This week on Word on the Street we’re joined by Peter Markey, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) for Boots where he is responsible for heading up all aspects of brand and marketing for the UK and ROI. As you might expect from someone with such a top-level position at such a renowned household name business Peter has a wealth of expertise and experience that he generously shares in this podcast.
Due to the scope of managing his in-house teams and the agency side of the business that he has to handle, this show has a lot of actionable advice whether you are in-house or in agency.
Pete has held senior leadership roles with some of the biggest and well-known brands in the UK such as TSB, Aviva, More Than, The Post Office, and British Gas. He has worked across a range of disciplines including marketing, sales, e-business, customer experience, operations, and strategy.
This show dives into the importance of big businesses tackling change, the focus that Boots have for social responsibility – an ethos that has run through the veins of the business for 150 years – the power of partnerships, why agencies need to support and push clients out of their comfort zones, working with those that share your values and why purpose is so powerful.
In this show you will hear:
- Impacting the world through good causes
- The importance of having a vision and purpose
- What makes a good pitch
- Where agencies miss the mark
- How agencies can add more value
Links & References
Katie Street: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katiestreet/
Peter Markey: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petermarkey/
Series 5 of Word on the Street is sponsored by Tanba, The Agency New Business Academy is a brand-new initiative aimed at equipping agencies of all sizes with the knowledge, content, partnerships, and opportunities needed to accelerate agency growth by optimising their new business ‘engine’. Tanba is an on-demand and affordable solution for agencies looking to upskill their team via training courses, content, and insights delivered by our panel of industry experts, leaders, and partners.
The academy is all about empowering agency teams to get noticed, attract opportunities, increase conversion rates, and reduce the costs associated with the sales process. Visit https://tanba.io/ to find out more and start empowering your agency.
“People really cared about the customer, they cared about the business” – Peter Markey [10:02]
“Knowing how to sell to people isn’t just handy for work, but it’s handy just in life” – Katie Street [11:27]
“People think of sales as this dirty word” – Katie Street [13:01]
“You’ve got to go and sell your idea, pitch it to people, explain what you’re doing, communicate, you know, bring people on the journey with you” – Peter Markey [13:40]
“We’re a retail business, we exist to make a real impact on society” – Peter Markey [18:33]
“The agency world has a bit of catching up to do here” – Katie Street [19:46]
“We want to do more with our lives and I’ve seen that manifest in different ways with a number of people” – Peter Markey [22:06]
“Out of 14/15 of us there are 2 guys and the rest of us are all women and that’s probably no accident” – Katie Street [23:10]
“People are going to remember the impact on what we like as leaders, the way we treated people, the way we changed things for the better, hopefully.” – Peter Markey [25:48]
“Reach is important to a certain extent, but not really, relevance is so much more important” – Katie Street [29:17]
“I think the best agencies I’ve worked with are ones that you do have a true partnership with and you get this really nice tension between support and challenge” – Peter Markey [37:11]
“Sometimes agencies don’t realise the importance to show big brands or small brands, we spend time on personal development for our staff, this is something that’s really important to us” – Katie Street [42:20]
“The bad thing about LinkedIn is when salespeople abuse it” – Katie Street [47:56]
“For me, the best pitches are where you just have that ta-da moment of like, I really like these people, they get us” – Peter Markey [53:44]