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Profile: Sir Charlie Mayfield, chairman of the John Lewis Partnership

On its 150th anniversary, the retailer talks about the 5% of customers that make up 50% of profits and the future of the partnership. “Customers are changing the way they live their lives in a fundamental way and technology is the primary driver of that. Retailers like us have to be extremely agile and adaptable in terms of changing our operating model,” says John Lewis Partnership chairman and former marketer Sir Charlie Mayfield, speaking exclusively to Marketing Week before giving the Marketing Society’s Annual Lecture last month (see Mayfield on marketing, below).While the John Lewis and Waitrose brands, which are part of the partnership, must adapt, Mayfield’s job is made harder by the fact that its high-value customers are constantly changing. In his lecture, Mayfield admits that 5 per cent of the partnership’s customers account for 50 per cent of sales, but the challenge is that this is not the same 5 per cent every year.Using data from its loyalty schemes my John Lewis and myWaitrose and its credit card, the Partnership Card is a focus and a way to help identify that 5 per cent. “It’s hugely important work we are doing across the partnership to enhance our capability, to support our divisional teams in terms of how they develop both their marketing and when they deploy marketing activity but, just as important, how we develop the strategy for the whole brand,” says Mayfield. The partnership claims to be making a sizeable investment in building that capability.Mayfield says: “We need to continue to adapt the partnership, John Lewis and Waitrose, to the changing world and I particularly want us to continue and push on in developing the role of partners within that. It’s about adapting the partnership at the pace that we have been and continuing to do that…
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Marketing the Disney way

As chief marketing officer at The Walt Disney Company EMEA and general manager for Disney Channels, Tricia Wilber is the ultimate multi-tasker, bringing the different strands of the business on to the same page, while responding to cultural change and not being afraid to take risks. Tricia Wilber has spent some of the day playing Disney’s new Infinity game on a big screen in her corner office overlooking west London. The game includes an all-star cast of Disney characters, including Pirates of the Caribbean’s Jack Sparrow, Buzz Lightyear from the Toy Story franchise and Mr and Mrs Incredible from the eponymous film.Players create a ‘toy box’, bringing their favourite characters together and letting them have their own adventures, as well as designing their own worlds they can then upload to a website for other users to play.The game itself is rather like Wilber’s job, which mixes genres and characters so that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. As chief marketing officer of The Walt Disney Company Europe, Middle East and Africa, an executive management role, the job covers four of five of the company’s divisions, including studios, TV channels, gaming and consumer products (see ‘How The Walt Disney Company divides up’, below[1])But Wilber is also general manager of Disney Channels in the region, responsible for 61 branded TV channels reaching 100 million households in 118 countries, and including shows such as A.N.T Farm, Art Attack and the recent film Teen Beach Movie.This means Wilber has to be an exceptional multi-tasker. It is the first time that a role including chief marketing officer, the channels and licensed products has been combined, she explains. “It is a really fun and exciting role that takes up a considerable amount of time but is also a great opportunity. It’s the…
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Information is power

Marketing and technology teams need to work together to optimise business success in a digital world but only one in 10 marketing and IT executives believe they have got it right. Those that have successfully collaborated tell how they forge strong links. Above: The Guardian is one of the few brands to have a chief digital officer role in addition to the chief marketing and IT functions. In its case, the remit is to push its ’digital-first’ policy across departments through training, and promote best practice across the company. Predictions of doom loom ominously over marketers when it comes to technology, with most suggesting that they are vastly under-prepared for the future. All marketing is now “inherently digital” according to Forrester Research, which adds that senior marketers risk getting left behind unless they “focus on how digital can deliver the brand experience in a more relevant and richer way”.Chief marketing officers (CMOs) will begin to outspend chief information officers (CIOs) on buying new technology as early as 2017, Gartner predicts. Although most marketers would claim to be in tune with the latest tech trends and prepared for what the future has in store, new research questions the extent to which they and their IT counterparts are working together effectively on their brands’ digital strategies. The study by Accenture highlights “a disconnect” between CMOs and CIOs that “threatens the ability of companies to deliver effective customer experiences”. It shows that only one in 10 marketing and IT executives believe collaboration between CMOs and CIOs is at the right level.One brand that has been forward thinking enough to tackle this head on two years ago is financial services firm IG Group, which combined the roles of CIO and CMO. Chief marketing officer Ali Hine believes the two departments can work together harmoniously…
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What’s your chief marketing officer really thinking?

Marketing Week delves inside the minds of CMOs and finds that understanding data, finding talent and being relevant to their jobs are their key concerns. Every piece of good news for marketing leaders is often tempered by bad news. The latest IBM Global C-suite Study, for example, shows that while chief marketing officers (CMOs) are playing an increasingly important role in devising their organisations’ overall business strategies, the majority also feel underprepared for the growth of social media and the explosion of ‘big data’.According to the survey of more than 4,000 global business leaders, 63 per cent of chief executives involve the CMO in developing the overall business strategy – second only to the chief financial officer (72 per cent).However, IBM also finds that “very few CMOs have implemented the key components of a digital strategy”, with just 16 per cent of marketing leaders saying that they have integrated customer touchpoints across physical and digital channels to ‘a large extent’.The findings are a reminder that while plenty of CMOs are thriving within their organisations and delivering growth, there are many others who are struggling to establish themselves and formulate effective strategies.This is a period of huge opportunity for CMOs, but it is also one with many challenges. To coincide with Marketing Week’s CMO 3.0 presentation at Advertising Week Europe[1] tomorrow (3 April), we caught up with CMOs across a range of brands to find out what they really think about their profession and the questions they are asking themselves about the future.Does the business understand the role of marketing?Brands still seem divided about the role of the CMO. Last month, for example, the Co-operative Group shocked the marketing fraternity by removing marketing director Gill Barr from the company’s executive board. The move is part of a wider management shake-up at…
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The future of food and drink marketing

As the National Obesity Forum issues a stark warning about the poor state of the UK’s health, some food and drink brands are adapting their marketing to encourage healthier lifestyle choices while remaining appealing the consumers. “Brands that make sugary and fatty foods are in danger of becoming the new tobacco companies,” warns Richard Cope, senior trends consultant at Mintel, referring to the stigma now associated with smoking and the tobacco industry that supports it. “Recommendations from scientists, nutritionists and governments are not going away,” he says. “The smart brands realise that ‘fat taxes’ are effectively coming.”The clamour for change in the food and drink industry has reached fever pitch. To coincide with the Government’s new ‘Change4Life’ marketing push, the National Obesity Forum warned in early January that a previous forecast that 50 per cent of the UK population will be obese by 2050 does not reflect “the true scale of the problem”. And this week, Channel 4’s Dispatches programme suggested that the food industry has increased the quantity of sugar in products, although the Food and Drink Federation says that sugar, when consumed as part of a balaned diet, does not cause obesity. The forum’s call for tougher action came days after a group of influential doctors demanded a cut in the sugar content of food and drinks of up to 30 per cent, warning that sugar is now as dangerous to health as tobacco and alcohol.Public health debates are commonplace in January as lobby groups target consumers obsessed with detox, diets and New Year’s resolutions. But the attacks on the food industry are also part of a longer-term trend rooted in rising concerns about obesity levels in developed economies around the world. Brands face the challenge of responding sensitively and responsibly while retaining their value to consumers.“At the…
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The future of food and drink marketing

As the National Obesity Forum issues a stark warning about the poor state of the UK’s health, some food and drink brands are adapting their marketing to encourage healthier lifestyle choices while remaining appealing the consumers. “Brands that make sugary and fatty foods are in danger of becoming the new tobacco companies,” warns Richard Cope, senior trends consultant at Mintel, referring to the stigma now associated with smoking and the tobacco industry that supports it. “Recommendations from scientists, nutritionists and governments are not going away,” he says. “The smart brands realise that ‘fat taxes’ are effectively coming.”The clamour for change in the food and drink industry has reached fever pitch. To coincide with the Government’s new ‘Change4Life’ marketing push, the National Obesity Forum warned in early January that a previous forecast that 50 per cent of the UK population will be obese by 2050 does not reflect “the true scale of the problem”. And this week, Channel 4’s Dispatches programme suggested that the food industry has increased the quantity of sugar in products, although the Food and Drink Federation says that sugar, when consumed as part of a balaned diet, does not cause obesity. The forum’s call for tougher action came days after a group of influential doctors demanded a cut in the sugar content of food and drinks of up to 30 per cent, warning that sugar is now as dangerous to health as tobacco and alcohol.Public health debates are commonplace in January as lobby groups target consumers obsessed with detox, diets and New Year’s resolutions. But the attacks on the food industry are also part of a longer-term trend rooted in rising concerns about obesity levels in developed economies around the world. Brands face the challenge of responding sensitively and responsibly while retaining their value to consumers.“At the…
Read more...
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