Keep the Customer in the Room: Marketing Insights from Asda and Waitrose

[00:00:00] You're listening to Retail Disrupted, a podcast that explores the latest industry developments and the trends that will shape how we shop in the future. I'm your host, Natalie Berg. Hello and welcome to a special edition of Retail Disrupted. If you're listening to this episode and would prefer to watch the video version, you can head over to the Retail Disrupted YouTube page and join us that way.

[00:00:27] Today's episode is brought to you by the Richmond Retail and Ecommerce Directors Forum. The event is being held on April 30th at the Belfry in Sutton Coldfield, and I am delighted to be chairing it once again. We have an amazing lineup of speakers. I'm going to be on stage with Dame Sharon White, former chair of the John Lewis Partnership, and Hash Ladda, the CEO of Jigsaw. In fact, Hash is going to be joining me on the podcast in the coming weeks, so if you're not already subscribed, now's a good time to do so.

[00:00:57] If you are a retailer and you'd like to join us at the event, as you can imagine, we are pretty booked up at this stage, but we have some spaces available. So message me directly if you're interested and we will get you booked in. Okay, on today's episode, we are going to be hearing from two amazing retailers who will be speaking at the forum. They're going to give you a glimpse into their session on retail marketing. But first, let me tell you more about them.

[00:01:21] Jessica Cole has spent the past 15 years working in the retail industry and has held senior roles with Morrisons, Selfridges, Accenture Strategy, Monitor Deloitte, and most recently, ASDA as Senior Director, Own Brand, Master Brand, Customer Strategy and Propositions. Jess specializes in setting and executing strategies, leading large scale transformations, building brands, and driving profitable sales growth.

[00:01:50] Martin George is the former customer director at Waitrose. He started his career at Cadbury's and held a number of senior roles, including commercial director at British Airways, group development director at Bupa, and most recently as customer director at Waitrose, where he was responsible for marketing and customer experience. He's previously held a number of senior roles, as well as setting up businesses in the hospitality, travel media, and healthcare sectors.

[00:02:17] Martin is now a non-executive director at Goodwood, Visit Jersey, and Trust Alliance Group. He's also a school governor and working with the Marketing Academy to increase diversity in the marketing profession. Let's welcome our guests to the podcast. Jess and Martin, it's so great to have you on the show today.

[00:02:37] We are going to be talking about the role of marketing within retail, and I'm really looking forward to getting your thoughts because there's so much happening from AI and the impact it's having on marketing teams to the very role of the CMO and how that's evolving and whether that's still relevant in retail today. So a lot for us to sink our teeth into. But first, as always, let's start with some intros. And Jess, I'll come to you first. Can you say a few words about yourself and your background?

[00:03:07] Yes, of course. And thanks for having us. So I'm Jess. I have actually recently left Asda, but for the past three years, I've been working as a senior director there. My responsibilities were looking after the own brand business and looking after the master brand of Asda and really kind of reviving the brand back to what the brand is known for and bringing back all of the love for that brand. But I also looked after customer strategy and propositions there as well.

[00:03:32] Whilst I was there, I had responsibility over that time of customer insight, foresight and customer experience. So really sit at that kind of strategy end of kind of traditional marketing. And then previous to that, I've worked in consulting and worked in industry roles as well, always focused around customer and commercial, but within retail, in consulting and in industry. Yeah, thanks, Natalie. And again, thanks for inviting us to join you. So my background is marketing and commercial. So I spent a long time at British Airways.

[00:04:01] I did have a brief time where I was responsible for British Airways retail propositions, so ticket desks and e-commerce and shops. But I guess the majority of my retail experience has been more recently when I was customer director at Waitrose. So very similar scope of responsibility to Jess. So customer strategy, proposition development and also communication. And more recently, I've been doing some consulting in the retail sector just because I think it's a sector that's addictive.

[00:04:29] And I think once you get involved with it, it's very difficult to leave. Addictive is a great word to describe the sector. I totally agree. Well, it's a pleasure to have you both here today. Now, this podcast, as the name implies, is all about disruption. And so I'd love to get your thoughts as retailers on what you feel has been the biggest source of disruption within the industry. What's really impacting retail marketing and driving change in the sector?

[00:04:56] I mean, I guess that's the obvious stuff, Natalie, that we've experienced over the last five years. The sort of very macro factors. COVID obviously had a big impact on the way that people shop. And whilst we've seen some reversal back to the way it was pre-COVID, I still think there were some profound changes that took place over that period. So that's one. Obviously, the cost of living crisis has been absolutely, hugely impactful on retail and obviously on the general public.

[00:05:22] So the shift to value, a lot of retailers really having to sharpen their pricing. Obviously, massive pressure on margins. So those two big macro factors. And then I guess because it's an industry of permanent disruption, constant disruption, more locally, we've had everything from HFSS. As you mentioned, we've had AI. We've got the impact of technology. We've got the growth of personalization, the development of loyalty programs.

[00:05:47] I mean, it's a constant industry of flux, which I guess is one of the reasons, you know, that many of us absolutely love it. Because just picking up the paper on a daily basis, just going online on a daily basis, there is something about retail every single day. So it's always in the spotlight. And that's the challenge of it. And that's the fascination of it for me. Yeah, yeah, it's so true. It's always evolving. And something I say time and time and time again on this podcast is that the only constant in retail is change. And I think that's so true. Jess, how about you?

[00:06:15] I know Martin's just kind of laid out all the big sources of disruption. Anything else that stands out for you? Yeah, I mean, I think I agree with everything that Martin said. I actually think what's been interesting as well is seeing what we thought might disrupt the industry, particularly in grocery, that maybe hasn't or hasn't in the way that we expected it to.

[00:06:32] So if I think about quick commerce, or if I think about, you know, meal box subscriptions, or all of these things that we've had to kind of adapt to really quickly, we've had to explore, is this something we want to go after, particularly as a more traditional retailer and retailers kind of figuring out how to navigate all of this crazy disruption, especially at the time of these big macro changes happening.

[00:06:53] And I think it's fascinating to see that, you know, although they're still around and Q commerce is really important, and we still see the likes of meal box subscriptions and things like that, actually, they probably didn't take off in the way that we expected them to. And I think the same goes for fashion, particularly with the retail experience and lots of innovation that we saw in the past there, that has been great and experimental, but hasn't really kind of stuck perhaps in the way that we expected.

[00:07:19] So I actually kind of see it as we're on the brink of something really exciting and big disruption to come in that way. And particularly with AI, because I think there's been lots that's kind of showed promise and expectation, but not necessarily taken off like we thought.

[00:07:37] Yeah, yeah, that's a really good point about some of the things that haven't stuck because I think the pace of change is phenomenal. And as retailers, I imagine you're constantly trying to work out, you know, where do you prioritize investment? You know, how do you separate hype from reality? You know what might stick, you know, and there's just so much innovation, I can imagine that's a huge challenge for retailers.

[00:07:59] So, just building on Jesse's point. I mean, I think what's become evidence is just how difficult it is to run a retail operation successfully. So I think what Jesse's hinting at is some people have come into the market who we thought, gosh, this is going to be massively disruptive.

[00:08:14] And yet, actually, you look at the players that are performing incredibly well. It's some of the established players who have modified their proposition to reflect changing customer needs and done it brilliantly, absolutely brilliantly, to the extent where some of those new entrants haven't made the incursions that perhaps they would have expected, and I think we would have expected. So I think it's due credit to some of the established players who've just done a brilliant job and continue to do a brilliant job in serving their customers.

[00:08:41] Yeah, yeah. And sometimes it does take that massive jolt for, you know, the legacy retailers to think, actually, we do need to do things differently. You know, you need that kind of external source of disruption to really come in and change the status quo. And yeah, it's been really, really fascinating to see, you know, what has stuck and what hasn't. But let's go back to some fundamentals. And I'd love to ask you a fairly basic question. And Martin, I'll stick with you for this.

[00:09:08] What is the role of marketing today? How would you say it adds the most value for a retailer? So I think it's a really interesting question, Natalie, because it's easy to get sort of wound up in the whole topic about the role of the marketing department. And I think it's about the marketing capability. And what marketing, what successful marketing organizations do, successful marketeers do, is they make sure the customer is in the room for every conversation.

[00:09:36] They ensure that customer centricity is embedded in the culture of the organization. And I think they brilliantly combine customer insight with building effective propositions that are sustainable, differentiated, compelling, enduring. And also, they're very smart commercially. And I think you need that combination of customer and commerciality to be a successful retailer.

[00:09:59] So for me, you know, marketeers have to be the champions of those things. And most of all, they have to make sure the customer is in the room, represented in the room when every conversation is taking place. I completely agree. And I think that's been an evolution. And I've definitely seen kind of different approaches to that at the different clients that I've had and different retailers I've worked with. I think more and more, we're seeing kind of the convergence of the strategy to execution, the customer and the marketing, the traditional marketing sides come together as one.

[00:10:28] And I think we'll just see more and more of that. And I think to Martin's point, it's really interesting about the role of marketing and the kind of discipline and the skills within that function traditionally and how they need to evolve to be much more commercial, to be more strategic, to make decisions based on data and insight. And so, yeah, I think it's fascinating. I think we're seeing more of that already. And I think there's much more of that to come.

[00:10:52] I think in the past, Natalie, what you found was that marketing did the communication of what the rest of the organization created. That was it was a sort of what I would describe as a marketing services function. It was a kind of here's the proposition. Can you go out and communicate it in the most compelling way? And I think what you're seeing, as Jess is saying, is an increasing sophistication of marketing organizations. So they actually are way earlier in the funnel. And they're at the very point where you're identifying who target customers are.

[00:11:22] You're doing the market segmentation. You're building propositions and working really closely, really collaborative with the rest of the organization so that the whole organization is aligned in serving customers. So, yes, the communication is one output of that entire process, but there's so much more. It informs the way in which the websites build. It informs the way which stores are designed. It informs the product categories that the buyers go out and buy and the ways in which the pricing take place.

[00:11:49] You know, that's not marketing. You don't need to own those by any means, but they do need to create the environment informed by customer insight, informed by data and fueled by collaboration. Yeah, that's interesting. So it's I guess it's become a lot more embedded in wider functions within the organization. And Jess, you talked about you just touched on skills and capabilities and how that is evolving.

[00:12:13] So I wonder if we can elaborate on this in a little bit more detail, because I know with, you know, with AI in particular, there's just it's impacting everyone and everything. You know, it's touching so many aspects of our lives, but I imagine especially within marketing. So what are the skills required of marketing directors today and how do you think this will evolve in the future?

[00:12:36] Yeah, I think so. I think if we look at kind of what's been before, what you would tend to see is a kind of collection of skills with the marketing directors. So you might have more of what you'd kind of describe as like the customer insight and the strategy people on one side and then the kind of creative and execution people on the other side. And their kind of deep skill sets were relatively kind of unique and siloed. And I think in a lot of retail organizations, what bridges the two are planning teams and marketing operations.

[00:13:06] And I actually think that's where the absolute kind of obvious quick win areas that AI can be utilized and should be already. It has kind of all the capability to do that now to really kind of help reduce the amount of administration, the process. And retailers are constantly looking at ways to optimize with such tight margins. That's a kind of a constant mindset that I think all retailers have.

[00:13:29] However, AI can almost kind of take a lot of that burden immediately, which I think is so exciting because that frees up so much time and thought to creativity, to strategic thinking, to using the data and insight to make choices much more rapidly. Also learn from those choices and adapt from them. So I think with AI in particular, but I think a more general trend is moving towards rather than kind of one deep skill. I think technical deep skills are still incredibly important, but becoming much more T-shaped.

[00:13:58] So broadening out the skill set in addition to your deep technical skill of really kind of playing more into that end-to-end process. So kind of not kind of accepting that we're at the end of the funnel and we'll kind of create what we're kind of told to create or, you know, that's been decided up front. But actually we're at the call base of how consumers are engaging with our content. We're learning from that. We're hearing from customers every second of every day on social media.

[00:14:23] How do we funnel that right back into what that means for a change in our strategy, a change in our proposition? So I think it's kind of the physical working together more collaboratively. But I think it's actually the individual skill set of retaining that depth of technique whilst also becoming much broader in either end of that spectrum, wherever you sit at the moment. And do you think that there will be, do you think some skills would become less important?

[00:14:51] Personally, I think it's less about what's most important. I think it's more about what can be kind of utilized in a different way. So I think that the process from my perspective, having worked and kind of advised a lot of clients as well in retail on how to optimize processes in this very area, they are relatively streamlined. I mean, there are certain things you have to do. I think it's the real kind of laborious operational elements that have to happen, like picking products to feature in marketing.

[00:15:21] You know, those things are crucial, right? Especially in a grocery retailer where you have 30,000 plus products, picking which ones are going to make the difference to customers. It's a very commercial decision, but it's also a lot of administration. There are many, many, many people to speak to. It's all run on Excel spreadsheets. You know, that kind of burden can be taken away.

[00:15:41] That will free up that time to really think about planning, kind of effective comms that go together, thinking about propositions and how to really kind of drive those propositions, change them, iterate them. So I think it's really positive. I think it's much more around how do we kind of continue to optimize those processes, but really kind of free up the time of individuals to do much more value-add work. Yeah. Yeah. I would add to what Jess has just said, which I agree with everything she said.

[00:16:11] I think often the soft skills of CMOs and marketing directors get undervalued. I think the fact that they're called soft, I think, is something that immediately, you know, would you rather have hard skills or soft skills? I suspect most people would rather have hard skills because they feel much more effective. But I think the ability of marketing leaders to influence, to communicate, to inspire, to energize, those capabilities are often underestimated. And I think at the heart of that is the ability to get people to work together, to deliver what they wouldn't otherwise.

[00:16:40] And I think those skills often don't get talked about, but the best marketing leaders I've seen are absolutely brilliant at those things. The other point I would make is I just think marketeers need to be clear that most of the business isn't interested in marketing jargon. You know, and what marketeers have to be brilliant at is talking the language of business. And that's, at the end of the day, going to be about return on investment.

[00:17:02] You know, if you want to persuade the CEO or the CFO to put more money into marketing or even just to demonstrate that they're getting the value for the money they're already investing in marketing, then you need to be able to talk the language of business. Because, in my experience, most CEOs and CFOs, other than maybe out of a personal interest, don't really want to talk about click-throughs or dwell times or spontaneous awareness. They want to talk about what is this doing to the bottom line today and tomorrow.

[00:17:25] So, you know, those two are two skills that I think modern marketing leaders are really focusing on. Yeah. So, just to build on that a little bit, you know, some CMO roles today focus on execution. Some just on comms. Others are broader in scope and are more of a strategic role. So, you've sort of touched on what you feel works best.

[00:17:49] But I wonder how you feel about whether a CMO needs to be a member of the executive leadership team or on the main board. So, I mean, you have sort of just touched on this. But if you could, yeah, just share some thoughts around that. That would be really interesting. I can share my thoughts. I think it's crucially important. And I think it's so important because the voice of the customer has to be represented.

[00:18:14] And I don't think anyone can just do that role because it takes real commitment, real dedication, real passion for the customer to kind of get that deep, deep understanding, not only on an analytical level of how a customer is engaging with our brand and how they're behaving, but who are they on a very kind of human, personal level. And then being able to translate that, as Martin described, into, well, what does this mean for the business? How can this drive impact to the bottom line?

[00:18:44] And it's typically, you know, individuals on an executive kind of board position that have the ability to influence that type of decision, but then also make change happen. So, I kind of see it as those kind of three elements. And if you're not present on the board or in those conversations, I think it's very difficult to make change and meaningful change happen, but also drive a culture of customer centricity right from the top. So, personally, I think it's really important.

[00:19:09] And if it's not a permanent role, I think it's very important to have someone who deeply, deeply understands the customer present in the right conversations. Hmm. I'd like to explore this idea of customer centricity, because I think every retailer likes to think of themselves as customer centric, because that's the primary job of any retailer, right? To be relevant to their customers, to meet their needs, to exceed their expectations, and to do that consistently.

[00:19:37] But putting that into practice and genuinely being customer obsessed is, it's not easy, right? You guys know, you're the retailers. What's your take on this? Do you think retailers can be doing more when it comes to customer centricity? Or is this just like a utopian dream and we all need to be a little bit more realistic about what retailers can achieve? I think every business can do more. And I admire the ones that are constantly striving and constantly innovating.

[00:20:06] But I think every business could do more, could do better. I mean, look at the most recent Institute of Customer Service results. I mean, what it says is customer service scores are the worst in every sector they've been in the last 15 years. So that tells me that something is going wrong. And I think some of that is about the way that people are deploying technology willy-nilly and not thinking about how it integrates with the human side of service. And there are lots of other reasons.

[00:20:35] But that says to me that there is a job to be done. I think also it can be overcomplicated. So there's clearly a very sophisticated way. Somebody was saying only yesterday I was at a conference and somebody was saying that with AI, that should remove the need ever to guess. The data that you get from AI should remove the need ever to guess. You will in time know, which is a really powerful thought. And so technology is definitely going to help. There's no question about that. Loyalty programs and all of that.

[00:21:04] But, you know, I worked in a business very early in my career at British Airways where we were just encouraged to spend time in the front line of the business. Just go and walk into the terminal, walk up and down the aircraft, talk to your colleagues because they're interfacing with customers each and every day. Or walk up and down an aircraft and talk to customers. In retail, you know, when I was at Waitrose, on a Friday, we would spend every Friday out in shops talking to colleagues and talking to customers. Easiest thing in the world.

[00:21:33] You can sit and watch activity online. I can sit and watch social media. I can read customer complaints. So there are lots of very easy ways that you can get to understand how your customers are thinking and behaving and feeling about your brand and about your competitors. Yeah. And sometimes we do overcomplicate things, don't we? Sometimes it is just putting yourselves in the shoes of the sales associate, you know, experiencing what they experience on a daily basis.

[00:22:00] And I was at, I know M&S has now made it a requirement for their staff, their head office staff to work in their stores for, I think it's seven days or seven to 10 days a year. And I was at an analyst event in their head office just before Christmas and they were all exhausted because I think half of that time, roughly half of that time has to be during peak. And, you know, they all said what a great, they were all buzzing, you know, what a great experience it was and really getting to see firsthand some of the challenges and also the opportunities to do things better, I suppose.

[00:22:29] I think Jess would probably say the same when she was at Asda, but certainly at Waitrose. I mean, I would say the best part of my job was going on Fridays out to stores and then at Christmas spending time. It was absolutely exhausting. And, of course, the frontline colleagues love the fact that they saw, I remember one of them saying to me, your hands are so soft, Martin, you've clearly never done a serious day's work. I said, no, I haven't really. I've just sat behind a desk for the last, you know, number of years.

[00:22:53] But, I mean, my respect for frontline colleagues, my understanding of what they did and my desire to improve their lives so they could do a better job for customers was always energized by that time in Branches. I absolutely loved it. Utterly exhausting, but without question the best insight I got at any point in the year. Yeah, I completely agree. I think it's really important and I think it is hard to be customer obsessed. But I think customer obsession kind of means different things at different times and to different people.

[00:23:21] I think the customer team and the customer insight team in particular have to be customer obsessed every minute of every day. I think translating that customer obsession into insight and making that really easy and simple and digestible for the rest of the business is the hardest job to do. And it's a really tough job to do. And that's something that we've really focused on at Asda of how to just make it so simple to understand that everybody can take that and is actually inspired to use it, can put themselves in the customer's shoes.

[00:23:49] But I think the hardest thing to do is get an unbiased view because it's very easy to kind of imagine yourself walking in the shoes of a customer or think of yourself as the customer, but often you as an individual are not that customer. And so I think to Martin's point, there's some really simple things that can be done. But in my experience, what I found the hardest is just making the time to do it.

[00:24:09] So watching the videos that customers send in as part of the research, you see customers in their homes, you get a feel for how they're living, just listening to what they're saying, but asking much broader questions about their lives and how they want to live and their hopes and their dreams and their families and their life stage. That's where the real kind of customer understanding and insight comes from.

[00:24:30] And I think that's where you can create those real magical propositions that differentiate you because there's the kind of understanding customers at the broadest level and how they're behaving. But then there's understanding who you're really trying to target and what's most important to them. And I think if you can find those kind of magic golden insights, that's where I think particularly in grocery in such a competitive market, that's where you can find an edge. Yeah. And in grocery, sorry, sorry, go ahead, Martin.

[00:24:57] I was going to just say, I think there's also a point here about what gets measured gets done, to use the cliche. So at Waitrose, we had three headline performance measures. And one of them was obviously, you know, a profit measure. One of them was the satisfaction, happiness of our partners. And the third was net promoter score. And, you know, Jess knows this, but, you know, we had all the drivers of the net promoter score. And at our monthly management meetings, we scrutinized that data in as much detail as we scrutinized the P&L.

[00:25:26] And each of us knew who was owner of the driver. And we would talk about how the driver was performing, what we were doing to get it back to target if it wasn't above target. And to Jess's point, we knew where we needed to be brilliant at the basics. And we also knew where we got competitive advantage. And those were the areas where we gave real focus. So there is the walk the walk and talk the talk. But actually, where the rubber really hits the road is when you are measuring people's performance.

[00:25:52] And ultimately, that determines whether they do or don't get promoted, do or don't get a pair rise. You know, that really focuses the conversation. And, you know, if you've only got three measures, and one of them is MPS, net promoter score, that's a very clear message to the business, that this is something that we take very, very seriously. I'm glad you brought that up, because I wanted to ask you your thoughts on success, what it looks like, how you measure it, the role of data in all of this. You'll have noticed that just this week, Tesco Club Card celebrated its 30th anniversary.

[00:26:20] And Clive Humby, co-founder of Dunn Humby, who, of course, created the Club Card, he actually spoke at the Richmond event a couple of years ago. But I noticed that he posted on LinkedIn this week. And I'm just going to read out what he said. He says, it isn't rocket science. Knowing your customer means a better shopping experience, better products, better pricing, improved ROI on promotions, and happier customers. I'd love to get your reaction to this and just your general thoughts on the role of data in all of this.

[00:26:51] Yeah, I'll go. So I think, I mean, I think there's so much data, which is an amazing, amazing thing. But I think that can become overwhelming within customer and marketing, because there's so much and there's so much conflicting data. And actually, there's so much happening in that kind of retail environment that it's also very difficult to unpick what's really driving what outcome.

[00:27:12] So to Martin's point, I think it's utilizing the data, but making it as simple as possible to understand and picking those real outcomes that you are driving towards as a business and not having too many of them, that it's impossible to kind of choose or make choices against them. So I think having all of the data that retailers have is wonderful. But I think it's all about the simplicity to get change done.

[00:27:38] And at Asda, we also had a number of kind of very few important metrics. But the way that we tried to kind of bring it all together across the whole of marketing and customer was feel, think, experience and do. Where we're really looking at kind of what a customer is seeing, how are they interacting with us? And what's that driving as an outcome for our brand consideration, preference, recommendation, and had really specific targets around that, around what we want those kind of aspects to be. How are they feeling?

[00:28:05] So what's their perception, particularly around value and price and quality and choice? What are they experiencing? So we had NPS and our customer satisfaction measures that we could drill down to a really granular store level, which was great and really useful for our store colleagues as well to understand how they personally could impact kind of the customer experience on the front end. And then what a customer is doing in response to that with really clear sales, market share, switching measures.

[00:28:33] And because we had kind of a simple framework that everyone can remember and relate to, but it tied directly to the business outcomes we were trying to drive and ultimately driving more profitable sales. That was the kind of most powerful way that we brought all of that rich data and insight together into one framework that every single week and month, we could sit down with the exec and review those outcomes and make sure the choices that we were making were actually doing what we needed them to do. Yeah, really interesting.

[00:29:01] Martin, I have one final question for you. And I'd love to get your perspective on the customer experience because you've worked across different sectors. Do customers expect a different experience when they're in an airport compared to when they're in a supermarket doing their weekly shop, for example? Or is it a case of actually, we all want self-service. We won't tolerate mediocre experiences. We want it to be frictionless. We want it to be personalized. And it doesn't matter where we are. So I'd love to get your thoughts on this.

[00:29:30] To what extent do our needs as consumers translate across sectors today? I think increasingly they translate across sectors, to be completely honest, Natalie. So I remember when I was at British Airways and we had people waiting an hour to check in to go on their holiday. And at the time, Tesco announced that if more than three people were actually in a checkout line, they'd open a new checkout. And our customers were saying, I'm spending £20 on my weekly shop. And Tesco would go out of their way to open a new checkout.

[00:29:58] And here I am spending multiples of that to go on my holidays. And I'm waiting an hour. You know, so actually, I think the challenges, but also the opportunities that you can potentially consider, I think, come from out of sector. You know, the redesign of the British Airways first class came from inspiration we got from yacht manufacturers who wants to create a premium experience in a confined space. So, you know, the deployment of technology, lots of companies and industries have done that better than we've done it.

[00:30:28] So I constantly, I think one of the obligations of being in a marketing role is the sense of curiosity and constantly looking for stimulation and inspiration from within your own business, within your own sector, but also from the wider world. Because that's where I think people are getting their standards set increasingly. Fantastic. Completely agree. Sorry, Jess, did you want to jump in? No, yeah, just one point on that. I think this goes back to my earlier point about really understanding customers and who they are and how they live their lives.

[00:30:57] Because whether you're a grocer or a fashion retailer or whatever type of retail you are, you're not the most important thing in a customer's life. And it's very easy to think that you are when you're, you know, you live and breathe the business and you're really passionate about the brand that you work for. But actually understanding kind of where you fit into a customer's life, but what else they're doing, what other brands they're interacting with, that really helps you understand that actually, probably one of the biggest pain points in their life. And it's a customer who's giving you their time, their effort, their money.

[00:31:27] So actually, how can you learn from all of those other experiences that customers are having and take the best of those and make them relevant for the type of kind of retail proposition you're serving? So, yeah, I think it's so important to do that. And you can only do that through really understanding your customer. Yeah, fantastic. Look, it's been so great to have you both on the show. Thank you for giving us a taster of your session at the Belfry. And I look forward to seeing you both in April. Thank you very much.

[00:31:55] Thank you for listening to Retail Disrupted. If you enjoyed this episode and would like to support the podcast, please leave a rating or review or share it with others. It really makes a difference.