← Uncensored CMO
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- [00:07]
John Evans
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Uncensored cmo. And in this episode, we have a returning guest, the absolutely wonderful Jess Myers, who is the chief customer officer at the very group. Now, I interviewed her last year. She'd recently taken over the role. She was cmo and this year she's now chief customer officer, having been promoted and overseen her last year of introducing the fabulous Flamingos, their new fluent device and doing something that surprised a few people. She ran the same Christmas ad two years in a row. I found out why she did that and the amazing results it's led to and also how they've extended into retail media and also introduced lots of new initiatives that have made very absolutely fantastic this year. So without further ado, let's get into it. Here's my conversation with Jess. So Jess Myers is returning to Uncensored cmo. Welcome back, Jess.
- [00:51]
Jess Myers
Oh, John, thank you so much. It's an absolute pleasure to have been invited back for a second time. And I think it's almost a year ago we spoke last time and what a year it's been.
- [00:59]
John Evans
Well, what a year it's been and we're going to get into that year. But I have to first of all compliment you on winning whatever competition is going for best merch. Right, because tell me about your top, because this isn't just any top, is it? This is an exclusive new top you're sporting.
- [01:13]
Jess Myers
Well, this has been created especially for the Uncensored CMO podcast today. Being a challenger brand, of course, we're always testing things. This is a test making its debut. As I was thinking about getting ready to come on today, I spoke to the team. Right. You need to get organized, think about the great things you want to talk about because there's so many. But first of all, I obviously need to be wearing the brand and coming in a flamingo jumper. We only had a children's flamingo jumper on sale at very and so this was custom made by our friends at the gate ready for today. So let's make it sparkle.
- [01:41]
John Evans
Let's make it sparkle. So bets on this appearing next year. Hot on the Christmas trending list.
- [01:48]
Jess Myers
Keep your beady flamingo eye on what's coming up. There's a great path ahead of us and who knows what other merchandise will be available for sale on very soon. Absolutely.
- [01:56]
John Evans
I realize anyone watching this on YouTube will get amazing image right now of the Flamingos here. So anyone who's listening, we've got a beautiful setup of Flamingos here and we'll introduce them in a minute because They've all got their own names and story and everything else like that. But what I thought would be lovely is just to connect back to the year ago and bring people on the journey of what's happened in the past year. One of the bits of a conversation absolutely loved was how you approached joining very as well. And you talked to me about your 90 day plan and I even remember the five things you said as well because you talked about engaging the organization and talking about the biggest challenges, biggest opportunities. You had lovely phrases. What's precious that shouldn't be broken, how can our teams work together and what you do if you were me. So you had a lovely approach to your start, didn't you? And how you engaged the business I thought was absolutely wonderful and very inspiring. So how's that, how's it gone since that you know, awesome start that you had?
- [02:41]
Jess Myers
Well, it's amazing. So I've had this incredible two year journey at very and it's been just such a joy to be part of the business. You know, two years ago was when I first joined retail and before that as we talked about, I worked in financial services. So a big part of my induction plan was getting to understand retail and be a retailer. Two years on there's still a lot to learn but we've definitely made some incredible progress. So if I look back over the last year, the things that I feel most proud of that the team absolutely smashed it on. So first of all, we've had a year of Flamingo consistency. We launched last November with our let's make it sparkle platform and we've had a year of consistency. When it's come to delivering the advertising, we've launched the House of Flamingo which is our fashion platform. We should definitely talk about that because that's absolutely fabulous. About eight months ago I got promoted. So I'm now.
- [03:24]
John Evans
Congratulations.
- [03:24]
Jess Myers
Thank you very much. Thank you. So I'm now the chief customer officer at various. I sit on the executive team for the business and it's just such an honor to be able to represent our customer and our colleagues at that senior table. So my role now looks after all marketing and all creative like it did before. I also look after all of E commerce, digital product, customer experience, data insight and analytics. So from a marketer, this is like the marketer's dream because you've got all the toys in the in, you know, and the tools and the toolkits will bring lots of things together. And one of the great things we're able to do when bringing all those tools Together was launch the very media group, which is our retail media proposition, and that launched in September. And as well as all of that, we have added a new partner into our flock or into our flamboyance. A collection of flamingos is called a flamboyance.
- [04:09]
John Evans
Now, I didn't know that. That sounds like not nameless.
- [04:13]
Jess Myers
Did you make that up? No, I didn't.
- [04:15]
John Evans
So flamboyance.
- [04:16]
Jess Myers
Flaming. Flaming.
- [04:17]
John Evans
Flock of flamingos is flamboyant.
- [04:19]
Jess Myers
Flock of flamingos is called a flamboyance. Say that quickly. So we welcomed in Zenith, who are our new media partner and we've done some incredible work with them since they've come on board. So, you know, what a year.
- [04:29]
John Evans
Yeah. Amazing. Well, congratulations on the new role. Maybe let's start there because I'd love to find out how that's gone. So what does that provide in terms of challenge for you as an individual in your leadership and approach? What challenges that given you in terms of stepping up into a broader role in the organization?
- [04:43]
Jess Myers
I think there's a few things in there, isn't there? There's the getting to grips with a new role, there's the role you then play as being an executive leader in the business and then how you bring all of those things together to deliver on the objectives of the organization. So for me, you know, I've spent my entire career working, working in the marketing area, but I was taking on board the E Commerce, the data part. But really as a marketer, your skills are so broad that actually in your role every single day, you already work with all of these teams. You know, the leadership part is about how do you understand it enough to work out how to bring the teams together, to collaborate really well, to really push boundaries and work really effectively. And so learning all of that and bringing that together has been fantastic and it's definitely unlocked some brilliant things for us, not only in things like launching the very media group, but also in the way we've approached trading this year during the Christmas period. So lots of opportunity sitting in there. The second bit then is going to be the role that I play sitting on the executive team. As an executive team, how do we help support our colleagues? How do we create vision and deliver on strategy? How do we inspire, coach and delight and how do we help move the organization forward? And for me in particular, how do I be the voice of the customer across that table? Because the hat I wear is part commercial and part deep customer experience. And if you start to think about that value creation zone, it's how do you deliver brilliantly for the company and how do you deliver brilliantly for customer? And that's my job to be able to do that. So it's been, you know, it's been an incredible journey and I'm really fortunate to have a brilliant boss and great peers. So, you know, it's been a ride.
- [06:16]
John Evans
Oh, big shout out, big shout out. There we go. That's brilliant. I remember when I think when I first kind of got a role in exec as a marketer, it can be quite a big change because suddenly you're no longer just talking about marketing things, you're talking about more broad business things. And your colleagues come from very different backgrounds, operational background or finance or sales. And it's a very different environment. Any kind of advice on how marketers thrive in that kind of executive role?
- [06:41]
Jess Myers
When you sort of start progressing through the marketing role, you start to get to the next senior role. I want to get the next level, the next level, the next level. And you start to think you get to the top of an eye. But actually what you're after is T shaped leadership. So a marketer's role is to understand the role they play to galvanize the organization and drive the business forward. And what does your role need to do to help improve and influence and meet the objectives of all of your peers across the business? Because the market needs to understand how does the business make money? What does risk management look like? How do we work the financial team, how do we work the distribution team? You know, as few, a few of many. And so you know, the role is about how you can connect all that together. And it gets back to the first 90 days. Again you, you go, I went round again. I knew these people already. But the question was, how do we need to work together? How can we make our teams, help our teams work together better? What are our collective objectives as an executive team and how do we move forward together? So as marketers, as I say, you would progress throughout your career. Continue to be curious, understand how the organization works. Once you get to the top of the ice. If you say be it actually you then are faced with a T. Yeah, The T is about how you get the harness the organization.
- [07:45]
John Evans
Because I've always think marketers should in theory make brilliant exec members because like to make anything happen, you have to understand the customer and you have to understand how the organization works and how things get done. And actually I think marketers, marketing is one of those roles that does connect the whole business, doesn't it, in a way that Maybe some other functional roles don't. So you've got that amazing ability to kind of connect things up for people.
- [08:06]
Jess Myers
You've got, you've got an amazingly broad skill set in marketers you'll have. You know, we always talk about marketing, about being art and science and art is not just the creative work and science is not just the data work. There's, you know, there's a mixture of both in there and marketers roles really do need to bring that together. If that is around inspiring and galvanizing an organization behind a unified brand purpose, that's one thing. If it's about how to make customer led decisions, that's another part. If it's about how to balance the commercial nature of the business. And actually you know, there needs to be balance between the two of them because if you're doing the perfect thing for the customer that might not meet the needs of the business. So actually how you balance those with data and insight, influencing people, bringing people on the journey with you and making sure that the marketing is just a, is a vehicle to accelerate growth. You know, there's a lot of skill set required in that which is why properly you draw the conclusion that CMOs make very good CEOs.
- [08:54]
John Evans
Well, I think so. Not enough of them there. So like we're rooting for them because I think they should be great CEOs. And I think you've probably provided the best articulation of a customer audience I think I've ever heard. When we chatted last time about Hun culture is absolutely amazing. And you also mentioned there as well, you know, your job being to represent the customer in the exec team where kind of decisions get made. How's the Hun culture? What's happened to Han culture in the last year?
- [09:20]
Jess Myers
It seems to be the topic we started talking about Hun culture and then ITV came out with an entire Hun culture survey and suddenly the Huns are everywhere. But they were always there. They've just been called a, you know, an audience. So the Huns were brilliant. So let's, it's probably worth talking back. You know we covered this in the last conversation. So I guess insert link here. I won't go over too much of it again but we started talking about, you know, the brand and the role we're going to need to play. You know, it's. This started really from the roots of the organization and who we are. So our purpose is to help our families give, get more out of life. So we wanted to give more some meaning and more for us, it all boiled down to, you know, quite simply there's good and there's very good and so very good. There's a, you know, there's a vibrancy to it, there's a vitality to it. There is, especially at Christmas, there's a glitter to it, there's a sparkle. And that sparkle is that moment when the customer finds that absolutely perfect item that they're looking for. And that's not necessarily for themself, that's for other people. And that calls to the heart of our customer and our Hun. So we've taken a enterprise value led piece of segmentation. So the science bit. So where, who are our most valuable customers? Exactly? What do they look like? Where do they shop? How much of their wallet do we have? Where else are they shopping? All the demographic information, we overlaid an attitudinal segmentation to it to understand hopes and dreams and wants and fears and kind of exactly how do our customers behave? And there's a real nuance to our customers that we could capture an essence known as our own. You know, this customer is incredibly hard working. She works hard in her job, she works hard when she's looking after the family. She's incredibly generous. Christmas is her time, right? She is out there in her best dress, she is hosting for the family. She's absolutely bossing it around the Christmas table and with her decorations, she's thinking about gifting and thinking about being generous, generous, you know, and she's had a quite challenging, challenging time and she's definitely experiencing the cost of living crisis. And so our customers have, and I know you loved this last time, a glittery resistance.
- [11:24]
John Evans
That's brilliant. That's so good, isn't it?
- [11:26]
Jess Myers
A glitter resistance which is a core sparkle. So when you start to think about that customer and you start to think about Huns, Hun culture speaks to it perfectly. So that's when we said, well, there's very good, there's Hun culture, that's sparkle. And that's where the let's make it sparkle platform came about. And we refer to Veri and our customers as flamingos in a flock of pigeons. So this is where the flamingos came from. So Kerry, Cherry and Terry were born as our flood amigos. And I guess they were, they fly and the, you know, the rest is history.
- [11:57]
John Evans
They do, don't they? And they're impossible to miss as well, which is lovely. And they just bring joy, don't they? I mean, that's the other thing is it's Just as you describe the audience. I'm smiling just listening to you because you can imagine them and imagine the joy that this kind of thing you.
- [12:11]
Jess Myers
Don'T smile about when you see a pink flamingo.
- [12:13]
John Evans
Yeah, it's just so. It's just such a beautiful sight, isn't it? And just say, it's so warming. And also, pink is just. Is a lovely color as well, and it just, you know, stands out as you. I mean, you describe this as sea of sameness.
- [12:25]
Jess Myers
It will not be lost on you that pink is also one of our distinctive assets. Our pink and our pink cube, the flamingos. Coming together, we have some brilliant tools.
- [12:34]
John Evans
It was born to be this way, wasn't it?
- [12:35]
Jess Myers
It was born to be this way.
- [12:37]
John Evans
Now we're. We're having this conversation in. As you taught me a new word, by the way, the Golden Quarter. I hadn't heard that before I had the conversation with you. But how important? I mean, I'm guessing it's very important, but how important is Christmas to very. Or to retailers in.
- [12:49]
Jess Myers
It's incredibly important to all of us. You know, when you speak to retailers, you'll probably find most of them will say that the 10 weeks leading into Christmas is when they'll do 40 to 50% of all. All of their sales. So it's an incredibly competitive time. We spend the entire year getting ready for it. I would say that retailer Christmas advertising is our version of the Super Bowl. Right. A lot of money gets spent on it or invested into it because there's a lot of money to be made at this time and a lot of needs for our customers to. To be met. So we spend a lot of time agonizing over kind of the Golden Quarter and getting ready for it. And for us and for most of our competitors, I'm sure there are multiple moments in there as the customers are getting ready to think about kind of this festive period. It all kicks off in early November or even in October this year.
- [13:37]
John Evans
It was early.
- [13:37]
Jess Myers
It was early this year. It's been incredibly. Black Friday has been an incredible.
- [13:41]
John Evans
Black Friday threw us. No one knew when it was. I don't know what you would have done. I know, but. But most people are like, when is it? Because in America, I discovered it's the day after Thanksgiving. So in America, everyone's like, of course it's just that day. But Thanksgiving moves around. You know, I didn't realize this either. So it meant that our Black Friday depends on when Thanksgiving is in America. And that was very late this year. But so I was talking to Sophie Neary and she was at Google and she was saying Fake Friday got like 80% of the sales of actual Black Friday with the one before.
- [14:12]
Jess Myers
Yeah. And I think Sophie would have said, and we work really closely with Sophie and her team. You have got, got to be ready. Your plans have got to be formed. And you know, we were talking about this before we came on camera, you know. Yes, we spend the entire year getting ready for it. Yes, the plans have been well laid. But yes, it's a digital business. Do we agonize over those numbers every single morning and change our plan accordingly? And Black Friday has been Black November. It's actually started in October. It's 29th of November is when it, when it was this year. It was, you know, the first. The last time we had that shape was 2019. So you then try to compare year on year 24 versus 2019. Yes, there's fake Friday sitting in there as well. You've got to kind of continue to follow, follow the shape. You then have the last payday for most people for Christmas happen the, the final Thursday, the night before Black Friday. So obviously in Black Friday, it all goes off. But it's not over, John. It's not over at all because we're now going right into the Christmas gifting. We've had cyber week this week. We're now into Christmas. We've now got, what, two and a bit weeks left until the big day at very customers can order on the 23rd and it be delivered for the 24th. So it is still all to play for. And, you know, it would be remiss of me to say that, you know, it's never one team or one person in a retail business who gets, gets this going. Everyone's acquired. Yes, the advertising plays a point, but, you know, it's the four P's, the product's gonna be there, price, place, promotion. The whole team needs to work together. And you'll find no more collaborative time in a business, especially in retail, as we get ready for this important point. But we should definitely talk about the, the creative because as you would have noticed year on year.
- [15:46]
John Evans
I know.
- [15:47]
Jess Myers
Some consistency you have.
- [15:48]
John Evans
I know. And congratulations. You know, I want to find out maybe a bit of the background to, you know, to why, I mean, you know, from a system one point of view, I'd go, fantastic, well played. You know, because, you know, we know from the data that consistency actually leads to kind of compound effects that actually creative gets better the more people see it. But at Christmas, the tradition is actually Most retailers or most advertisers in general will change their creative. So what led to you to decide to keep with the existing creative that you came out with last year?
- [16:15]
Jess Myers
You know, it's really funny and I was quite surprised that when we launched it or relaunched the advert this year, I had a lot of people come up to me and say, well, that's brave, Jess, running the same advert again, which was taken aback out because actually it wasn't the brave decision, it was the smart decision decision. And I'll tell you why. You know I mentioned Christmas is our super bowl, right. So we, this, this journey started for us way back when we relaunched the brand and actually it's the first time we talked to System One and I'm going to give you a lot of System 1 plugs here because I really believe in your, in your methodology. We're going to invest a lot of the company's money to drive great sales and customer behavior over this period in the short term and also in the long term as well. Why on earth would you launch an advert and a big platform without testing it first? It just baffles me as to how that happens. So we ran the script through System One methodology. We had some really great feedback. We created the ad, we sent it live and last year we had a 4.7 star rating, which was brilliant for us launching it first. So the advert run, the campaign went through January, we come back and do the review again. And we found that From a System 1 testing perspective, we looked at our brand tracking, we looked at our conometrics, we looked at all of our customer lifetime value internal models and across all metrics, the work had absolutely smashed it. So as we started to think about going again this year, it was a data led reason. Why on earth would you not run the existing advert, but with optimizations? So speaking of optimizations, we wanted to make sure we were reaching more of our target customers this year, really driving effectiveness and efficiency. And so rather than having 60 and a 30 like we did last year, we wanted a 40 and a 20. So the first port of call, system one, we came back to the team and said, right, we'd like this to be a 40 second advert. Please run this through your system and tell us which were the most effective, efficient, joyful parts of the story that we can weave together. And that's what we did. So the 40 second advert you're seeing now has been optimized through system one data to make it the most efficient. And we went from a 4.7 to a 5.4 star rating.
- [18:19]
John Evans
You did. You did. Which is really good, isn't it? So. And presumably with the slightly shorter edit, that frees money up to buy more media. Does it give you more coverage?
- [18:27]
Jess Myers
It does. So We've got the 40 second advert out there. Brand advert. We've got a 20 second version of that brand advert as well, so that's been smashing it. So we obviously won System ones out of the week.
- [18:36]
John Evans
You did. Congratulations.
- [18:37]
Jess Myers
Second time in two years with the same advert. So I'm really proud of the team for that. We're in your top 10. You know, last year we also found ourselves In Kantar's top 10, second most persuasive ad of the week. The team just scooped an Effie for the campaign. The Silver Fe was one for the Christmas work last year as well, so we knew we were onto a winner with it. But as well as the brand adverts that you're seeing the gate on, our creator team have been incredibly clever with how they've used the really effective animation set as well. So we've also got three 20 second adverts that talk about gifting gifts for her, gifts for him, gifts for the kids, and if you look really closely, the, I'm about to say Eagle Eye, but the Flamingo Eyed of, you would notice that we have used the animation sets from different adverts. So Black Friday toys, a bit of Berrypay have all been Christmased up and we've got those back out again. So that's really showcasing how the team optimizing the creative work, focusing on consistency throughout the year. And as well as all that brilliant advertising for Christmas, we have got a ton of newness that's been launched this year as well. So it's never been more.
- [19:38]
John Evans
It's true, because people kind of think consistency means it's boring or it's not fresh or it's not new. But actually when you've got a consistent idea as powerful as yours, you can play with it. And the point is people recognize it and they feel that familiarity with it and that's what makes it so powerful. So the fact that you went from 4.6 to 5.4 without, well, changing the edit, but not a great deal about the creative just shows that actually consumers love it even more this year than last year.
- [20:02]
Jess Myers
I think it's sometimes lost on me as to why, you know, why do marketers not do this more often?
- [20:07]
John Evans
Good question.
- [20:07]
Jess Myers
Why do they not think about. I think it's your Andrew Tindall who said this. You've got to start with a cracking idea. Right. The compounding effect of consistency doesn't work unless you start with a really strong idea. We had a really strong idea and therefore we said, well, how do we optimize this and make it work even harder? I think I've just drawn the conclusion that there might be a few egos kicking around in the marketing industry and we seem to think we need a new advert every single year. But we know that great creative wears in, it doesn't wear out and actually the smart choice is to optimize what you have and get out. You don't always need a new advert.
- [20:41]
John Evans
Yeah, I mean it's funny, you're right about the feedback on being brave. I mean, weirdly, that was my response as well because it is counter our culture. I think maybe it's because we have annual planning cycles and we have annual budgeting. Therefore we go, oh, next year we're going to make a new thing to replace the old thing. We don't stop and think, well, if the old thing works really well, why not do that?
- [20:58]
Jess Myers
Why don't you take that production budget and either get it out into more channels or even optimize it further into media and get more of your target customer cycles on it.
- [21:05]
John Evans
Exactly. That makes a lot of sense. Now the other thing I did as well, we're slightly guilty, I have to say at System one of talking a lot about Star, which is long term brand building potential, of course, but in the golden quarter, Spike matters a lot, which is our short term sales potential and fluency. Because one of the things you've done brilliantly by creating the flamingoes is create something that people can see that it's you and it's undeniably. I mean the thing is, whenever I'm at home and I'm watching the Christmas ads, I know when you're on, you know, it's impossible to miss because it brought pink and flamingos everywhere and all the rest of it. So which is great. So we cut the data slightly differently this year as well to look at the top 10. Well, we looked all the ads but top 10 ads based on short term and fluency combined. We sort of did this grid which was fascinating and you came out fifth in that list as well. So what was interesting is we had, I mean the rundown of the list would be Audi was top with Kevin. That's like seven or eight years of investment Coke with their AI version of their trucks, the AI version The AI version that surprised everybody, including me, because I was like, I had that down as a bit of a. Why would you do that? But actually, what I learned in that experience was the consumer doesn't care how you made it. Like, we got obsessed, go, oh, no, AI has messed up the Coke ad. They didn't care. They just loved the trucks and the jingle and all the elements of it.
- [22:19]
Jess Myers
It's the trucks and the jingle that's just so iconic, isn't it?
- [22:21]
John Evans
Oh, totally, yeah, yeah, exactly. And then Asda were the best performing new idea advertiser.
- [22:28]
Jess Myers
The gnomes.
- [22:29]
John Evans
Yes, exactly. So, again, in terms of hitting the ground running, it's interesting actually, the average star rating of a new. A new idea being launched about 3.8. So your 4.6 last year was very good in the context of someone doing something new, which is brilliant.
- [22:44]
Jess Myers
That's because we put it through the System1 database to begin with.
- [22:47]
John Evans
Secret source.
- [22:47]
Jess Myers
You'd already learned from it.
- [22:49]
John Evans
Exactly. Sainsbury's with their BFG ads did pretty well, you guys. Morrison's came back with a familiar oven glass. I love that. That felt a bit hung culture, actually. But it's just the joy in everyday things. And they managed to spot a Christmas thing with the gloves. I don't think no one else has spotted and turned it into. It was more musical and theatrical this year that in fact, they actually.
- [23:10]
Jess Myers
They used the Bugsy Malone, didn't they?
- [23:11]
John Evans
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was quite. It was. Was it Don't Stop Me now or Don't Stop believing.
- [23:15]
Jess Myers
Anyway.
- [23:17]
John Evans
Yeah. And then they went with a sort of theatrical one this year, which. Which kind of gave a bit more depth and joy to it, which is brilliant. They, in fact had, I think, almost exactly the same result as you as 4.9, he says, thinking up to about 5.5. So again, similar sort of, you know, step up with the idea as well. John Lewis did pretty well, actually. Best scores they've had for five years. Lidl Cadbury and then Coke's alternative Coke always do two ads. I mean, they've got big budgets. I think they always rerun holidays are coming with a bit of spare. Bit of spare media and then they still do a new thing change. I know, exactly. But I guess you'd be a bigger Simican. But anyway, the interesting point about all that was 7 out of 10 were consistent. Which just shows the power of. Which Exactly. You knew instinctively the power of kind of sticking with a good idea. So let's talk about the flamingos. I mean, you mentioned. We mentioned Them quite a lot. But, yeah, tell me how you're bringing. How are you using these flamingos? Because I think they're a really good example of what, you know, Orlando, my colleague, calls a fluent device. And you've created it in a short amount of time and they're already appearing everywhere. So how do you use these? Where do they turn up and where can I buy one as well?
- [24:19]
Jess Myers
Well, obviously you can buy them on berry.co.uk. you've got Kerry here. You know, she's really retail, retailing at 12.99. And Kerry is our fabulous and flamboyant Flamingo. And then you have Coral. Now, Coral made her debut in our October Toys campaign and she is the fun and mischievous one. So you've got two flamingos on the site right now. But, you know, we've spent an entire year building these fluent devices and intentionally so, you know, when the Gate created the creative platform for us, we had these distinctive assets. We spent the year getting, you know, getting them out there across all of our channels. So, you know, we. We started in Christmas last year. Then we had November with our Black Friday advert. Then we go into end of season sale. That runs us through to about January. So we're talking Flamingo Animated World sitting there. Then about February, March time, we launched our very pay advert, which talks about the flexible ways to pay for our customers. Again, another animated fluent option with the. With the flamingos in it. Then we came into sort of the May, June time when we launched the House of Flamingo. And I'd love to talk about that. So that was May, June time. Then we came back on with House of Flingo in September and that was the first time we'd been on TV with fashion in over seven years. That's exciting. October was our toys campaign, which was new, which is where Coral made her debut. And then we're back into Christmas again. So that's. That. That's a whole year. So I'm just talking sort of TV and kind of broadcast media here. But the flamingos have been embedded across everything that we do. So, you know, through our CRM channels, in the app, across the website experience. It's completely ingrained in collie culture. So the word flamazing is still very much part of who we are.
- [25:57]
John Evans
I think every other message I get from you has got. Well, probably every message has got flamazing embedded in somewhere and on LinkedIn as well.
- [26:03]
Jess Myers
You're flammazing or Flamingo failed?
- [26:05]
John Evans
No, no, honestly, it's either a set of Flamingos or flamazing or both.
- [26:08]
Jess Myers
But then we started to think about newness, especially at Christmas this year, to take example. So one of the, you know, one of the moves we made this year was to partner with Zenith. We. We welcome them into our flock, into our flamboyance. Flamboyance, yes, exactly. Into our flamboyance. You know, one of the really important things, join the flamboyan, making sure that our media and our creative is working really seamlessly together and building on each other. And just like our creator strategy, the media strategy is absolutely rooted in fame, fluency and feeling something else you'll be familiar with. One of the great things, one of the many great things I absolutely loved about Zenith was the part of their philosophy is about making bold moves. And we're a challenger. We love bold moves. We love to find growth, mindset, entrepreneurial spirit, dig in deep, innovation. So we love their bold moves. And one of the bold moves they came up with for us this year was a partnership that we have with itv. Now, at the time, you think it's a bold move and now I'm sitting here thinking, well, of course we did that, it's absolutely perfect. So the idea this year, it's currently running, we did a partnership with ITV where Alison Hammond, Queen of Huns herself, is the Very Godmother.
- [27:11]
John Evans
I love it.
- [27:12]
Jess Myers
Alison is helping our customers absolutely boss it at Christmas and sort out their Christmas dilemmas. So there's a 40 second ad and a 20 second ad had, you know, customers are calling into the. The Very Godmother and saying, you know, I've got 12 coming around for lunch. How am I going to do it? Well, you'll do it with the Ninja dual drawer air fryer. So. And the ad again brings the flamingos in. So it were brilliant at how they cut together, you know, footage of Alison, but also, you know, there's a point in the Abbot that says, you know, very flamingos have been spotted flying over the uk delivering, guessing, and the RV for more formation has come through. So that's the Alison Hammond working great to get our brands involved in that, that. We also, of course, had our plushie toys. So the flamingos are here. We're selling those on site now. Again, we're testing flamingo merch. Watch the space. I expect you'll see more of that coming through. And then we also launched this year our gift guide. So not a catalog, but it is a return to print for us. We wanted to find a new way to speak to our target customers who might not know who we are. So we partnered with the Mail Metro Media to create a an inspirational gift guide showing the depth and breadth of our department store. Of course the Flamingos are everywhere. You know, first order discount codes for our customers. Really great use of tech to be able to kind of scan over images and deep link straight into the site for the latest offers. You know, another really great way to kind of test all of that. And as you'll start hearing me talk about a lot of these ways we're getting the Flamingos out, you're also hearing me talk a lot about our brand partners and that's a really important point because as mentioned earlier, we launched the very media group this year and introducing our brand partners is a really fundamentally significant part of all of that.
- [28:43]
John Evans
Wow. No, tell me more about that because that's a big deal as well, isn't it? So you know, turning yourself into a basically media company. Am I right in saying you do, you can do everything from kind of creative production through to execution? Yeah. How does it all work?
- [28:54]
Jess Myers
So we've been doing retail media for a while actually you know, we're already experts in it. You know, we've been doing it for over 10 years. But what we wanted to do is reposition our retail media offering to make sure we are really kind of creating the uniqueness in our proposition and adding the value to our brands and our brand partners. What they're all after is awareness and consideration and that's a really big part of our plan too. So retail media is essentially the ability to be able to offer great service to your brand partners and hyper personalize target advertising to your customers whilst monetizing your assets. And so we've got a really unique proposition where we bring together our award winning creative platform plus our unique data set. You know We've got about 500 data points on every single customer and we bring those things together to create either highly bespoke targeted or broadcast advertising and campaign solutions for our, for our partners. So that is the use of our creative platform. So whether you're the user creative platform, our in house creative studio that we have but also access to our data targeting insight and measurement capability as well and that's what the brands are looking for. And really retail media is just another media option these days. You shouldn't be able to tell the difference between where it starts and stops. So you'll have seen retail media opportunities throughout all of our Christmas. So, so Christmas Black Friday. You'll see it in sale, the gift guide. We had over 60 different brands involved in the Gift Guide, the work we're doing with ITV and Alison Hammonds, all of these are very media opportunities that not only speak true to our brand, but also gives our brand partners great ways to tap into target customers.
- [30:27]
John Evans
I think retailers, particularly the last couple of years, seems to be waking up to the power of their reach. Because you talk to so many. I mean, how many people interact with you every day? It must be. We have about one point, hundreds of thousands. 1.8 million.
- [30:38]
Jess Myers
Yeah.
- [30:39]
John Evans
That's amazing. So the reach you have as a retailer that other brands could be benefiting from by partnering is enormous.
- [30:44]
Jess Myers
That's it. And it's not just the scale. What they also want is to speak to the target customer, specifically, you know, specific shopping behaviors, specific product needs, how we can speak to, you know, how we can connect the brand with that customer and how we can speak to the customer about the brand they're after. You know, there is serendipity in there about how we bring those things together.
- [31:05]
John Evans
Yeah. Now, you mentioned you dropped in House of Flamingo, which just sounds really intriguing, like it's a fashion house, but. Yeah. What's House of Flamingo?
- [31:13]
Jess Myers
So we always knew when we launched the let's Make It Sparkle platform and we introduced the animated Flamingo world, it worked absolutely brilliantly for us, but wasn't going to necessarily translate so easily into the world of fashion and fashion aesthetic. So we needed to create a platform that we could talk to fashion about. So we went back to the strategy, back to the purpose, and started to think about the distinctive assets. When you think about all the assets we have in there, you know, there really is this air of sort of Flamingo energy in what we do, as we want to capture that and bottle that. Then you start thinking about the customer and our customer. We know she has a passion for fashion. She's after aspirational yet affordable fashion. But, you know, her fashion choices, she finds it quite challenging. Her life has changed. She's now mother of two. She's juggling the needs of the family. She's not quite sure how to put the outfits together. You know, her body image and her body might have changed quite a lot and she might not know how to shop anymore. So we want to help her, you know, find confidence in fashion again. We want to help her unleash her inner Flamingo, of course. So that is how the House of Flamingo platform was born. It is a physical destination to. For all of our style, whether that is fashion, clothing, accessories, beauty products, for our customer to be able to come and interact with, with us. So it keeps the fluent devices coming through. So what you expect to see in the advertising is unapologetically pink, fabulous in every single way. Flamingo cues throughout. There is the flamingo pose that has been launched, which is now, we were.
- [32:46]
John Evans
Trying this out earlier. There will be a photo somewhere on LinkedIn there is a flamingo pose.
- [32:51]
Jess Myers
And actually for the last, last piece of work we did, the last TV advert we did, we had two real flamingos walking around the gardens of a country manor. So that was our September autumn fashion moment. And again, System one tested this for us. This is the first time We've been on TV with fashion for over seven years.
- [33:05]
John Evans
Wow.
- [33:06]
Jess Myers
Now Nat Rep 2.8.
- [33:08]
John Evans
Yeah.
- [33:08]
Jess Myers
With our custom sample, we got 5.7 out of 5.9 stars.
- [33:12]
John Evans
Wow. So it's a big jump.
- [33:15]
Jess Myers
It really resonates with our target customer. So you can expect to see more of the flamboyance from.
- [33:20]
John Evans
And is this a. So in terms of House Flamingo, is it an online thing or does it turn up physically as well? Can people go and try stuff on or is it right now?
- [33:28]
Jess Myers
Right now it's a physical. Sorry, it's a location online. So it's a central location on the site.
- [33:34]
John Evans
Yeah.
- [33:34]
Jess Myers
But who knows? There's so much opportunity in there.
- [33:36]
John Evans
It sounds quite experiential the way you talk about it. I envisage something you can go and experience and, and discover.
- [33:43]
Jess Myers
And I have to calm myself down because when I, you know, I've got a very creative mind, I'm also incredibly impatient.
- [33:48]
John Evans
Yeah.
- [33:48]
Jess Myers
My team will refer to me as impatient perfectionist, which is probably quite hard to work with, but I get really excited about these things. I think there's so many ways for us to connect with our customers. There's so many ways to get the brand in their hand, you know, and lots of opportunities. So, you know, if we thought this year was big, next year is going to be massive. There's tons to go after.
- [34:05]
John Evans
Well, what I love about the platform you built and the idea and the characters and everything else is you can easily see many what directions it could go in. Which is a lovely problem to have, isn't it? You know, just kind of with so many ideas you can go from and that's when you know you've got a great creative platform. It just almost invents sense itself, doesn't it, in terms of where you can take it. So look, we talked a year ago, you just done your 90 day plan, you're in a New role. We're getting into the second Golden Quarter that you've kind of been through. As you look back at the last year, what are the big learnings maybe for you personally, that you've taken out as a senior marketing leader that maybe people listening could kind of take inspiration from what have been your big tips or learnings from taking on a new role and delivering another year of flamazing results.
- [34:45]
Jess Myers
I think one of the big things and whatever we've done over the last year was almost what we're going to do over the next year, which was double down on the plan and double down on what works most. Now as a leader, we're there to help set vision and coach and develop our teams. And the biggest learning for me is unlocking collaboration. Even if there aren't silos there, it's how do you get the organization working together to create something brilliant? So not just the teams we have internally, the way we've worked with the teams externally, again, that gives you the consistency. Yes, we invited incentives, joined us, but we had now an extra year of working with the Gate, our creator partner, and working out how we can set that team up for success has been really key as well. So the key things are be really clear about the strategy, be really clear about the customer, be really clear about how you can double down to achieve growth, measure and agonize over everything and as we've just done, optimize it and get it out again.
- [35:41]
John Evans
I love that. I love that. And look, you know, you've been walking proof of that, which has been amazing. Just on the relationship thing, you said you brought in Zenith, you continue working with the Gate. Any tips on how to get the most out of the sort of third party relationships as well? Because it's often it can be a point of tension, can't it? And aligning objectives and also I'd imagine that rerunning Creative youe came up a year ago. You know, you can imagine the agency going, oh, can we not create some more new things? Things, you know, as most creative agencies are desperate to sort of put, put their creative hats back on. But yeah, how have you managed those relationships?
- [36:12]
Jess Myers
Yeah, so really well. So they always have to be an extension of your existing team. And that's how we work together. You know, when we went through the process to appoint not only the Gate, but also Zenith, you know, we went through this, a really consistent pitch process, but a really big part of that is finding an agency partner who shares the same values as you. So we're looking for SWAGGER no ego, Humble entrepreneurial growth mindset, wonderful collaborators and the sort of people who want to get into the trenches together. You know, we did that with the Gate and then we. The GATE helped us on board Zenith and we all got in the trenches together this year. You know, I recognize what you say about advertising. Agencies want to do new work, but once they share the same objectives and you're all using the same data and you're working together, really clearly the answer is, you know, it's the smart one, not the brave one. And they would. They recommended it at the same time as us. And we said, actually, rather than using production money to make a whole new ad, advert will optimize what we have and we'll use it in all these other magnificent ways to make the campaign even bigger, even better and even more successful. And that comes with sharing the same values, sharing the same objectives, having really open, trusting relationships and building on it. You know, you don't want to be zigging and zagging and chopping and changing. You know, I'm sure even Andrew Tindall said in his report, the more you change your agency, the less consistency.
- [37:25]
John Evans
Totally, yeah.
- [37:26]
Jess Myers
So we've got our family and, you know, we're looking in together.
- [37:29]
John Evans
No, it's so, so true. And this is something really, really keen that everyone understands, is that consistency of agency relationship leads to better work and better results. Similarly, I was chatting to lucky generals in Yorkshire Tea recently. They've done amazing work and again, they're not producing a new thing every year. It might be every two or three years, but because it's working so well that that basically frees up the budget in the future to go and make some more, you know, some more bold advertising.
- [37:52]
Jess Myers
They've been working together for years, haven't they?
- [37:54]
John Evans
Yeah, I think it's eight. It's at least eight years, I think. I think it's 27, maybe. Maybe seven years. 2017, 2016. I think it's 2016. So about eight years. Yeah. Which is amazing. And their market share has just absolutely taken off. You mentioned, you said just swagger, no ego. You had a few other things. Is that something that you've just come up with now, or is that something that you've embedded as a concept of what you look for?
- [38:15]
Jess Myers
I'd love to say I came up with it just now, but I think if you ask any of my team, they'll say I use it all the time.
- [38:18]
John Evans
Oh, do you? Where's it come from? Is it something you invented?
- [38:21]
Jess Myers
Things I've learned Along the way, things I find find important to how I operate, but also important to the culture of our business. You know, we have an incredible organization. You know, we are a Northwest business. We're proudly in the Northwest. We weren't born anywhere, we're born in Liverpool. There's definitely a certain culture in our. In our company and in the local community, but also in kind of what we're trying to achieve as a business. But I think that that applies to not only us, but anywhere, because, you know, growth, mindset, entrepreneurial mindset, creative innovation. Absolutely. But, you know, you always want to work with decent human beings.
- [38:51]
John Evans
Oh, totally, yeah.
- [38:52]
Jess Myers
Decent human beings. And again, so swagger. No, ego is, you know, you want swagger.
- [38:56]
John Evans
I love that because I've never heard someone say it before, but it makes a lot of sense because swagger can come with ego and that's a. Just. Can be a destructive thing. But low ego means you can learn from other people. You know, you take other. Other ideas. It doesn't have to be your idea. But the swagger and the confidence is also so important as well. So that's a beautiful combo. What are the other ones by the swagger? No, ego. What was the second one I talked about?
- [39:16]
Jess Myers
Growth mindset entrepreneur.
- [39:17]
John Evans
Growth mindset, Entrepreneurial. Yeah, essential.
- [39:19]
Jess Myers
The other one I'll take or talk a lot about is Pressure Makes Diamonds.
- [39:22]
John Evans
Ah, good, good, good, good. Well, hence the golden quarter. Should be the most sparkling one then.
- [39:28]
Jess Myers
Yeah, very sparkly. And as I keep saying, it's the Lord of playful. Every single day, we'll turn over a stone.
- [39:32]
John Evans
Brilliant. Well, listen, good luck. Good luck with the next few days. Hope it ends on a high. Hope you get a break as well. I mean, you know, I. Presumably you'd be checking the sales every hour or so, won't you, from now until.
- [39:42]
Jess Myers
Yeah, I'm obsessed. I spend, you know, every five minutes refreshing a graph to see what direction it's moving into.
- [39:47]
John Evans
I think the closest I can come to your experience. Years ago, I was working in drinks and I was working on Disa and Amoretto and we had a number of, like, liqueur brands that 90% of their sales happen in December. I mean, it's like warnings. Advocar, for example, like the snowball. Like, it's literally, you know, no one buys it all year and then suddenly, week before Christmas, but your entire year, you had to wait for the final week. And it was whether or not Tesco or Sainsbury's had put you on promotion literally dictated the whole year. But we used to get dressed up in kind of these kind of elves costumes and go into and help put, you know, put the boxes on the shop floor and stuff. But I remember that, like working right up to Christmas Eve, you know, trying to get displays away in store, you know.
- [40:27]
Jess Myers
Yeah. Well, in retail this is what you expect. This is our time, you know, and if you don't love the hustle of every single day, this might not be the right place for you. But, you know, it's all about how you create the right culture and the right energy. You know, on Black Friday, we had flamingos, people dressed up running around the place. Our Christmas tree in the office is gorgeous. Got 100 flamingos over it this year as well. So, you know, creating that the right environment, yes, it might be difficult, but that camaraderie, you know, super.
- [40:54]
John Evans
But you're right about the pressure, mate. Simon, because actually I remember when we did, we called it Project Snowball was when we all ran around in store dressed up in teams and we competed with each other. That was the highlight of the year. It might be pressured, but actually that was the thing everyone remembered and still talk about today.
- [41:08]
Jess Myers
So I think, yeah, it brings a huge amount of energy and that's so important.
- [41:11]
John Evans
Well, listen, thank you. Congratulations on another great year and yeah, look forward to seeing where the flamingos take us next.
- [41:16]
Jess Myers
Maybe speaker in a year's time.
- [41:18]
John Evans
Indeed. Look forward to it.
- [41:18]
Jess Myers
Thanks so much.
- [41:19]
John Evans
Thanks. Thank you very much for listening or watching Uncensored cmo. I hope you enjoyed that. If you did, please do hit the subscribe button wherever you get your podcast. If you're watching, hit subscribe there as well. I'd also love to get a review. Reviews make a big difference on other people discovering the show. So please do leave a review wherever you get your podcast. If you want to contact me, you can do I'm over on X UncensoredCMO or on LinkedIn in where I'm under my own name, John Evans. Thanks for listening and watching. I'll see you next time.