The commercial and marketing director tells Tim Healey why he moved from FMCG to elite sport and goes on to discuss building data-led growth, evolving sponsorship, women’s cricket and how The Hundred and global partnerships will shape the club’s next phase.
You worked at Procter & Gamble. You pivoted into sport, and have worked at Uefa, ICC World Cup 2019 and you have been CMO for Harlequins. You are now the Surrey County Cricket Club commercial & marketing director. Please walk us through your career.
I started my career in FMCG, working in sales and marketing at Procter & Gamble – I had various roles living across Europe, running national and international regions (from Ireland to Central and Eastern Europe, Middle and Eastern Africa. I spent five years in Geneva as part of this
I worked across a range of brands, including Charmin toilet paper, Sunny Delight, Pringles, Pantene hair care, and Oral-B – all sorts! The blend of marketing and commercial was really interesting: these were all brands that wanted to be innovative, but within complex networks of stakeholders.
10 years of experience in understanding different consumers, different needs, adapting plans, refining the overall commercial and marketing framework to be successful in those different markets, grounded me across marketing and commercial to become quite entrepreneurial.
I then transitioned into sport – a passion of mine. The opportunity was presented to move from Geneva back to England to take up a role leading the marketing function at the English Football Association (FA) at Wembley Stadium and its 17 brands/core programs.
The FA wanted someone who had been trained and coached to have a strategic mindset. Well, P&G certainly did that for me: I brought a mindset to think commercially about how to develop our brands and carefully commercialize while driving fan engagement.
Initially, at the FA, my job was to build out five-year brand plans across our core properties – from England, the FA Cup and grassroots initiatives, to ensure that we had purpose, clear objectives and measurable KPIs. Once established, we would then integrate other functions, like commercial partnerships, broadcast communications and grassroots participation to create holistic plans.
After two successful and transformative years at the FA, I was asked to move back to Switzerland and do the same thing for Uefa: create an integrated marketing function that could be more than just a branding department and unlock commercial value through fan engagement.
There were some remarkable projects to be part of – developing the first-ever strategic plan for women’s football to transform the game, building a promotional department for the Europa League and Champions League, building promotional plans for the men’s and women’s Euros and working with the commercial function to create integrated partnership plans. Across the five years, our research and insights, branding, promotional marketing, broadcast, communications and commercial functions came together to act in unity, driving value.
In 2017, I chose to move back to the UK and start a family. The ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 job came up: this was creating a local organizing committee over a two-year period. I was employee number three and during that time we grew to 115 people. We built the structure, vision, strategy, agency network and promotional plans around the tournament to build awareness, engagement and monetise through tickets, hospitality and commercial partnerships. We built up and delivered the tournament, which famously ended up with Ben Stokes winning it for England and lifting the trophy. It was an amazing moment for cricket and for the country.
In autumn 2019, I took on what was due to be a short-term consultancy role at Harlequins as the chief marketing officer. Things escalated rapidly with a swift change of CEO, and we faced Covid, which gave us the impetus to implement a digital-first, fan-engagement-led strategy that was interlinked with a commercial growth plan. As a leadership team we created a new club vision, renewed club culture – on and off the pitch and we completely transformed the club over 18 months to the point of winning The Double, selling out all our men’s home matches, achieving record Membership, developing the biggest commercial program in the league, achieving the highest digital following and setting a series of new records for Harlequins along the way. It was a pleasure to be a small part of something so special.
I decided it was time to return to my cricket roots as I looked to build my career with a more commercial focus and at the start of the year I joined Surrey County Cricket Club. My role is to integrate a £65m revenue business, which includes a £10m conference and events business, as well as hosting our domestic cricket teams and the England teams. I oversee marketing, communications, commercial, research & insight and hospitality alongside our C&E business.
It’s an exciting time to be working at the club. We’ve launched a women’s team this year, have delivered some major capex projects in the last six months and are now looking forward to concluding a partnership with Reliance, which owned the Mumbai Indians, to create a new joint venture based around The Hundred. There are considerable growth opportunities for Surrey.
Post-Covid, Surrey has experienced a return to impressive revenue growth – including growth in ticket sales, hospitality, retail, catering for major events like The Ashes and The World Test Championship Finals. With all that in mind, what does the next year look like from a marketing perspective?
We typically look in four year cycles and in that context there is huge momentum and opportunity. This year is massive with India touring. There’s a huge year around The Ashes tournament in two years’ time too, when cricket tends to grip the nation and while the in-between years drive less cricket revenue, they are offset by a large conference and events business across the year, but the reality is that cricket never really stops and we need to continually push forward.
With this in mind we’ve a huge opportunity around reinvigorating the T20 competition, growing our women’s team and leading the growth of The Hundred into a new era of ownership with our partnership with Reliance. In the coming months we need to think about our team name, the colours we play in and take on ownership of marketing, ticketing and communication. There is a great deal to be done!
I need to make sure that my team is resourced to take on those new challenges, as this will open up huge new opportunities for us in the Asian market in particular.
Unlocking the future fan base and the future commercial revenue will ensure that we grow the club to the next level. Beyond the cricket side of the business, our conference and events business is probably one of the biggest, certainly nationally, around a sporting stadium.
364 days a year, our business is hosting all levels of large events. We’re investing in reinventing spaces around the ground, such as our brand-new world-class dressing rooms, in which we now host dining experiences. We’re looking at hospitality spaces being completely redesigned and brand collaborations.
The world of sports sponsorship has changed dramatically. If you sponsor certain F1 teams, for example, they provide a raft of services to support brands operating at this level. What’s your view on the development of sponsorship and association with brands?
We’re definitely seeing our partners evolve. Our huge point of difference, when I look across most sports clubs, is that we’ve invested heavily in our digital infrastructure – our CRM tools and ability to connect the various parts of the business.
Our ability to process data and understand fan behavior is up there with the top three or four Premier League football clubs. We serve our commercial partners with insight to develop activations and connections, which are the way that we best unlock value.
Tell us about your marketing team – how is it structured?
We’ve a lean marketing team with a huge focus on data and insights, which ensures that our marketing is laser-targeted. The content function sits alongside marketing to ensure our communication is engaging and consistent across channels.
Drawing on your leadership expertise. What has your career taught you that helps to maintain a great marketing team?
I think everybody needs to know their role and the purpose of their team. I’ve always started with sharing a really clear vision on how our planned activities link to the clubs or the larger organization’s goals. This then feeds into each individual’s job description, KPIs and objectives. Once that is completely clear, we can measure our activities against what success looks like for the club.
That’s the business part, but actually, a great team is all about the people. I’ve always tried to find people who are up for a challenge; people who are willing to listen, learn, think innovatively and take some chances. I think sport is a really safe space, where trying things out, learning and evolving quickly is really the fastest way to grow.
I’ve been lucky enough to work with some really amazing individuals and the best people are the ones who have really embraced those key principles and taken the chance to evolve their roles and remit. In doing so, they have made mistakes and learnt at speed, enabling us to grow the business.
What is your first memory of a marketing success that you were a part of, where you felt this is the role for me?
As part of my internship in the Tesco team at Procter & Gamble, I utilized coupon marketing plans to engage previous purchasers of Sunny Delight to drive purchases of Pringles. It was intriguing to see how data could drive purchasing behaviors!
A common issue among senior marketers is tackling ‘silo mentality.’ How do you avoid it?
I understand the challenge of silos, especially in sports clubs, where there can be a tendency to think solely about an individual area of the business. Creating a winning marketing team takes work – and it often needs face-to-face connections, real-time interactions and clear project timelines.
A good example this week is that we’ve just qualified for a home quarter-final for Surrey in the Blast T20 competition, and it would be very easy for each of my teams to work in silos around this. One needs to sell tickets, another to sell hospitality, one needs to generate great social media assets and gather player content.
By coming together as a team, planning how we can work to serve each other, aligning timelines and plans – all of this elevates our joint activities and in turn, this makes a huge impact and difference to everybody’s success.
Could you tell us about a customer research discovery you made that you found surprising?
I think the most intriguing and insightful discovery I have made was part of a strategic plan to grow women’s football. We had worked with a researcher who had evaluated teenage girls and the challenges they face growing up. He had found that girls in early teenage years can feel a lack of self-confidence and, through peer pressure, often give up sport, for fear of being judged.
The insight was that we could be using the power of team sports to connect girls – to help improve their self-confidence; to encourage groups of girls to stay together and form friendships for life and also stay fit and healthy. That research informed our campaign: “We play strong”, which is still on the sleeves of all of the players competing in the Uefa Women’s Euros today.
How do you surf the tsunami of rapidly evolving marketing technology?
It is certainly an interesting challenge. With so many options around AI, data and automation for example, one can struggle to stay afloat. Sports clubs as a whole, (excluding the most successful premiership teams) do not have the budget to endlessly innovate and experiment with expensive tools.
To counter this, we try to be innovative where we can, and simultaneously watch other global sports clubs closely – notably Premier League, NFL and AFL teams: what are they testing – what are their early wins? We note the successes and apply them to our business.
What myth about marketing would you most like to bust?
Don’t change it for the sake of change. I feel there is a desire to continually change look and feel, update campaigns and perhaps evolve too quickly, sensing our consumers may be bored with our creative. In reality, in sport, budgets are so limited that campaigns often lack awareness, never mind achieving fatigue, so there is greater value in driving consistency and recall.
What advice would you give your younger self if you could go back in time?
Talk to your consumers more. If you understand your target audience: how they think and feel, you will transform not only your thinking, but also win arguments in a boardroom. You will be able to show how close you are to what’s happening on the ground – with your customers and target customers.
Sport is interesting because in many ways you want to test like you would an FMCG product – but we’re so secretive! Every team kit launch, for example – nobody’s allowed to see it for fear of leaks. To counter this, on a match day, I will try and sit in places around the stadium next to our spectators. I will talk to whoever is sat next to me and ask their opinion: how is their day going, what frustrates them and just try to be connected to where the majority of our customers are.
What question would you like me to ask the next senior marketer that I interview?
How are they leveraging AI and what have they learned so far that they would like to share with others, especially if they work in sport?
Your question from a senior marketer I interviewed recently is, when not working, how do you unwind?
I have a three- and a five-year-old, so I’m not sure I actually ever get to unwind! But if I ever get a moment, I love running. That’s where I can just free my mind and some of my clearest thinking happens. I tend to like ultra-marathons and running in the mountains, which I got into while living in Switzerland. I’ve done a few ultra-marathons, the Marathon des Sables. It turns out I tend to enjoy physical pain…!
If there’s one thing you know about marketing, it is…
I’m going to go back to my P&G roots – our brand-building framework. Marketing is understanding: who you’re trying to serve, what you are trying to tell them and how you’re going to do it. Stay focused and keep it simple.
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.
This interview has already appeared in The Drum. Discover the best campaigns, industry insights and interviews from world-leading marketers, creatives and more.
