United Kingdom
An experienced Chief Marketing Officer and Marketing Director with a track record in creating value and delivering profitable growth through highly effective brand, customer, marketing and digital strategies. Driven and energised by delivering superior financial performance and strong customer results. Highly commercial, with a data-driven and insight-led approach to developing and implementing growth strategies; focused on creating culture and capability which equips, enables and empowers high performance teams - making businesses a great place to work. Extensive knowledge and experience of financial and service sectors, including multi-product, multi-channel distribution models, with a passion for transforming, growing and scaling digital channels, e-commerce businesses and digital brands. Marketing Director, Chief Marketing Officer and Board level experience with in depth knowledge of brand strategy, marketing planning, customer experience, customer insight, proposition development, marketing communications, ESG, e-commerce, digital marketing, marketing technology, agency relationships and business transformation - across business-to-business and business-to-consumer. Experience includes PLCs, mutuals, membership and privately owned businesses, leading go to market strategies for companies with profits from £5m to £500m.
Chief Marketing Officer for the Skipton Group: we exist to help people have a home and make their money work harder. With over 18,000 colleagues in 1,200 locations and more than a million members, we offer financial advice, mortgages and savings. We are also home to the UK’s largest estate agency, helping one in ten individuals buy and sell their homes. Reporting to the Group CEO and part of the Group Executive Committee, accountabilities include brand strategy, public relations, marketing communications, digital marketing, customer management and championing the voice of our members. B2C and B2B.
Marketing Director for the UK’s largest online mortgage broker with 1,000+ colleagues, generating £15billion of mortgage lending and helping 80,000+ customers buy and own their own homes each year; accountability for brand proposition, marketing communications, digital marketing, public relations, customer journeys, product management, and commercial partnerships. Reported to the CEO. Key Achievements: Created a vision, strategy and plan that built brand equity, improved marketing effectiveness, transformed digital visibility and enhanced customer journeys: increased year-on-year market share by 20%, enabling a record £15m profit increase. Developed a clear and compelling brand proposition based on market insight, competitor analysis and extensive customer research achieving a best-in-class 20% increases in Brand Awareness and Consideration amongst key target audiences; increased brand reach, appeal and impact, enabling a 30% increase in revenue. Employed a data driven approach, transforming the commercial effectiveness of marketing campaigns (SEO, PPC and Affiliates), driving customer acquisition, increasing customer value and generating £50m revenue; doubled Return On Advertising Spend. Transformed digital performance capturing a 20% increase in category share of search traffic and increasing the online conversion rate by 50%, generating £12m of incremental revenue; independently benchmarked as the market-leading brand for digital performance versus ten category competitors.
Marketing Director for Co-op Life Planning & Legal Services (the UK's leading provider of funerals, funeral plans and probate services with 4,000 colleagues in over 1,000 locations nationwide); member of the executive team with accountability for brand proposition, marketing strategy, customer experience, marketing communications, customer propositions, e-commerce, digital transformation and internal communications. Reported to the business CEO and Group CMO. Key Achievements: Created a clear brand proposition that secured category-leading brand awareness with record levels of consideration (20% increase), shifting customer perception of the Co-op brand, overtaking competitors on all major brand attributes and supporting market share growth in key target markets. Delivered the go-to-market strategy driving a 33% increase in profit. Utilised data and insight to create a highly effective marketing communications strategy, plans and campaigns (full mix: TV, radio, press, OOH, POS and digital); optimised £15m budget and increased Return On Advertising Spend by 25%. Generated a record £35m per annum product sales through ecommerce, leading a highly effective digital media strategy (SEO, PPC, Display, Social and Affiliates); delivered improvements in visibility, traffic, acquisition, conversion and profit. Achieved market-leading share of search traffic (40% increase). Developed, launched and scaled a new ecommerce and telephony based customer proposition that enabled Co-op to enter a new market, establish category leadership and generate £15m per annum of new revenue.
Head of Brand, Marketing & E-commerce, Yorkshire Building Society (the UK’s 2nd largest building society with 3.4m members and £40bn of assets); accountabilities include the Group’s brand strategy and proposition; marketing communications programmes; digital transformation and the e-commerce channel. Remit includes b2b and b2c brands. Key Achievements: Created a clear brand proposition and purpose for the Group’s business-to-consumer and business-to-business brands, including a full rebrand; increased brand awareness by 40% achieving highest levels of awareness relative to marketing spend of any major UK bank / building society. Delivered the go-to-market strategy that enabled a 30% annual average growth in profits to £180m. Sponsored a £20m omni-channel investment programme transforming digital capability and turning YBS into a £2bn per annum online residential mortgage lender, ranked 3rd in the UK; increased customer satisfaction by 50% and improved online path to purchase conversion rate by 40%. Delivered multi-channel marketing communications (full mix: TV, radio, print, digital, OOH, POS & sponsorships) achieving top decile cost to acquire relative to major UK banks / building societies, generating £1.6bn of mortgage and £750m of savings business per annum.
Head of Marketing & Ecommerce, Yorkshire Building Society (the UK’s 2nd largest building society with 3.4m members and £40bn of assets); accountabilities included customer insight, market research, proposition development and marketing communications.
Responsible for all aspects of marketing insurance to Barclays' Premier Customers with P&L accountability. Led the brand, customer, marketing and channel strategy; doubled customer acquisition rates, achieved sales growth for 12 consecutive months and returned a loss-making business to profit.
Accountable for all aspects of marketing to Barclays' 500,000 small business customers; created a distinctive proposition driving category-leading share of the critical start-up segment and switcher markets.
Responsible for leading the development of Barclays' business strategy in the mid-corporate business sector.