An industry leading e-commerce company approached us to lead the search for a cutting-edge relationship marketing leader to report to their new CMO and take over a team of 50.
This individual would possess deep experience in creating and driving cutting-edge email/push/SMS campaigns to increase revenue and customer engagement. They would also need to have the ability to identify certain customer segments for targeted marketing programs and work with stakeholders to deliver ROI-positive results. Finally, the leader would also be reshaping and then relaunching their loyalty program so previous experience in running such a program would be vital.
We agreed with the client that omnichannel and pure play ecommerce companies would be the main targets. Additionally, the CMO identified hospitality – particularly casinos– as great sources for top CRM and loyalty talent. Diversity was also a strong focus of the search, and we homed in on finding great BAME and female marketing leaders.
In the end, we introduced a shortlist seven candidates to the CMO. The hiring manager and talent acquisition were impressed by the level of talent that was presented and struggled to select the final two. The final two candidates were from two of the world’s largest omnichannel retailers.
The successful candidate was running CRM, personalization and marketing technology at one of the most respected players in that space. In terms of diversity, our research had a near 50:50 gender split. The client was delighted with the project, and the CMO summed it up by commenting, “I could have hired any of the seven candidates I met.”
Our partner in this case had just hired a new CMO for North America. We were tasked with bringing in a Chief Brand Officer to help build his vision of a cohesive marketing function.
The role's remit was to oversee all elements of the creative brand experience, customer journey planning, digital marketing and media planning and execution/performance marketing. This leader was critical in delivering marketing assets to the needs of the organization, working front line with their peers across marketing, partnering with demand generation to understand requirements, ensuring consistency and quality and, at the same time, implementing appropriate systems and metrics to migrate away from the historical silo approach
We agreed that this search needed to focus on companies of a comparable scale and complexity, that were global in nature and had strong marketing functions. We prioritized candidates with strong delivery and operational backgrounds, coming from complex product organizations who have ideally driven transformation in terms of process and structure.
In the end, we achieved both speed and quality delivering the search from start to finish in three months. We mapped the electronics, CPG and retail sectors across the US speaking to more than 450 candidates in the process and leading to a shortlist of three candidates.
Our partner in this case was one of the nation’s largest apparel, home and multi-category retailers with over 100 years of history serving American consumers. They were seeking a dynamic and creative branding executive to head its end-to-end in-house agency and studio function. This individual had the unenviable task of spearheading a total reimagination of one of the US’s most revered and respected brands to come into line with more modern trends, themes and shopping preferences.
This leader had responsibility for brand management, creative strategy, advertising development and execution across all customer touch points in support of the company’s brand vision, marketing strategies and objectives. The ideal candidate needed to have the proven ability to attract strong creative and agency operations talent while also managing, leading and retaining a diverse and dynamic team.
Our client was facing heightened competition as the retail industry continues to undergo significant transformation and evolution. This retailer needed to adapt to new shifts in demographics, attitudes and consumer preferences to re-market themselves to new shoppers and to drive an increase in both online and in store foot traffic. This brand re-imagination was a delicate and sophisticated journey which had to respect and maintain many of the core identifying features and assets of the original identity while infusing new energy, direction and identity to appeal to new markets and consumers.
Our search strategy focused on mapping the retail, consumer services and travel/leisure industries. We needed to find someone who had been on a similar journey previously and that had the creative respect for the past but the tactical experience to reimagine this company’s future and execute against that vision.
We inherited this search from another well-known search firm who had tried for over a year to solve this problem and had failed. Our client awarded us the project and within six weeks we presented them with a 50% gender diverse shortlist of six candidates from a range of leading companies, such as Disney, Sephora, Google, Victoria’s Secret and Walmart.
In the end, we succeeded in hiring a female executive from The Walt Disney Company. She had spent the five years prior reimagining Disney’s D2C retail business and had relaunched their retail experience globally both on and offline. This hire was the first of many for us this client not only proving that any search can be successfully concluded but that our clients never have to settle and can strive for candidates from any of the world’s leading brands.
