Tom Holmes, creativebrief Founder & Chairman, talks to Harry Meakin, Tanqueray Marketing Manager – Diageo Western Europe and Marketing Academy 2013 alumnus.
It all started at a career event that L’Oreal put on at Harry’s university, the team sent to entice them were fun and seemed to love their jobs. Not to mention that the graduate trainees were all very beautiful and Harry was instantly popular with his female flatmates for returning with a bag full of moisturisers! Harry also applied to other graduate programmes such as Diageo and Unilever.
Miraculously he wasn’t found out and he accepted onto the L’Oreal Management Training programme for Sept 2004, it was a brilliant place to start. This led to a number of roles across sales and marketing over the next 2.5 years, culminating as the National Account Manager on L’Oreal Paris for Asda, where he also met the Mrs – thanks to L’Oreal!
Harry always wanted to be a marketer, but a wise old mentor, said it might be a good call to cut his teeth in sales. This has been very valuable. In 2007 he moved to Diageo as Assistant Brand Manager for Smirnoff Vodka, a move to a new company and into a new function was challenging and exciting in equal measure. At Diageo, he has had 7 consumer marketing jobs in 7 years across Smirnoff, Gordon’s, Bell’s, Johnnie Walker, Single Malt Scotch Whiskies and Tanqueray Gin. Diageo is an amazing company and Harry is very proud to work there.
Why did you choose a career in marketing?
I had no idea at the time, but marketing has a healthy balance of creativity and competition. I think these 2 things are what made me initially very attracted to the industry. I love to compete, having been very into sport from an early age, and finding creative ways to win has always given me butterflies. Marketing is about making it happen, you make tangible things, be that product or communication. This is fun!
What do you think makes a successful career in marketing?
There are 3 things that are important (probably many more!) firstly, it is valuable to gain a diverse range of experience: Understanding your consumer, the retail environment, what you can do with digital (especially digital nowadays), products vs. services – mainstream vs. premium. Secondly, I think it’s important to deliver brilliant commercial results (often that involves risk and being persuasive), with these come more investment and bigger opportunities. Thirdly, it’s extremely helpful to be passionate about what you are doing.
And who is a great example of this?
Richard Branson
What do you think are the main challenges facing marketers today?
The pace of change in the way we do marketing is a big challenge; digital is becoming the bedrock, the one thing that forms part of almost everything consumers do. Marketers are expected to keep up with the acceleration of change that the digital world is leading. And so we should! Actually I think this is the most exciting challenge, as we just need to crack on and stay ahead. For those that embrace the change there are more opportunities to gain a competitive advantage.
Marketers must continually recruit consumers; some brands lose up to 50% of their consumers a year to other categories or competitors. Diageo recently did some work that identified that Smirnoff Vodka was losing the equivalent of the entire population of Birmingham every year! The challenge is to restlessly find ways to recruit, so that you are filling that “leaking bucket”. That too is an exciting challenge to have.
How do you keep up with constant stream of innovation in marketing comms?
The honest answer is I probably don’t keep up, but not through lack of effort! Firstly I try to give myself the best chance by attempting to be a technologically savvy consumer, the best way to understand stuff is to use it yourself, I have become quite addicted to Twitter, apologies for anyone who unfortunately chose to follow me. There are only about 40 of you!
I tend to keep an active eye on brands that are really innovative in this space, brands like Pepsi Max, Paddy Power and Heineken. Those brands that are looking to push the boundaries in comms.
As a gin team we have a bi weekly get together called “Gin Loves” where each team member brings a piece of work that they love and we chat about it. This keeps us close to the innovative and best work out there. I think we stole this idea from one of our agencies!
There is a watch out though, that one could become overly obsessed with innovation in marketing comms and lose sight of what you are trying to achieve and crucially what is the one thing you are trying to do or say as a brand. Staying true to that 1 thing is as important as innovation of comms.
To read the rest of the interview please click here
