    On Episode 97, we have David Lemley in to chat about marketing in retail—he calls it retail voodoo.&nbsp;David was an early employee at Starbucks, and that experience taught him a lot. His company, Retail Voodoo, does brand strategy for specialty food and beverage brands. David’s expertise in brand strategy, innovation, consumer markets, and consumer behavior is deep, so I wanted to talk to him about retail marketing, what the retail landscape looks like, and of course Starbucks (which we get to in part two). But in part one, we get the low down on retail voodoo.&nbsp; 



Marketing in Retail

In each episode of Confessions of a Marketer, Mark Reed-Edwards talks with a marketing leader or thinker about the deepest challenges in our business. Luminaries such as Beth Comstock, Whitney Johnson, Jacques van Niekerk and more share their wisdom with Mark. The podcast is a must-listen for marketers around the world and has ranked consistently among the top-rated business and marketing shows.

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Management & Marketing

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How to succeed on Amazon in 2024

We're back with this mini series of Talent Showcase episodes focused on people in marketing, communications, PR, and allied fields who're looking for their next opportunity. You'll hear their stories, successes, and how they can help their next employer or client.

Today, I'm joined by Paula Lowe. Paula is the founder and principal of The PR Table, a marketing communications consulting firm, where all of marketing has a seat at the table. Although Paula's expertise is in media relations and communication strategy, her experience encompasses all aspects of marketing communications, from email marketing, content development, and social media to website creation and maintenance.

Paula has more than 15 years experience, having worked with large multinational corporate entities and small startup ventures within a wide range of industries, including technology, Financial Services, Health Care and Medical, Health IT, Supply Chain, Non profits, and Supply Chain and Logistics. 

Transcript

Mark Reed-Edwards: Paula, it's good to have you on the show. Welcome.

Paula Lowe: It's great to be here, Mark. Thank you.

Mark Reed-Edwards: So, I just told your life story, but can you tell me more about yourself beyond what I just shared, your background and career path?

Paula Lowe: Sure. It's always fun to sort of remember the story. I actually went to school in Boston and graduated with an associate degree in hospitality management. I quickly got a job at the Ritz Carlton in a supervisory role, but realized that it was not going to afford me the opportunity to complete my degree, which was very important back then.

So I transferred and got a job as an admin assistant at an environmental engineering firm. And about a year in, I transferred from the facilities department to the corporate communications department. And that was it. I fell in love with corpcomm. I began to realize that my natural storytelling and relatability with people was something I could leverage in a career that I would find satisfying and challenging.

So I got in touch then with our PR consultant that was brought in. My boss said, "I'm going to have you work with our PR consultant, help tell some stories. I think you'd be good at it." I said, "Great." And that was it. From there, I left the environmental engineering firm and I joined Lois Paul Partners back up in Lexington.

I've had my career in public relations ever since. 

Mark Reed-Edwards: So what is one of your most important career accomplishments, do you think?

Paula Lowe: I have to say, working for Hebrew Senior Life in Boston, which is a non profit. They have a hospital license for Hebrew Rehab Center. And they have eight or nine senior housing locations throughout Greater Boston. And I was there at the onset and throughout COVID.

And that was a very, very challenging, stressful, difficult time. But it was also a really great learning opportunity because HSL is a leader in senior care. And the then- CEO, he's since retired, but he was a real inspiration to see how he handled things and we were able to bring them through that crisis really successfully. 

Mark Reed-Edwards: So what do you think you can offer your next employer or client?

Paula Lowe: I think that the years of experience I have have led me to be, although I am a PR specialist, if you will, my forte is media relations and analyst relations, securing those relationships, but you know, there's a breadth of services and strategy that I can bring to my clients, so relationship building, persistence.

One of the things I found as a PR person is that we have to be persistent. And if a client or I want a relationship with a particular member of the media, I will make it happen. It just might take some time and some creativity. I really find a lot of inspiration in trying to find different ways to do things.

I'm not a believer in "this is the way we've always done it so this is the way we should continue to do it." So if my clients are open to new ways of looking at things. I bring a lot of creativity and ideas that we can implement. And of course, strategy. I've done that for most of my career.

Nothing is done in a bubble. There's always a strategic reason and business objective we're trying to achieve.

Mark Reed-Edwards: I've never really done PR. I've been in areas around PR and talked to the press on occasion. But persistence is a quality for most of the people I know in PR who are great at their jobs. Because they build relationships over years. And you have to be persistent to do that.

Paula Lowe: Absolutely. And it's a fine line. Some of the relationships I built early on in my career, I'm still friends with those reporters and editors. And I think one of the things that sets me apart, and maybe even it's a generational thing at this point too, but I never went to a reporter or editor with a pitch that I had to read off a sheet.

I made sure I understood it. I made sure I understood the business value of what we were offering, and if they didn't accept it, I always asked why. I said I know that time is tight, but what am I missing here? Because I am trying to be a good resource. I do my research. If I'm missing, I need to know what I'm missing and why.

And sometimes they would tell me, sometimes they wouldn't, but often they'd say, "You know, that's a great question. Nobody asks that. It's not totally off the mark. It's the timing or it's this." And that's valuable information to take back to a client as well. Why the pitches aren't working or why the client thinks it's a great story, but maybe the media doesn't.

And then we find a different way to go back to that person with what they can use.

Mark Reed-Edwards: Yeah, and finding out their editorial calendar and just partnering up with them over the course of months or even years so that you can align with what the reporter's needs are and those reporters are stretched thinner than ever now.

Paula Lowe: Oh, gosh, for sure. The landscape has changed significantly and it's very challenging. But you can still do it. I'm doing it right now for a client. I'm having a lot of fun. It's a really unique auto industry training software company that I'm working with and it's a lot of fun and I'm making those relationships on their behalf and it's just been great because you can still do that.

It just takes a little longer.

Mark Reed-Edwards: Yeah. And how do you---I'll ask one last question. How do you work with your client to set their expectations that they're not going to be in the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times next week.

Paula Lowe: Isn't that the age old question?

Mark Reed-Edwards: Yeah.

B You know, it's just a matter of being very honest and direct and saying, " When you have that story I'm happy to tell it, but you're not there right now, or you know, it's gonna take some time to secure those relationships and make those connections." 

One of the challenges, too, is the way people move around.

Many of the people I worked with just a few short years ago are now in different roles. Still within the media landscape, but different roles. It might mean that I need to get reconnected or connected with someone new. And those things do take time. So I just sort of set the expectation up front and let them know that there are certain criteria that you have to meet to get into a big publication like that, or even Forbes, Fortune, those kinds of publications, and those take time. They're not an overnight thing.

Mark Reed-Edwards: Well, Paula, you've got a great story to tell for yourself, and thanks for joining me. I hope this podcast helps you find your next great gig.

Paula Lowe: Thank you, Mark. I appreciate being here. 

Mark Reed-Edwards: Well, that's it for this mini series. Together, we've met some extraordinary people. Ben Bradshaw, Jason Rasmussen, Gem Passant, Chuck Tanowitz, Kelley Lynn Kassa, and today's guest, Paula Lowe. 

I hope we helped tell their stories and that they have nothing but good fortune to come. As for what's coming next for this podcast, stay tuned.

We have one of the world's leading Amazon experts and the guest for the most popular episode of Confessions of a Marketer while we were away. That's Robin Johnson. She'll be with us next time, and we'll see you then.

Paul Lowe: Marketing Consultant

Today, I’m joined by Kelley Lynn Kassa.

Kelley’s career evolved from public relations, media relations and analyst relations to marketing programs, content strategy, and content creation. She’s worked with a wide range of organizations, from start-ups to blue-chip technology companies.

Outside of her professional life, Kelley is a foodie and a rower (look for her on the Charles River!). Plus, she coaches recreational rowing to youth, adults, and para athletes.

The transcript

Mark Reed-Edwards: Kelley, welcome.

Kelley Kassa: Hey, Mark. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me today.

Mark Reed-Edwards: It's wonderful having you here. It's been a while since we've caught up, so it's great to chat. Can you tell me more about yourself beyond what I just shared, your background and career path?

Kelley Kassa: Sure, as you mentioned, I started in PR and I migrated or spread my wings into marketing. I tend to think of myself as a marketing utility player. And what I've found over the last few years is I've had a great deal of success and brought success to organizations that I've worked with by serving as a marketing mentor to them.

I can come in and bring them the strategy and work with their in house marketing person, who's younger in their career, on the execution or I really just serve as a manager for that person. This way they have somebody who understands marketing and helps them reach the marketing goals and metrics that the executive team wants, while also making sure that they are learning about marketing and they're growing in their role as well. For one company that I worked with---an innovation consulting firm---they had had a series of new people in their career in marketing, there was no marketing executive, and they were celebrating their 20th year in business.

After a few months of working with me, they said they've never been successful at marketing before. And now they've found that success. And so that's something that I'm rolling out as an offering to other organizations. It's something I've done not just with that firm, but also with a nonprofit organization that I work with where again, it was somebody newer to his career reporting into an executive director who had so many other things on his plate.

Things were going south quickly. So they brought me in and I met with him on a weekly basis. It's that hands on stuff of, "Okay, what's on your plate? Let's prioritize that. What's coming up? What do we need to think about in three months that we need to plan for now?" As well as the day to day care and feeding of your employees. Like, "How's it going?" 

So that's what I'm really excited about right now.

Mark Reed-Edwards: It sounds fascinating to me because you have so much you can offer. You're, a utility player. How do you figure out where you focus with a client?

Kelley Kassa: Well, oftentimes, it's a matter of doing the initial triage. And my perspective comes from having worked for a number of PR agencies earlier in my career: "What are the bigger goals and then what are your quick wins?" Okay, so I'm probably going to butcher the baseball analogy because I'm not that much of an enthusiast, although I like going to Fenway to see the Red Sox. While you're focusing on what are the home runs we need to hit, how quickly can we get some singles under our belt, so to speak so that we start to get momentum.

I listened to your recent podcast with Chuck Tanowitz, who I know well, and he talked about bread rising and needing multiple projects going on while your bread is rising. And it's sort of the same idea. The home runs are going to take a little bit more. You're going to need to put more effort into it.

So what can we do in the short term to show some wins and prove that marketing will get them what they want?

Mark Reed-Edwards: So speaking of home runs, can you tell me one of your most important career accomplishments?

Kelley Kassa: You know, I pride myself on the relationships that I have with clients. And it's very easy to say, "Oh, I'm not just a vendor and I partner with my clients." But to use a very old cliche, the proof is in the pudding. And, and in this case, I'd say it's in the salad. In that I had a client who eventually was acquired by IBM, but I first started working with her in 1995 five --and I'm probably dating myself. I know I'm dating myself. And, up until recently, we still exchanged Christmas cards. You know, of course we're Facebook friends, but we still keep in touch. And she gave me a recipe, a fabulous recipe for salad that I still make every Easter for my family. And I don't know what it's called, but we call it Toby's salad because Toby was my client.

Mark Reed-Edwards: You're a rower, right? And we're connected on Facebook and that's a big part of your life. What do you think being a rower has taught you that you bring to marketing?

Kelley Kassa: So there are a number of things. And I'm sure that you've heard of the book and the movie, The Boys in the Boat, which is all about teamwork. What I see in rowers and when I coach, especially the middle schoolers, the number one quality that I really look for is grit and stick to attitiveness.

With marketing, you need that because your first, second, third, fourth idea might not get you what you want, but you need to just keep grinding it out. And with rowing, you have more failures with bad strokes than you have successes with good strokes. And it's about working through and fixing the things that are not working to get to those fabulous strokes that feel good, and that are in sync with everybody else in the boat.

My boat house does corporate events, where we teach teamwork. When you're thinking of a corporation, marketing can be hitting all of its marks, you know, perfect strokes. But if sales isn't in tune with marketing, the boat's not going to go very fast because you're fighting against each other.

And so you really need everybody working together the same amount of effort. A boat that's working together with eight people will actually go faster and farther than a boat of eight people that are fighting each other, even if those other eight people are bigger and stronger.

Mark Reed-Edwards: Last question. What do you think you can offer your next client?

Kelley Kassa: I can offer my next client that level of expertise of, having put in the hours, while helping them succeed with their marketing goals and growing their in- house marketing team and making their in- house team happier. That's one of the things I did with an organization. I worked with the executive director and the marketing person that were pretty close to strangling each other.

And they both ended up much happier in their roles with me being involved in bringing that experience and insight and sometimes just serving as a buffer between the executive who doesn't have a whole lot of time and the newer career person who needs a whole lot of time.

Mark Reed-Edwards: Well, Kelley, thanks so much for joining me. I hope this podcast helps you find your next great gig.

Kelley Kassa: Thank you so much, Mark, and have a great day.

Mark Reed-Edwards: I'm Mark Reed Edwards. See you on the next confessions of a marketer.

Kelley Lynn Kassa: Passionate marketing executive

Chuck Tanowitz is a seasoned professional in strategic communications, with a history of building strong programs that drive media and brand growth. 

His experience spans more than 15 years—he has played key roles in shaping the marketing and communication strategies for various brands, including Paytronix Systems, Greentown Labs, the N-Squared Innovation District, TenMarks, and a long list of others. 

Chuck is back on Confessions of Marketer for the second time—having joined us in 2017 in the very early days of this podcast. 

Transcript

Mark Reed-Edwards: Welcome to this special episode of Confessions of a Marketer. I'm Mark Reed Edwards. We're back with this mini series of shows I've dubbed the Talent Showcase. These episodes focus on people in marketing, communications, PR, and allied fields who are looking for their next opportunity.

My guests share their stories, successes, and how they can help their next employer or client. Today, I'm joined by Chuck Tanowitz. Chuck is a seasoned professional in strategic communications with a history of building strong programs that drive media and brand growth. His experience spans more than 15 years.

He's played a key roles in shaping the marketing and communication strategies for various brands, including Paytronix Systems, Greentown Labs, the N Squared Innovation District, 10 Marks, and a long list of others. 

Chuck Tanowitz is back on Confessions of a Marketer for the second time, having joined us in 2017, the very early days of this podcast.

Chuck, welcome back.

Chuck Tanowitz: Thank you. I I really appreciate you having me on.

Mark: It's great to chat. So can you tell me more about yourself beyond what I just shared, you know, your background and career path?

Chuck: You know, it's interesting. I was reading an article recently that talked about developing a career portfolio as opposed to a career path, and I feel like that's actually a little bit of what I've done. Yes, the core of my career has been in PR and marketing and brand, but I've also taken on these other roles outside.

That's how I ended up, for example, at the N squared Innovation District, which was really more of an economic development effort, as much it was a marketing effort. So it's given me this broad base of very interesting kind of pieces that I've done. 

You know, when I look at the work I did at Paytronix, which was very much traditional marketing and PR and brand, which was: drive leads and drive interest in this company.

But then you look at something like N-Squared, where it was: "How do I develop a community? How do I bring in art into the project and develop placemaking? How do I connect with local colleges and universities?" 

And then something like Greentown Labs, where it was: "How do you build something from zero and get it known where you're trying to not necessarily build leads, but certainly build brand around a name and what it means and giving it some brand equity?"

And then also creating my own PR from, which I had done a few years ago. And then also being a local advocate and sit on the Economic Development Commission. And then most recently, I spent three days in Vermont learning how to bake croissants. So it's, you know, how do I put all those things together and begin to say, "What do they all mean and how do you move forward?"

Mark: Boy, there are some analogies one can make to baking related to our profession. You know, being patient, right? And letting things rise.

Chuck: Yeah, sometimes I am not nearly patient enough in my rise. But yes, that is a big part of baking. In fact, I said to my wife the other day, "What I need to do when I bake is plan out a series of bakes along the way, so that while one thing is sitting and rising, I'm working on the next thing." You're right, it does align with where you are in PR, where you're kind of, yes, you might be working on a press release over here, but that's not going out, you know, for two months, three months, six weeks, whatever it is.

I also need to be doing the short- term pieces that's going to be driving things forward. But that's actually, I think, where, you know, if you want to kind of bring that analogy back out, where a lot of companies are missing the boat on PR. I know when I was doing my own agency, people would say to me, "Well, how will I know PR is working in the leads that I get?"

And I heard it described recently as: demand generation is my sales in this month and next month. PR and brand are my sales in six months to a year. Looking at that over the long term is very difficult to kind of parse out how much is PR and brand doing for you and how much is demand gen doing for you.

Those things have to work together, but you're right, there is a lot of patience involved in that PR and brand strategy because they are long term. You're not going to flip a switch and people are just going to know about you It's going to take some time.

Mark: And croissants are layered, and it's very fine layers, so maybe there's another analogy we could make there.

Chuck: I don't know if you've ever made croissants, but I was learning how to lock in butter which is a whole different thing. But yes, they are layered. There's a very careful folding process you need to do to get the right layers. You need to be patient. I was so proud of myself the other day when I made these croissants and I bit into it and I could see the honeycomb layer within it was like, Oh yes, I hit all those layers just right.

But again, you don't know until you're done, right? When I bake a bread, it really takes 24 hours for sourdough to mature and come to life. 

And you put it in the oven and at that very last step, you could burn it. You could put it in too early, too late. And suddenly all this work you've done for the last 24 hours, is shot. And that's it. Right? 

So there's a lot of businesses that operate like that, but PR is definitely the end of that process. 

You can't rely on a single launch to make or break a company. You have to do it over time because there's too many factors that could get in the way that are often outside of your control. I mean, how many of us were working on a launch and the week before something major happens in the world and it completely changes what you're trying to do, right? 

Happens to Hollywood all the time. How many times have you heard a movie getting delayed or moving around because another one was coming out? Or some major event happens in the world-- a news event, a death, something tragic-- and it's like, "Well, we can't release a movie into that environment." 

So there's a lot of places that operate like that. Businesses need to be aware that they exist in that market and they can't plan these things out and say, "We have to hit that date, otherwise we're going to die."

That's not a good way to run that company. You have to think long term and having a whole host of things moving throughout the year. It's a long growth process.

Mark: It's kind of interesting. I don't want to get bogged down in this subject, but ESG and DEI have cropped up in the last several years for good reason. Prior to that, it's almost like companies existed in a different world. Most of them didn't want to get involved in what was going on in the greater society.

Chuck: We dealt a little bit with that at my last position. During the George Floyd protests and Black Lives Matter, before the federal government declared Juneteenth a holiday, my CEO had decided: we are going to close the office on Juneteenth. And we are going to encourage our employees to do public service, to take some time to read and to think.

And we put out, you know, internally, a bunch of reading suggestions and so on. I was on the DEI committee, so I was part of that decision. And we sent an email off to our customers to let them know that we were going to be closed that day. And our customers were nationwide. Many of them were convenience stores in the Midwest and South.

And we had a very mixed response back. Some people were very supportive: "Well, this makes a lot of sense." Some people felt that we were politicizing the business world. And to my CEO's credit, he said, "This is what we're doing." We didn't lose any business over it. None of that happened. 

And a year later, the federal government made Juneteenth a holiday regardless.

So clearly, we were heading in the correct direction, but you know, he had to look at that response to say, "That's okay. I'm going to take that." And businesses do need to do that. They do need to realize that they live in a greater world and what they stand for matters.

I'm seeing that shift a little bit from where it was even a year or two ago, where people are getting a little less comfortable being out there. But I do think it's important and I do think people are making purchasing decisions, at least on the consumer side, in part by what your business stands for.

Mark: So this is about you, Chuck. So let's turn the focus back to you. And can you share one of your most important career accomplishments?

Chuck: It's interesting that there's actually a lot of things I can pull from that. Let me start recently and go backwards a little bit in time. I was very proud of the work that I did at Paytronix in launching the brand. 

Getting the opportunity to launch a brand of that magnitude where it was not just, "Hey, let's just change a few aspects of how our logo looks." But this was a complete change in what we looked like, what we sounded like, who we were, how we talked about ourselves-- across the board, the tool sets, the graphic tool sets, the conversations.

To have that opportunity to build that and to say, "How do I bring that out internally? How do I bring that out externally?" That was really interesting. I learned a tremendous amount from that project. I was proud of the work that I did there. I was proud of what it did for the company. There was an, you know, some immediate jumps in, you know, that, that brand awareness that happened.

You don't often see that, but you know, it was nice to see those Google searches go through the roof. So you certainly saw that impact right away. Then I was sitting in a sales meeting a few months later and the chief revenue officer stood up there and said, "this is one of the things that's really working in our company. Our brand is making our sales process move faster." 

There's some direct result. I can see that. 

I was also equally proud of some of the work I did with Greentown Labs, spending a couple of years launching them into the market and getting them going from a place of sitting empty, really, to something that became very much part of the fabric of the clean tech landscape, certainly in Boston and began to emerge as we were wrapping up that work emerged around the country.

They're now in Houston. And a lot of the branding and the concepts that we laid out for them, they still use today. You know, one of the things I remember we talked about early on was we were debating how do we talk about their tenants, right? Because they were charging rent. How do they talk about tenants?

And we were like, "Well, if we call them member companies and we give them a badge, that's going to help our SEO." And they still talk about member companies and alumni companies and that sort of thing as part of their language. I was very proud of that work. It seems so small and minor, but it changes the nature of the way that you think about yourself.

It changed nature of the way companies think about themselves within it. And then the work I did at N Squared was spectacular. Not only did we see the results and the people coming in, but one of my favorite projects was the Greenway Arts Project. We had this greenway that was really underutilized and we were looking at how do we drive awareness for the N Squared Innovation District and engage with the local community.

And I synced up with Studios Without Walls to bring in sculpture. We had looked at a lot of different directions about how to do this. And we brought in this for two years, we brought in this the sculpture exhibit and not only did it get the neighborhood excited, but it completely changed the way the neighborhood looked at the center of its being where it had been looking at other areas.

This was a neighborhood that didn't really have a good center of downtown. They began to look at that greenway as their center, which they hadn't before. And considering that there's a major development happening on the other side of that greenway, the fact that they changed the center of their site to that location will change long term, the way that that whole neighborhood sees itself. 

Mark: I think anybody who has listened to this podcast would know the answer to this question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. What do you think you can offer your next employer or client?

Chuck: I certainly bring a breadth of understanding of how people think. Right? And be able to get into that conversation in a very interesting way. You know, there's the tactical: writing skills, etc., down the line. 

But there's certainly then the broad sweep of: "Who are we? How do we get that to market? How do we encourage people to know about us? How do we raise our awareness?"

So I bring that kind of skill set. At the same time you know, I have a pretty solid track record of training people, so there's not only the ability to bring that out, but also build a team underneath me that can help execute on that and help grow that team and encourage that team and keep them engaged in storytelling.

One of the things that I do take great pride in is the ability to tell that story and the ability to kind of turn that story outward. At Paytronix, I changed some things around to create what I called story- driven marketing, where we went and dug into the customer stories, figured out where those stories were, how those matched with our brand message and then move those into the various content components, the eBooks, the webinars, etc., blog posts, case studies, and pushed those out through our own marketing that we needed to get out for demand gen, but that also then fed the PR.

So being able to create these systems that can run and can help build for the future is where my skill set is. And then, you need to build the infrastructure underneath it to maintain those long term. But certainly it's about: "How do you create a process that's going to continually benefit across multiple touch points?"

So that's a lot of what I try to bring to the table.

Mark: Well, Chuck, it was great chatting again. Always enjoy it. And I really hope this podcast helps you find your next great gig.

Chuck: I appreciate it. I appreciate the time.

Mark: I'm Mark Reed Edwards. Join me on the next Confessions of a Marketer.

Chuck Tanowitz: Seasoned strategic communications pro

Gem Pasant has over 15 years’ experience in Customer Leader roles in a range of organizations from start up to large corporate, typically in the insurance sector. 

Gem’s biggest area of interest is Customer Experience as culture—specifically how this links to company purpose, employee experience and sustainable growth through the practical application of the Net Promoter System.

Transcript

Mark Reed-Edwards: Welcome to this special episode of Confessions of a Marketer. I'm Mark Reed Edwards. 

We're back with this mini series of shows I've dubbed the Talent Showcase. These episodes will focus on people in marketing, communications, PR, and allied fields who are looking for their next opportunity. My guests will share their stories, successes, and how they can help their next employer or client.

Today, I'm joined by Gem Passant. 

Gem has over 15 years experience in customer leader roles in a range of organizations, from startup to large corporate, typically in the insurance sector. Gem's biggest area of interest is customer experience as culture, specifically how this links to company purpose, employee experience, and sustainable growth through the practical application of the Net Promoter System.

Gem, welcome.

Gem Passant: Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

Mark: It's wonderful to have you on the show. So can you tell me about yourself, your background, and career path?

Gem: Yeah, sure. So I actually started out in human resources. I read archaeology at university with some anthropology and got really into human behavior and thought human resources is the way for me to go. And then got onto a graduate scheme. So that's what we call in the UK, would maybe be a postgraduate scheme in the US, basically working for an employer on a fast track scheme for a large insurance company in the UK called Aviva.

And I planned to stay in that field and not long in realized that I actually didn't understand my customers enough, which was the internal customers of the organization. And the only way to do a good job working in HR was to go and experience what they were experiencing and work in the business itself.

And so I was looking for a change, I asked for a change, and was invited to apply to be Chief of Staff to the Chief Operations Officer for the UK business, which was a great role, a super fast track learning, if anyone's ever done Chief of Staff they'll know. And that gave me an opportunity to really learn and understand the business cause I was right in the thick of it and look for what my next opportunity would be.

And there was an area that had been unloved for some while, which was the customer experience function. That was back then not called CX, which is what we tend to call it now. It was quite early days for having a customer experience function. And it had been run by somebody for a long time who'd moved into a different role and then there'd just been an absence of leadership for a while.

So I took that role and changed quite a few things within the team and propelled it into a new stage of growth, I guess you could say. But stayed there for four years, absolutely adored that role. I was then asked to do various other things, I think that's what happens when you work in a large organization and you're known to be flexible.

So I went on to do all sorts of other things, from head of internal comms, to more chief of staff roles, to running large billion pound transformation programs in the program office. But I then decided to have a break from all of that and retrained as a neuro linguistic programming coach.

So I quit that role--quit Aviva--and went and lived in Thailand, which is where I met my now husband. That's a different story for a different podcast probably. And then I came back and did some more customer experience stuff for another insurer, a slightly smaller one called Liverpool Victoria here in the UK.

And then I went back to Thailand. My husband and I decided that we were going to move back to Thailand together, because in the interim he'd gone to live in San Francisco. So we made a home together in Thailand, and that was a really interesting period of time because it included COVID. And so I did some consultancy work when I was there, but probably the most interesting thing I did was that the British Consul actually asked me to coordinate the community response for all of the Western Consulates for the, the Western communities in Chiang Mai--lots of older people, lots of retired people, lots of people who it was hard to reach out to, who they were genuinely really worried about health wise. So that was a thing that kept me really busy and active in my kind of final months in Thailand. And then my husband and I decided to move back to the UK at the request of my parents, to to live near them.

And I got my most recent permanent role, which was back again in Customer Experience as Global Customer Experience Lead for Many Pets, which was another insurance company, but this time pet insurance and a start up/ scale up. And then I left there almost a year ago now, and I've been self employed doing CX consultancy and short contracts since then.

Mark: Wow. Customer experience is just fascinating having worked in marketing pretty much my entire career, certainly the last 30 plus years, it's embedded in everything we do in marketing and we didn't even realize it. So, it's great to hear your perspective.

Gem: Yeah. Thanks.

Mark: So, what is one of your most important career accomplishments? 

Gem: The things I feel strongest about are the things that often don't have the greatest data points attached. And that's all the leadership stuff. So it's building teams, not just that are high performing, but that genuinely care about each other and act like a team and support each other and deliver phenomenal outcomes.

So I feel like I'd be remiss if I didn't say anything I talk about in career outcomes is always because of a phenomenal team that has worked with me or around me. But I guess the things that have the tangibility to them --a really good example, it's a, it's a little bit of an older example now, but it was a, a huge success at the time-- which was when I worked at Aviva in the head of customer experience role.

Me and my team implemented Net Promoter Score, which most people will know about now, but back then was quite an early use of that metric, to understand how our customers were feeling about their experiences with us. And Net Promoter Score, for anybody who doesn't know, has a range of minus 100 to plus 100 as a score.

Financial services typically would hover, at that time, around the zero. The benchmark overall is a bit higher these days, but around that time. So we implemented it across the board and we discovered that in some of our contact centers, the ones that were doing the sales and the servicing, the initial scores were holding steady at minus 37 from launch and a few months in they were still there.

And so we dug into that information and tried to work out what was going on. And ultimately it was all to do with the types of calls being handled, where they were handled, by whom they were handled and with what kind of experience those people had. And what we recognized was that actually we needed to move work around and we needed to train people differently and we needed to move some of the work that was being handled offshore back onshore.

Some of the work that was being handled in the UK actually would be better handled by our Indian colleagues. And so by understanding what skill sets people had, what they preferred to do, and the types of training that they took to best, we were able to move work around so that actually everybody was playing to their strengths, and that really came across in the customer experience.

And we did all of that in less than a year, and the Net Promoter Score went to plus 12 from minus 37 in a period of just over, uh, six months. Which is a huge change and if anybody's ever tried to shift a Net Promoter Score before, you will know that typically you can move it a couple of points by tweaking around the edges. To move it so strongly, you need to do something quite radical. But we did that by listening to what our customers were telling us about the experience that we were giving them. And, not that they knew what the answer was, but we worked out what we thought an answer could be. And of course the teams went on to do more after that and continued to improve it.

But I think for me that's always been a really powerful example of how when you listen to your customers --and by the way, your employees, because everything they were telling us was very similar to what the customers were telling us-- that's how you can really shift the experience that both your customers and your employees are having.

Mark: So what do you think you can offer your next employer or client?

Gem: Interesting. I think it's sometimes a challenge when you have quite a broad brush background because you don't always know what it is because often it's things that people perceive in you rather than you know about yourself. And what I mean by that is I don't know that it's always the technical stuff.

So what I've learned about myself in this last year or so of being self employed is that actually the things that I offer that are my strengths are Looking at really complex problems and being able to see through them quite quickly and then taking customer data, employee data and other kinds of data and problem solving.

That doesn't sound like a pure customer experience type of behavior, and it's not. It comes from understanding my HR background, my operational background, my program management background. But pulling all that together to understand what is in the best interest of an organization commercially and for their customers and for their employees.

That, for me, I think I've worked out is my sweet spot, being able to look at all three of those areas together and get them to play nicely together to do something that's for the good of all. 

Mark: Gem, I really appreciate you sharing your story. It was fascinating to hear. And I really hope this helps you find great gigs.

Gem: Thanks very much for asking me.

Mark: I'm Mark Reed Edwards. Join me on the next Confessions of a Marketer. 

Marketing in Retail

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