AllSaints’ global head of performance marketing and e-commerce shares his career journey with Tim Healey. They discuss the power of trust, diversity and joy in teams and how the fashion brand is balancing rapid growth with staying true to its rock-and-roll spirit.
You’ve worked at American Express, John Lewis, Barclays Bank, EE, Audible (part of Amazon), HSBC, Hyperoptic, WEX, and you are now global head of performance marketing and e-commerce at AllSaints. Could you tell our readers how you found marketing and give us a whistle-stop tour of your career?
I first found my love of marketing when I was at high school. While studying product design I felt marketing was the intersection between designers, products, businesses and consumers – if you didn’t have good marketing, you wouldn’t actually be able to drive sales or get a healthy commercial return.
I did an internship at Goldman Sachs while at uni, but that just reaffirmed that actually I wanted to be in marketing and be more consumer-focused: a mix of creative and analytical. I joined a graduate scheme in American Express and I’ve been fortunate to kick-start my career with a lot of well-recognized brands.
I loved AmEx, but I wanted to work with different brands and discover what life was like elsewhere, and that’s why I’ve been quite open to fixed term contracts, maternity covers or just temporary roles because an organization is going through a restructure. Moving through different businesses, I realized my passion was for acquisition. Since then, that’s what I’ve focused on: driving sales or demand generation roles.
Jay and his team at the Retail Week awards
I tackled a couple of roles in challenger brands because I wanted to see what it was like being in a smaller-scale up environment. After that, I realized the missing cog from my marketing experience was a proper direct-to-consumer role, so my next gig is a maternity cover, where I am now, at AllSaints. I have learned that fixed-term contracts force you to deliver at a pace with a deadline.
Leaping between all of these different businesses, I have seen that marketing issues fall into two areas: it is either a traffic or a conversion rate issue. ‘Traffic’, in the broadest sense, means: are you attracting the right people, through the right channels, and with both a short and long term horizon for brand health? Conversion rate is ensuring the customer is on the right journey to the right product, and ensuring they understand the brand’s value proposition.
All Saints clothes stores: rock’n’roll influenced clothing in an industrial setting
What’s the offer at AllSaints?
We were recently awarded Fashion Retailer of the Year by Retail Week, and you can see why.
AllSaints is a fashion brand that is in a league of its own. Not typical high street, not only luxury, but an attitude. AllSaints clothing is more about identity. It’s a feeling that our clothes give people: the ability to embrace individuality; to wear something ‘a bit edgier’ that has that rock and roll spirit. Other high street brands don’t sell the kinds of clothes that we do.
AllSaints is only 30 years old, but there’s a lot of brand love for it. We’re going through transformation because there’s a lot of opportunity for AllSaints to grow. So it’s an exciting time to be here.
What does the next year at AllSaints look like from your perspective?
Growing while staying true to your brand is always a challenge, but I think we’re striking the balance well – getting closer to customers and letting those insights shape our plans, while continuing to inspire them with products they won’t find anywhere else.
Our legacy is rooted in music, and we’re proud to keep leaning into culture – from intimate events with emerging artists to partnerships with global names like Imagine Dragons and the Williams Formula 1 team. That’s an area we’re really excited to build on.
There’s always been an edge to our product lines – far beyond just leather jackets – and part of our job is to keep showing customers the different ways our well-crafted pieces can fit into their lives.
All Saints’ Leather Collection continues to be a cornerstone of their clothing offer
How is the marketing team structured at AllSaints?
Our marketing team is pretty modest in size, but I think that’s because all of the employees at AllSaints are seen as part of our brand ambassadors. Store managers are referred to as brand leaders, and wear the brand with incredible pride. My performance marketing team sits in e-commerce, with different channel managers – across paid search, SEO, paid social and affiliates – and I have peers across the business leading the PR, organic social & CRM teams. We look after the UK, US, Europe & ‘Rest of World’ (which is largely North America). It’s a lean team, so we’re kept busy!
Drawing on your leadership expertise, what has your career taught you that helps to make a great team?
Great teams are built on three things: trust, diversity and joy. Trust is ‘two-way’. It takes time to build that trust and leaders have to show their own vulnerability so that their team members bring themselves to work and feel safe to do so. Human connection really makes the day job a lot easier.
Diversity is key: I consciously try and hire for diversity and not as a box-ticking exercise. I need different types of people in my team to challenge me. Based on personality/behavioral charts, I know I am a ‘red’. Therefore, I need ‘some greens’ for balance.
Finally: joy. I think fun is really important at work. When people enjoy being together and working together, that collaboration delivers much stronger outputs. I have seen the power of something as simple as ‘a team mingle,’ where you play your favorite TV advert or maybe have the opportunity to learn interesting things about people. It all comes down to trust, diversity and joy.
The F1 Williams x All Saints collaboration
In terms of diversity, how have you found your career in marketing?
I think there are always moments where you wonder, am I being evaluated same way as peers? I think there is a huge amount of unconscious bias within all of us. It’s easier to relate to people that are more like you.
In professional environments, I’ve experienced presenting an idea and it’s not taken seriously but then someone else says it, and it’s suddenly being implemented the next day. Other times, if I’ve done something that’s a little bit riskier, I am held to a stricter standard of discipline than someone else who is given more leeway.
More broadly, there are adverts from some really big brands out there at the moment, which I think miss the mark. The recent Sanex advert comes to mind with cracked black skin turning to a white person with smooth skin. It’s very subtle, but it feels like it reinforces a harmful stereotype. Advertising really does impact behaviors and attitudes. How can we stop perpetuating those narratives?
I think everyone agrees that we need more diverse perspectives in the room. I think we need ethnicity and disability salary equity. I think that is coming. The gender pay gap used to be about 18% and that’s narrowed to about 10-11% due to the changes in legislation driving transparency. Ethnicity pay gap, however, is still stagnant at about 12% based on Office of National Statistics results.
That said, with the internet and modern tools, it has never been easier to test creative executions with diverse audiences: you can even go ‘old school’, just get a load of people in a room, give them lunch and ask their opinions. It doesn’t have to be expensive to get consumer feedback. We need to encourage more testing like this, rather than endlessly executing at pace.
With technology advancements, and the ever-increasing creator economy, I think there will be a democratization of who delivers creative for brands. Historically, a lot of the big ad agencies were run by a 50-year-old white guy at the top, and I think as the creator economy takes a growing share of spend, it is inevitable that we will see more diverse perspectives creating adverts and influencing those brand messages.
How do you manage to stay afloat or maybe even surf the tidal wave of marketing technology?
With so many changes, it can feel hard to stay on top of it all. I make time to attend events; I subscribe to newsletters. I consciously block out time in the diary to catch up on stuff. There’s tons of information out there: it’s almost rude or neglectful to not keep up with it. This “always learning culture” must be embedded in your team too.
In previous roles, we blocked out half a day every month for the whole team to go and learn and do it in a way that best works best for them – whether they would read a book, listen to podcasts or attend events – and then we would come together and share what we’ve learned.
It’s important to stay open to knowledge and learning. I recently did a course with Oxford Union AI. We learned about the history of artificial intelligence and learning. What stood out to me is that creativity is a novel combination of ideas. That’s why I think there’s always a role for humans. Humans provide a unique thinking that can’t be replicated.
At heart, I’m an optimist. I think AI will drive productivity and enable businesses to be more efficient. Marketing is such an exciting industry to be in because there’s so many use cases for AI. Advanced tools will mean media management becomes more self-optimizing. Brands will need to lean in and give more data to the tech and platforms. Creativity will become more contextual rather than broad brush.
On the other side: our digital experiences need to improve: going to a website and getting cookies pop up is so annoying; clicking though to make a purchase, and finding that item is out of stock… Brands need to start using technology more in order to improve end-to-end experiences.
AI will help to improve cost efficiencies but we need people to make key decisions around strategy and insight.
All Saints online portal: the web store
Documentary maker Adam Curtis said (I’m paraphrasing): “AI is the ghost of our time. It constantly serves up the past and presents it as a solution for the future.” Discuss?
I think there’s truth in that – AI is only as good as the data it’s trained on, which inevitably reflects the past. If we rely on it blindly, we risk recycling old ideas rather than pushing into new territory. Innovation requires risk-taking and bold thinking, which technology alone can’t provide.
That’s why human judgment is so important. People with deep knowledge of their craft can spot when to challenge the default and when to take calculated risks that open up new possibilities.
It’s also why I’m a big advocate of moving between industries – if you only ever go from bank to bank, you’re likely to recycle banking ideas. But if you go from banking to fashion, you bring fresh perspectives that the category hasn’t seen before.
So yes, AI may serve up the past – but it’s the human element that ensures we don’t get stuck there.
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Tell us about a customer research discovery you made that you found surprising?
Well, first of all, I think customer research is often underutilized – it’s too easily dismissed as a “nice to have.” In reality, it can uncover angles you might have overlooked or deprioritized. A recent example for us came from a piece of psychographic research we ran with Croud and ImpactSense, looking at how customer mindsets influence decision-making.
What really surprised me was how strongly the AllSaints customer overindexed in the ‘Curious Explorer’ segment – 36% compared to 25% Nat Rep. This group responds equally to emotional and rational triggers, which has real implications for how we communicate. It’s encouraged us to broaden our paid social approach – not only using our more polished, shoot-led assets, but also complementing them with a diverse mix of content creators and customer testimonials. That way, we’re not just showing the product, but also building social proof and showcasing real use cases that customers can see themselves in.
All Saints’ series of music events continues to connect the brand with cutting-edge entertainment
What myth about marketing would you most like to bust?
It’s the classic: ‘marketing is the coloring-in department.’ Marketing is often seen as purely the execution function, whereas marketing should have a seat at the table when strategy or longer-term planning is being done. Marketing should be used in partnership with other business functions and to drive commercial action.
I’ve witnessed ideas being launched and falling flat because they were just done for ego: they were something an individual wanted to see happen, rather than pausing to consider the consumer and market dynamics. Marketing has the power to inform business strategy and enrich business briefs – even take them in a slightly different direction – but too often we fall victim to whoever has the loudest voice in the room.
When data and insight are brought in, the creativity and problem solving is better. Where marketing is part of the mix from those early stage, the creative execution and media choices will be much stronger.
What advice would you give your younger self if you could go back in time?
People probably would look at my CV and say that my advice to myself should be: ‘be patient’. But I feel proud and happy that I made the decisions that I did to move between businesses. I gained new skills and experienced different industries, or at times, left a culture that didn’t serve me or align with my values.
It can be tough to leave a role and a regular pay cheque. I think you have to have confidence in yourself, but also believe that things will figure themselves out. My advice to myself would be: be brave and trust your inner voice, because you have to nurture that voice, otherwise the other voice, ‘the Debbie-downer’, takes over. Know you can do it. You have to be your own biggest cheerleader.
I’d also advise myself to say ‘yes’ more. There are opportunities I didn’t take up when I was younger that I do regret now. When I was in between roles, I started painting again. My Instagram is @streaksbyjay. I do commissions for friends because there’s not enough wall space in my house. These days, I serve on a couple of advisory boards. These sorts of ‘Extracurricular’ experiences give me joy. Connecting with different people fuels my creative thinking: if you’re just going home to work, work to home, that’s a pretty dull life.
I also believe that people who have a lot of intersectionalities, like myself – being Pakistani and from a Muslim and lower socio-economic background – have much to offer. Sometimes you end up worrying a lot about what other people think of you, but I’ve come to realize my differences are actually my superpower, and we shouldn’t water them down to fit in. Code switching and masking can be exhausting. So, advice to my younger self would definitely include: lean into your own perspective, personally and professionally.
The Japanese House performing live at an All Saints Session
What question would you like me to ask the next senior marketer that I interview?
Do you believe in kismet (destiny) and that things happen for a reason?
Your question from a senior marketer is: what was the last cultural moment you experienced and that stopped you in your tracks? (Cannot be an advert.)
I went to see the DJ Black Coffee play a set at The Royal Naval College, on the Thames. It’s a Unesco World Heritage Site. It was just such an unexpected place to hear such great contemporary music and a state-of-the-art sound system with the skyline of London in the background and a sunset backdrop.
Everyone was so ecstatically happy. There was this real feeling of music bringing people together. Everyone you looked at looked back at you and made that ‘little nod,’ that silent acknowledgment: “Yeah, this is good, right?” It was like a pop-up mini-festival, in an unexpected, amazing architectural environment – it was phenomenal.
If there’s one thing you know about marketing, it is…?
It’s not static. It’s dynamic: constantly changing and moving. My strength is about allocating resources. I view marketing missions through the lens of the people and budgets needed to improve business outcomes. Having seen marketing in action in lots of different businesses, I can tell quite quickly what’s a good idea and what’s not.
You might die tomorrow so make it worth your while. Worth Your While is an independent creative agency helping brands do spectacular stuff people like to talk about. wyw.agency.
This interview has already appeared in The Drum. Discover the best campaigns, industry insights and interviews from world-leading marketers, creatives and more.
