably would say is where I’ve seen it work well is, and this is becoming more common nowadays, where actually the structure across product, data, digital and marketing is aligned under a chief customer officer. So at Sainsbury’s Bank, for example, that’s the structure. And I think what that does is it inherently breaks down some of those traditional tensions, let’s just say, that sometimes might exist between particularly, I would say, product and marketing. It can exist, obviously, across the piece. So I think when you have that type of structure, it lends itself well to actually being much more joined up against a common goal and a common objective and really wanting that collaboration and that teamwork to come together for the good of that department, if you like. But I think that probably harder in larger organizations like the bigger banks. It was definitely something that worked really well at Sainsbury’s Bank.
Fiona – 00:07:46:
You touched on a great point there, actually, about that sometimes marketing struggles to be seen as a strategic business partner from the outset, and rather than primarily a delivery function for sales targets. And actually, we do see that across lots of organizations. What are some of the perceptions and operational realities that contribute to that? And how have you managed to move that marketing teams into proactively shifting that perception?
Claire – 00:08:10:
No, I think that’s a really interesting question and actually one that I’ve witnessed and had the opportunity to also change in my career as well. But, for me, what it ultimately comes down to is culture, trust, accountability, but also having a voice at the top table. I think that’s really important as well. My experience when I joined Sainsbury’s Bank, back to the last question actually, was that marketing was being as a delivery function only. And actually the team had lost a lot of credibility in that respect, but a lot of confidence as well, because that’s how they were used to operating and then that was the culture that they were in. So for me, when I went in, I was really keen to enable a change. And to do that, I had to build strong relationships at an entry level, at a board level, across the teams and importantly with my peers as well. And I also had to deliver meaningful change really quickly. So thought leadership around strategy, how I would make a difference to the business, how I would grow the business, but also delivering quick wins and results was really important as well. And then if you go back to kind of the behaviour side of it as well, I think the way that you kind of shift those perceptions is by role modelling collaboration as well. I made sure I did that with my peers across the business, encouraged the teams to do it, rebuilt the confidence, rebuilt the credibility and made sure that I had a voice at the top table as well, which for me was the kind of real game changer in that respect.
Fiona – 00:09:48:
Yeah, I mean, that’s a great way to get there, isn’t it? You’ve got to really have those great relationships at every level of the organization to kind of make sure that influence is maintained over time as well.
Claire – 00:09:59:
Yeah, and I think when you’re new to the organization, it’s actually probably easier to do that because you have an opportunity to go and establish those relationships. And you’re brought into the organization for a reason, right? So people really want to hear what you can do, how you can change the organization. So I think that is a point, a really natural point to go in and try and achieve that objective.
Fiona – 00:10:25:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense too. So in terms of your sort of achieving that end-to-end customer experience focus, if you could wave a magic wand, what fundamental shifts in the organization structure, process or mindset would you implement to really foster a truly end-to-end customer experience focus so that marketing’s integrated from start to finish? So right from the proposition development all the way through to the post-purchase engagement, how would you change things in an organization to enable that?
Claire – 00:10:56:
So, I mean, a magic wand, amazing, right? But I actually don’t think that fundamentally I would rip up the organizational structure and start to crash teams together, subject matter experts together, because I kind of don’t feel that going to that extreme is the right thing to do either. And I think this is where agile collaboration and where we are on an AI journey as well kind of really comes into play because actually massively changing structure can be really disruptive to business, right? And I actually don’t think in this day and age it’s necessary with the tools that we’ve got at our disposal. So I think how you use technology and how you use agile is a way to bring teams together, subject matter experts together to actually solve the customer problem or actually go after a customer opportunity would be my magic wand. And I had a really great example of this when I worked in that waste group. I was leading marketing at the time that COVID hit. And actually, we had never worked in that way collaboratively across functions before. You can imagine each function, digital sat under a different MD, marketing sat under a different MD. So it was quite disparate. And actually, a lot of the time we would work together, but it would be slow and quite cumbersome. Then COVID hit. And actually, I knew straight away that fundamentally, if we did not come together across digital data, marketing and products in particular, that we were not going to serve our customers well. And that was so important because people were really anxious at that time. The big challenge was we had to create new propositions. So we had segments like over 70s, NHS, customers who were receiving forbearance. We had to come up with what’s the new proposition around these? Never mind, what does the data tell us? How do we reach them? What’s going to suit them best? How do we make sure that we keep joined up journeys from marketing to on-site? How is the customer support in place? So we just had to, within the space of a day, go into that agile mindset. We had daily stand-ups. We had leads across the propositions in particular. And that, for me, was a game changer. I mean, in two weeks, we reached 75% of the base. We doubled awareness as well. And that wouldn’t have happened about COVID. That would be my magic wand, you don’t need to have a COVID to actually achieve something like that that served customers brilliantly. Just get into that agile mindset straight away and get teams working together. But have the tools in place to support the teams working together collaboratively as well, which I think is really important.
Fiona – 00:13:52:
Yeah, I think COVID was a great exercise in teaching everybody to stay nimble because everything that you knew about marketing and what was the right thing to do beforehand was just out the window. So it kind of gave people almost license to just, okay, we’ve got to do something differently. Let’s try something else. Because everyone was stuck at home, I guess it forced everybody to be a little bit more likely to lean in and collaborate because they’re all in a new world, right?
Claire – 00:14:18:
It did. But I also saw the reversion of that post-COVID as well. People going, all right, we can breathe again. We can go back to normal. So when you see really positive things happening and something’s worked really well, how would you sustain that? And how do you make it part of your operating rhythm? I think that’s what a good leader would recognize, grapple and implement.
Fiona – 00:14:43:
It’s pretty critical now when you’re going through so much change. I mean, the most constant thing in our industry is change. And with AI accelerating that, I mean, if you don’t stay nimble and you’re not prepared to adapt, then you’re going to be left in the dust, I think, at this stage. So it’s an imperative for businesses now, right?
Claire – 00:15:00:
Yeah, definitely. Totally.
Fiona – 00:15:01:
This is something that comes up a lot, both on the brand and the retail side, around getting that balance right between brand building, long-term brand building and short-term trading and hitting immediate performance goals. In your career, how have you navigated that inherent tension between making sure that the long-term brand investment and brand consideration is happening and that you’re building preference over time to the immediate pressure of literally driving short-term trading results? And what are some of the key principles and frameworks you’ve employed to strike that balance?
Claire – 00:15:35:
Yeah, no, great question. And I’m sure, 99% of marketers have actually had this challenge themselves that they’ve had to navigate this tension. I’ve navigated it a lot through my career. I think particularly in times where budgets are challenged. So I mentioned COVID there. Then we have the cost of living crisis. So I think when marketing budgets are under pressure, that tension is really heightened. And you have to double down more, I think, in terms of striking that balance and investing in long-term brand growth as well as delivering sales. So probably a great example of this would be when I joined nCentury Bank. So that was back in 2020. And at that time, the brand was really heavily reliant on aggregators and very heavily reliant on price as well. And the result of that was growth and plateaued because just operating at the bottom of the funnel will get you so far. And I really needed to create a strategy that would sustain those short-term sales. But actually, how do we get growth? And we were only going to do that through brand investment. One of the key kind of principles and frameworks that I used to really get that investment and that belief that this was the right strategy was there was a few things. So firstly, I think really looking at proving that there’s diminishing returns is really important. So simply increasing spend at the bottom of the funnel will not guarantee profitable growth. You and I know that, but actually, I worked with our media agency to model it out for Sainsbury’s Bank and showed that just by increasing investment by 25% will increase your CPAs by 10%. And that makes it not commercially viable, right? And that’s quite a big key thing in terms of going that actually you have to do something different here. And then I think demonstrating brands’ impact on conversion efficiency is the next thing. And this is where I really, I always look to industry data. And I’ve done this a few times in my career when I’ve been building business cases that I ran. So, very familiar to marketers, BrandZ, IPA, Nielsen, and Dynamics. There’s a host of industry data out there and also case studies as well, which proved that improving brand saliency not only increases organic sales, but enhances efficiency as well. The whole piece around you get a 40% try over in the outer years is really important. And while brands’ families seem less efficient than performance marketing in the short term, when you model that over five years, it’s a much smarter investment. It’s much more profitable than just relying on a short-term bottom of the funnel that today. Another key thing as well is highlighting the broader brand effect. And I was able to do this by modeling this through with finance as well. I think particularly around, we all know, saliency drives loyalty. It reduces churn. It increases lifetime value. So I think really focusing in on that is important. And you become less reliant on price. So Sainsbury’s Bank was very reliant on price. This is a lot of other challenger banks. But building your brand can actually improve your margin sustainability. And then brand saliency stores up. So actually, customers recall the brand when they enter the market. Hence the carryover effect. So I think building a chase around all those points really does demonstrate year-on-year growth without compromising short-term sales. I think you can strike that balance between both. It’s about how you go in, how you model, how you get the belief that you can build a long-term strategy to deliver both things. And really make sure that you’ve got a robust measurement framework in place as well to be able to support that. I think that’s really important.
Fiona – 00:19:40:
And also, I guess, doing that on an ongoing basis. You touched on it there. I think we’ve seen this happen with some of our clients where people lose the belief under the crunch, when they’ve had a downturn and the instinct to cut brand budget kicks in. And they go to bottom of the funnel tactics. And then they’re the brands that when you come out of the downturn of all of a sudden realize they’ve lost a load of market share. The industry is littered with stories of when that’s happened. And you saw some brands that were very smart about some of the big CPGs that kept investing in brand building throughout COVID just took share from market and took off and grew their revenues throughout that time.
Claire – 00:20:18:
And I think that’s where having a really great media agency comes into play, right? So we work with Essence MediaCom and they were great thought leaders in serving up some of those data and insights, particularly in COVID. We were in discussions with our CEO and CFO about that as well. And they absolutely could see, well, wait a minute, this downturn in terms of COVID cost of living, there’s an opportunity here. So let’s keep investing. And that’s when we were investing through that period of time.
Fiona – 00:20:50:
Yeah, which is, I mean, an awesome place to be. Just wanted to ask a question around the shift towards differentiation for you. So what have been some of the key initiatives and changes in approach to enable that evolution from those bottom of the funnel tactics to stronger emphasis on brand differentiation?
Claire – 00:21:09:
Yeah, so again, I think there’s a few things here for me. So first of all, I think really getting organizational buy-in. I mean, everything that I’ve spoke about in terms of that framework in the last question, it was about bringing especially senior leadership across finance, commercial, marketing on that journey and really getting their belief in the methodology, asking them to be part of cross-functional teams to work through some of that data and what that output might be in terms of the longer term commercial opportunity there. Really aligning stakeholders in getting buy-in, I think is absolutely critical. And getting them involved as well in agreement around how you measure is really important so that you make sure that you set expectations correctly. Like, what can you expect to see by when? So I think that would probably be the first one for me. I think the second one is, if you’re going to invest in brand, you have to have a really good, clear brand proposition and identity and excellent proof points to support that as well. At Sainsbury’s Bank, I went through a huge piece of work to redefine the brand proposition because actually we didn’t really have a brand proposition because we’ve been off in at the lower funnel. It was all just about price. Working with the Made Sainsbury’s Bank was really important because we wanted to make sure that we’re part of the paint brand. We want to be really complimentary. But actually, fundamentally, we need to make sure that customers, this brand really appeals to them. So it was a very insight-led piece of work, again, involving it’s called the board, but also people across the organization and asking them, what do they think of the brand? What do they think customers want? Because ultimately, people on the ground, especially in our call centers, are closest to customers as well. So we developed a new brand proposition, new brand identity, did turf research to make sure that the proof points that we were going to launch with were going to have the greatest reach so that we could get the biggest banker back in terms of that media spend as well. And that, I think, fundamentally, again, really helped get the most out of the brand strategy and the brand investment. And then investing in brand-led media channels. So we shifted from bottom funnel to optimizing much more reach awareness channels. The one thing I would say that was probably our secret sauce was having Nectar360 Facebook page as essentially an in-house media agency for Sainsbury’s. We have at our disposal an opportunity to buy really brilliant space around stores, which is our key core target audience. So awareness driving channels like out of home, around store, as well as big awareness pieces within store as well. And we complemented that with Vogue and Radio and other awareness driving channels. So we got that full funnel mix, essentially. And I think it’s also as very, really important that you don’t have a brand message up here and a brand identity up here saying one thing and then your conversion or demand generation media saying something else. We made sure that we were complementary through our advertising tactics and through the funnel to make sure that everything really joined up.
Fiona – 00:24:40:
And that’s kind of also where having the strong measurement in place is critical, right? If you keep making the right decisions about, okay, that worked, we’ll keep putting money over there and making sure the mix is right.
Claire – 00:24:50:
Absolutely, absolutely. And we had led studies galore going on. As you can imagine, and all other points of measurement and attribution. And then the final thing I would say as well is embedding it across the organization and making colleagues or advocates of your brand. Don’t make it a one-off once and done. You launch the brand and then you forget about it. Embed it into the organization. Embed it into the operating rhythm. You talk about it constantly. I mean, we launched a brand ambassadors network. We had lots of brand training. And that was about actually how do you take the brand values and how can you implement them across your operating rhythms? So yes, celebrate the success and the big campaign. Have a fantastic launch, but keep it aligned and meet your colleagues, advocates of your brand. And that, I think, can be a real game changer.
Fiona – 00:25:45:
I was going to bring you all the way back to the beginning of our conversation. Claire, you talked about that sort of breaking down the silos within the business. Looking into the future, do you see the use of AI in marketing to be potentially an enabler of breaking down those organizational silos, like whether that’s enhancing data integration or cross-functional insights? Or do you think it could inadvertently create more silos or exacerbate the existing one? So what are your thoughts around leveraging AI to foster better collaboration and a better unified customer view?
Claire – 00:26:16:
Yeah, great question. And AI is on the tip of every single marketer’s tongue at the moment, isn’t it? Let’s face it. I think it’s really interesting that we’re talking about it within a philo perspective as well versus how can it have the power to actually implant organization. So I’ve got a couple of views on this. So I do think it has potential to be a really powerful enabler for organizations and breaking down organizational philos, right? I’ll talk to that in a second. But actually, if it’s not strategically implemented, I just think it could exacerbate in silos. I think it all comes down to the way in which you implement it. So I think the risks are that it could lead to data fragmentation. So if you can imagine, if you’ve got different things, you’ve got marketing over here doing one thing with an AI tool. If you’ve got finance over here doing something else and then product over here and none of them speak to each other. You’re just going to have data fragmentation and everybody is going to be working to different sources of the truth. And that is really challenging in terms of are you then making the right decisions about the right things and in the right way? Likewise, the same goes for AI providing insights as well. If teams don’t have a shared framework around interpretation. It’s just going to reinforce existing silos.
Fiona – 00:27:46:
And beliefs, biases as well. Yeah.
Claire – 00:27:48:
I was just about to say that, biases. So that’s a real challenge in AI, isn’t it? If it’s trained on limited data sets, then it may reinforce existing biases as well, rather than provide a holistic view of customer behavior. So I think they’re the kind of risks. But what I would say is, I think for the organisations that are going to nail this and we’re going to get it right, they’re probably going to have, I think, an essential team overall looking at AI and being the kind of super users, super thinkers of AI. And they, I think, should be the people that make sure that as an organisation, you invest in unified AI platforms. So you make sure that you’ve got a single source of the truth across departments. You embed AI into cross-functional decision-making. So you make sure that it informs across the piece, whether it’s customer experience, strategies, operations, finance. It’s that single source of the truth. And actually, it fundamentally facilitates collaboration. So collaboration in the sense of, I still think you need to have humans involved. I think humans augment, but make sure that it really facilitates that collaboration, streamlining processes, making it easier for colleagues to be freed up to work on the right things. So I think we still have to wait and see how this is going to play out a bit. But I think the organisations that will get it right will have that strategic lens on it. So it’s really important that we don’t end up in a cyber mentality around AI.
Fiona – 00:29:24:
And also, I mean, the fundamentals are still true. Like, even without AI, if you haven’t solved the problem having a single source of truth in your organization, then people are inherently going to be working off different versions of the truth and not talking to each other. So you lay AI on top of that and it inherently is going to exacerbate the problem rather than sort out the data layer underneath. And then AI can really accelerate what you’re doing and, to your point, drive that cross-collaboration because then everyone’s looking at the same information, which is incredibly powerful.
Claire – 00:29:56:
Absolutely.
Fiona – 00:29:57:
We’re almost out of time, Claire, but I do want to ask you a couple of closer questions around, like in your opinion, more sort of broadly about the role of marketing, what are some of the most important attributes of senior marketers for the future? How do you think that role is going to evolve in the coming years?
Claire – 00:30:13:
I think in terms of attributes, I personally don’t think it should evolve too much, I think, based on what I think the important attributes are. So I think you need to be curious, right? We just talked about AI. You have to be really open to learning, no matter what level you’re at in your career, right? This is all when you need to be curious, you need to want to learn. I think challenging yourself daily around that is really important. And then I think two other things I would say are embrace change. I have been through phenomenal change in my career. And every time I have learned new things from it, I’ve become a stronger person, a more resilient person. So really embrace change, don’t fight it. And I think just always try and stay emotionally intelligent. Make sure that you’re understanding where your team are and what’s working for them, what’s not working for them. That’ll help you be a better leader as well. So I think for me, they’re the most important attributes. And in the five years’ time, I think they’ll probably be saying the same things.
Fiona – 00:31:21:
Yeah. And we always ask this question for our viewers’ benefit as well, Claire. Being vulnerable for a minute, what are the things that you’re working on yourself to improve and to be a better marketer?
Claire – 00:31:30:
This is a great one. I think we spoke about AI there, right? I really want to deepen my experience in AI. I think I’m touching the surface at the moment. So I really want to deepen my experience in AI and predictive analytics in particular. And that’s back to the point about challenging myself and just being curious. I don’t know enough at the moment and I want to know more. And then I think the other thing for me is, believe it or not, pushing myself out of my comfort zone and really working on a bit more around public speaking, believe it or not. It’s something that I would really like to do more of. And the default sometimes is, oh, I’m too busy. I need to keep that time because I love having these types of conversations. It is a little bit of my comfort zone. So I want to push myself a bit more in that respect.
Fiona – 00:32:17:
Yeah. Practice makes perfect, Claire. You’ve got to keep doing it to get comfortable, I think. But I think we’ve come to the end of our time today, Claire. Thank you so much for joining us. It’s been a great chat. It’s wonderful to hear your thoughts on marketing. Thanks for coming.
Claire – 00:32:31:
I’ve loved it. Thank you very much.
Outro – 00:32:35:
We hope that you enjoyed this episode of Time for a Reset. Thanks for tuning in. We’ll be back talking to another senior marketer very soon. Make sure to leave a review and we’ll catch you next time.
