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Following last night’s Fellows Dinner with Nicola Horlick, CEO, Bramdean Asset Management our chief executive shares his first thoughts on how marketing can represent itself better to the City.
1. We need to distinguish between the views and attitudes of FD’s generally and “The City”. FD’s may often be responding to what they see as the short term demands of the City, but some people in the City do get the role of marketing and brands, and value it. Martin Deboo at Investec, whose job is to follow the publicly quoted top consumer companies like Unilever and Diageo, went so far as to say that the City is conducting an “irrational love-in with marketing”… Martin’s view may be a bit rosy because of the companies he studies, but I do know that Diageo are particularly good (and unusual) in both measuring and communicating the value and health of their of their brands both internally and to the City. They are a particularly good company for us to follow and hold up as an example of best practice to the rest of the City.
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Posted: January 27th, 2012 | Author: stuart.treasure | Filed under: Notes from the CEO, Talking Points, Uncategorized | Tags: Bramdean Asset Management, Fellows Dinner, Hugh Burkitt, marketing to the city, Nicola Horlick, the marketing society | 1 Comment »
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Notes from the CEO, by The Marketing Society’s Hugh Burkitt
The sight of John Lewis staff jumping into the air on hearing that they are to receive a bonus of 18% is a delightful good news story. But it’s not only the staff that should be jumping into the air. Every member of The Marketing Society should also jump – or at least raise some part of their anatomy – an eyebrow will do – to celebrate this good news story about marketing.
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Posted: March 11th, 2011 | Author: maddie.york | Filed under: Notes from the CEO | Tags: Hugh Burkitt, John Lewis, waitrose | 5 Comments »
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Notes from the CEO by The Marketing Society’s Hugh Burkitt
To a posh Advertising Association party at Unilever House last week. There an engaging young man called Ed Vaizey, Minister of Communication, Culture and the Creative Industries, told us that this government thinks that advertising is absolutely marvellous so long as you don’t spend any money on it.
This has a familiar ring. We will build expensive aircraft carriers, but we can’t afford any jets to put on them. (Incidentally has it occurred to anyone else that you could get a lot of deck chairs on an empty aircraft carrier, and noticing that in Green Park serious money is paid for sitting on government deck chairs, why don’t we anchor the carriers off Southend and solve the deficit in no time?)
Ed made a charming speech in which he made all sorts of flattering comments about the size, importance and quality of the UK advertising industry, but then made it clear that this government are complete Philistines when it comes to understanding what advertising can actually do.
Like many misguided company CEO’s before them, they think that they can simply save the money and the net result of not advertising is all pure profit to the bottom line.
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Posted: November 1st, 2010 | Author: Glen Dower | Filed under: Notes from the CEO | Tags: Advertising Association, CEO, Coalition Government, Ed Vaizey, Hugh Burkitt, Notes from the CEO, the marketing society | Leave a Comment »
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A strange thing happened to me last night for the first time in my life. I was asked to remove my tie. Not by an attractive lady, nor by a man from the St John’s Ambulance wishing to massage my heart, but by the chap on reception at an achingly trendy club on the edge of the City of London – Shoreditch House.
The experience was particularly odd because I don’t normally wear a tie during working hours, but had just come from a lunch at the RAC Club where, of course, ties are de rigueur.
The significance of being asked to remove my tie, was heightened because I was in Shoreditch House to listen to that distinguished marketing thinker, Mark Earls of Herdmeister fame, speaking at a Marketing Society digital dinner about connectedness and our compulsive habit of copying each other.
Mark observes that modern fads – like SuBo – happen with frightening speed, because we copy other people’s tastes. Mark also points out that digital communications, can lead to the fragmenting of our society into smaller groups.
But, I note that whatever tribe we belong to, we continue to find the visual signals we send to each other deeply and primitively important.
When groups of people are gathered together, fashions may be different between one age group and another and between one side of London and another, but the desire to conform to the norms of the group is strong, and the group itself clearly feels more comfortable if outsiders do not signal their strangeness.
Posted: August 19th, 2010 | Author: Glen Dower | Filed under: Notes from the CEO | Tags: CEO, Digital, Hugh Burkitt, Mark earls, the marketing society | Leave a Comment »
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I know that I’m a difficult customer, and I know that I don’t always give my own customers the service they deserve, but my experience in the last week of Avis, the car hire company, has been a sad reminder that advertising promises are not always delivered.
I am of the generation that remembers the famous ‘We’re number two, so we try harder’ campaign produced by DDB in the 1960s when Avis’s Chief Executive was a brilliant leader called Robert Townsend who wrote one of the best books on management ever, called ‘Up the Organisation’.
Renting a car from Avis at Cork Airport last week, I noted that they still have a ‘We try harder’ badge attached to their logo, but at the end of my renting experience I am left thinking that if Avis are trying harder to do anything at the moment, it is to make more money rather than serve their customers.
If you are still with me gentle reader, my gripe is as follows.
A helpful sign on the Avis desk in Cork Airport had told me when I rented the car, ‘Drop your key back here’.
Thinking to myself, “Ah! That’s a good simple system, I’ll do that,” two days later I returned the excellent Ford Focus which I had hired at the agreed time, parked it in the agreed place, having filled it up with the agreed diesel fuel………but unfortunately forgot to drop the key into the box and flew back with it to London.
The next day I called Avis and explained my plight. The bottom line was that they said they only had one spare key and couldn’t hire that car out again to anyone until I returned my car key. By now it was Friday morning and a courier company very helpfully offered to return the key for £300. The Royal Mail, rather more helpfully, offered to return it and track it for £6.20. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: July 29th, 2010 | Author: will.armstrong | Filed under: Market Leader, Notes from the CEO, leadership | Tags: Avis, Hugh Burkitt, Robert Townsend, the marketing society | Leave a Comment »
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Business leaders are much in the news at the moment – mostly for the wrong reasons. Shareholders think they are paid too much. Their workers are striking because they think they are paid too little. The entire population of the United States hates them personally for being responsible for one of the greatest environmental disasters ever. It all makes being a football manager in the World Cup seem relatively straightforward.
Watching Tony Hayward being made to squirm publicly in front of a US Congressional hearing at least demonstrates why top CEO’s deserve to be highly paid. Most of us would pay quite a lot of money not to become the US people’s public enemy number one.
Writing in the Telegraph Mark Borkowski (a “PR Expert”) pronounced that Tony Hayward of BP had “the communication skills of a tax inspector; dry and arrogant. It’s incredible that one of the most important corporate jobs in the world has been entrusted to him.” Hmm, well it may be incredible if you are PR man, but having watched a number of our great business leaders talk over the last seven years, I am tempted to say that there may well be an inverse relationship between speaking skills and success. The more boring you are, the more likely you are to be relentlessly successful in a big organisation. Being funny may be a real mistake. Who can forget the cost of Gerald Ratner’s little joke at an IOD Conference? It destroyed his brand and his business overnight.
But the media need to have heroes and villains to help personalise companies that are often hard to understand and relate to from outside. The result is that CEO’s probably get both blamed too much and praised too much in the media for what they do. A recent Harvard Business Review report which objectively reviewed the financial performance of 2000 CEO’s over their entire length of time in office found there was very little correlation between visibility and success. From a shareholders point of view it may well be that the quieter they are the better.
But there are times when all leaders need to lead from the front and stand up and look and sound like leaders. And we have assembled a brilliant list of inspirational leaders for you to draw strength from on November 18 at our Annual Conference.
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Posted: June 22nd, 2010 | Author: will.armstrong | Filed under: Leadership Central, Notes from the CEO | Tags: Annual Conference, business leaders, CEO, Hugh Burkitt, leadership, the marketing society, Tony Hayward | Leave a Comment »
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Sir Terry Leahy has been an outstanding leader of Tesco, and was voted by The Marketing Society our ‘Greatest Brand Builder’ of the past 50 years at our 50th Anniversary Awards last November.
It was typical of him that after receiving this accolade in front of an audience of 1500 senior marketers, and hearing an emotional tribute from Sir Frank Lowe, that he walked over to the Tesco table to say hello to his colleagues and his opening words were, “Sales weren’t very good yesterday”. Like all good retailers he is also obsessive.
He is a CEO that all marketers should be proud of. Having joined Tesco as a marketing assistant, he made a brilliant transition into general management, and has always kept his marketer’s understanding of customers and markets at the heart of all his decisions. He certainly adds weight to the theory that CEO’s from a marketing background add more shareholder value than those from any other discipline. Over 14 years he has achieved compound profit growth of 10% per annum – from £774m in 1997 to £3457m in 2010
I predict that Tesco will go from strength to strength after Sir Terry, which is perhaps the ultimate testament to him as a leader. The marketers I meet at Tesco are all intelligent, un-flash, hardworking and driven, just like Sir Terry. They don’t use a lot of marketing jargon. They just keep close to their customers.
Aside from their supermarkets, where Tesco use their Clubcard more effectively than any other retailer, Tesco also have a successful strategy in non-food, convenience stores, home delivery, international markets, online retailing, banking, and telecoms which leaves Asda and Sainsbury’s trailing in its wake. They don’t just talk about new ventures, they get on and do them. Anyone concerned with investing their pension fund at the moment (and for once I have taken my own advice) should back Tesco, because if any UK business survives and prospers in the next 50 years it will be them.
Posted: June 9th, 2010 | Author: hugh.burkitt | Filed under: Leadership Central, Notes from the CEO | Tags: 50 Anniversary Awards, Greatest Brand Builder, Sir Terry Leahy, tesco, the marketing society | Leave a Comment »
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I am sure we have all had quite enough politics in the last couple of weeks, so let’s get back to that other great English obsession – football.
JP Morgan Chase & Co has just produced a lengthy “quantified” report assuring us that England will win the World Cup. A curious PR stunt that will surely further undermine our belief in bankers, and remind us that most business plans are full of spurious quantification.
Everyone knows that English footballers always arrive at the World Cup a) knackered at the end of a long season b) distracted by their publicity hungry WAGS c) carrying long term injuries and d) so hyped up by national expectations that normally dependable footballers are sure to whack their crucial penalty into Row Z, oh and e) we never practice penalties anyway.
This week I observe that the press pack have already turned on our previously highly rated national manager, Fabio Capello, partly to manage our national expectations, but also to start building the bonfire around the stake so that we can all give him a good roasting when England fails to lift the trophy.
In a different part of the football forest, last week I joined the Fulham faithful for a memorable trip to Hamburg for the final of the Europa Cup against Atletico Madrid. We played to perfection the classic British role of gallant loser – by conceding a goal three minutes from the end of extra time. As we trudged back to our convoy of buses to be airlifted out of enemy territory as fast as possible, the only good news I could reflect on was that we didn’t lose on penalties. And for the rest of time I can continue to kid myself that five crafty Fulham players might just have performed better than an equivalent bunch of nervy Spaniards. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: May 20th, 2010 | Author: hugh.burkitt | Filed under: Leadership Central, Notes from the CEO | Tags: Hugh Burkitt, leadership, team work, the marketing society | 9 Comments »
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Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive but to be a Cameronista was very heaven.
I have to admit to feeling quite excited by our new PM’s beautifully delivered speech as he stood -once again noteless – outside 10 Downing Street. So despite all my darker urges to dislike him because he is a) nauseatingly young and b) a smarmy Etonian git, I feel pleased – and perhaps relieved- to see a clearly bright and eager new man in charge.
From a communications point of view I found the use by both parties of silent and adoring wives curiously old fashioned. But it is an important part of the Conservative family values pitch, and it plays well with Mail and Telegraph readers. Gordon Brown, certainly seemed more attractive as one watched his two small sons skipping beside him out of Downing street, though I don’t think his sons earlier exposure would have made much difference to the election result.
What can marketers take out of all of this political upheaval? Intention to buy research should always be treated with caution and here it overstated the surge in Liberal support. But the polls may have been caught by a collapse in enthusiasm for the Liberals right on the finishing line.
In any event old brand loyalties re-asserted themselves and Labour support turned out -even in Rochdale -to be more resilient than expected.
Going forward, one wonders quite what will happen to the Liberal and Conservative brands now. Will they be equally loved or disliked for their role in this next tricky phase of government? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: May 12th, 2010 | Author: hugh.burkitt | Filed under: Leadership Central, Nice to Know, Notes from the CEO, Uncategorized | | Leave a Comment »
