What makes a successful marketing leader? In this interview series, Thomas Barta explores together with leading CMOs the secrets of marketing leadership, what works, and what doesn’t. This time, let’s listen to the views of Claire Cronin, Virgin Holiday’s CMO.
Thomas Barta: Hi, Clare. Many thanks for your time. Let’s start with a basic question: What’s great about being a leader in marketing?
Claire Cronin: For me it’s about connecting everyone to a higher order purpose. Every department and individual is motivated to some degree by metrics. But our marketing frames the higher purpose for everyone in the organization, so people can truly understand what Simon Sinek calls “the why” and care deeply about their contribution to “the what.” In 2016, for example, we reframed our purpose to “Enabling everyone to take on the world”. By the way, Thomas, where have you always wanted to go?
Barta: New Zealand.
Cronin: Great! Typically when we ask that question, everyone names somewhere far-flung and fabulous, like the Maldives or Thailand. But when you ask them where they plan to go on their next holiday, they’ll name a place much closer to home. And when we ask what’s stopping you, people typically say that they need to first save more money and then do more planning — because they’ve spent years dreaming about their ideal holiday and they don’t want it to be a disappointment. That fear of disappointment means they tend to pick a holiday destination that is safe and familiar.
Our goal as marketing leaders is to help customers take on the world. The notion of making people’s holiday dreams a reality, is an exciting proposition for employees at every level of the company.
Barta: What is marketing’s reputation inside your company’s C-Suite?
Cronin: We’re seen as a growth engine. In the last two years, we’ve helped grow company profit twenty-fold. Our brand health is at its peak and more customers are choosing to go on holiday with us than ever before. I believe the main reason we’re seen as a growth engine is that we’re seen as visionaries — we set the bar for where the company needs to get to in order to build sustainable profits.
Barta: Did marketing always have that strong reputation?
Cronin: No. Marketing, in the past, used to be just a communications function at Virgin Holidays. In 2014, my managing director streamlined eleven business functions into five. He was a big fan of Jim Collins’s “From Good to Great” and put significant focus on creating macro-board roles that minimized duplication. He also wanted to dial up our customer focus, so he put customer experience and marketing together, then recruited one director to do both.
Barta: What was your most defining leadership experience?
Cronin: Hmm — good question. It was probably when I first stepped out of marketing to lead a wider business function. In my previous company, NetJets, the CEO in 2011 asked me, “We’ve got a real problem in customer service in Lisbon. You’ve fixed our marketing, so I think you can fix customer service too.”
I was a bit taken aback. Throughout my career, I’ve been focused on getting bigger marketing roles. Moving laterally wasn’t really on my mind, and this was a really big role. Leading 160 multi-lingual people. It was really the nuts and bolts of aviation operations, and I’d never worked or lived in another country. But I agreed, and it worked! Suddenly, I was accountable for things like client compensation and hard aviation metrics like on-time performance. This experience broadened my perspective as a marketer and member of the C-suite.
Barta: You talk a lot about change. How do you get things done in your company?
Cronin: If you have strong customer insights and you’ve been successful in the past, people are more likely to trust your plans. But a crisis helps too. NetJets, for example, was at a real transition point. I joined in 2009, at the height of the economic crisis. The company plunged from double-digit growth to double-digit decline. I think when things go wrong, companies are more open to new ideas. That’s when I can say, “Look, I know you’ve always done it this way, but would you consider doing this?” You have to be brave and visionary in a crisis.
Barta: What do you think your biggest future leadership challenge will be?
Cronin: Responding to the challenge of low-cost carriers and the commoditization of long-haul travel. It’s already happened in the short-haul space and we need to defend and extend our leadership position by adding real value for our customers. We can’t let long-haul become a race to the bottom for the cheapest headline price.
Barta: How will you keep that focus?
Cronin: By measuring it. Like many companies we operate a balance scorecard and we align everyone’s priorities behind that. Customer advocacy accounts for the single biggest component of the scorecard, sending a clear signal to all employees that acquiring customers and delighting them is our number one focus.
Barta: Have your customers’ wants ever conflicted with what your CEO wants?
Cronin: Not really. In Virgin, the whole C-suite is focused on creating a fun, frictionless customer experience, which ultimately drives customer satisfaction and profit. Conflict comes when a customer experience takes longer to build and involves a certain amount of risk and discovery. For example, we’re currently exploring online voice search. That could deliver a tremendous customer experience and be really innovative. But the cost of perfecting that experience and using tools like IBM Watson is incredibly high. We need to strike a balance between being innovative and being profitable. We can’t echo Amazon’s approach and take such a long-term view on profit. So I’m running small tests to understand complexity and returns, for example, earlier this month we released a small-scale Alexa holiday search app.
Barta: When you think about how you lead today—has this changed over time since you started?
Cronin: To be honest, I haven’t seen a massive change. Ok, I use more tech-tools in managing my team. Online platforms like Slack and Yammer have become more important in reaching remote work forces. But I think the fundamentals of leadership are largely unchanged.
Barta: How has digital changed leadership in marketing?
Cronin: When I was at Barclays in 2001, digital was all about using technology to increase self-service, drive down costs, and establish cost leadership to drive competitive advantage. Today my role is more about how we use technology to unlock better customer experiences to drive profitability.
Barta: Did you ever break the rules to make important stuff happen?
Cronin: When I was at NetJets, I broke the rules by creating an advertising campaign starring Warren Buffett. I didn’t have permission to advertise with him. But he was our biggest shareholder and a vocal fan. I figured if it was successful, he’d forgive me. It was only one ad at first, in one title—the Financial Times. And I was pretty confident it would work. It quickly became the most successful campaign in our history and he was typically self-effacing and bashful about its popularity. He kindly signed a handful of copies for me and we had them framed and sent out to our best customers.
Barta: Claire, what leadership advice do you like to give to others?
Cronin: I would echo the CEO of Netflix, who recently said, “Don’t tolerate brilliant jerks. The effect on teamwork is too high.” I think leading a team is like leading an orchestra. All the instruments need to work together in harmony and you can’t afford to have one solo superstar. The team’s health must be protected as the top priority. I think that was true back in 2001 when I graduated. I think it’s true today.
Barta: Claire, many thanks for your time.
Marketing leadership expert and keynote speaker Thomas Barta is a former McKinsey partner and the author of the new leadership book The 12 Powers of a Marketing Leader (with Patrick Barwise).
Full Interview can also be read here
