Summary
Thomson Reuters’ UK & Ireland marketing team is driven by a clear vision with a challenging mandate for change. Over the past 12 months we’ve introduced new technology, new ways of working, award-winning campaign strategies and most importantly of all, an energetic, motivated and supportive team. We are proud to be at the heart of the company’s commercial success, but even prouder of the amazing team and career environment we’re building.
About the team
Our marketing leadership team is accountable for a fast-paced and diverse mix, with a heavy emphasis on brand development and content-driven demand generation. We are one year into a major transformation programme in support of our vision to be recognised as the most fearless, insightful, innovative and commercially impactful marketing team within UK&I professional services. The core team is:
- Erin Fung: Planning, performance and insight
- Nick Withersby: Brand activation and creative director
- Matt Charlton: Thought leadership and content marketing
- Nina Coelho Antunes: Proposition marketing
- Rory Crone: Demand generation
- Guillaume Payen: Digital development
- Gary Hurry: VP.
The complete team consists of 42 talented, diverse and developing marketers. We have been together in this set up for one year. Historically, marketing was fragmented and detached, but together, we’ve completely changed the impact, perception and reach of the team.
We believe it to be a career-defining period within the marketing team.
Marketing integrates heavily, both domestically and globally. We have a special relationship with sales and product development colleagues, which stems from mutual respect and understanding.
The brand they work for
Thomson Reuters is a global leader in content and technology for professional markets. Our brand serves the legal market – both in-house and corporate segments – with a very diverse range of personas and characteristics. UK&I revenue is c£250 million. Our core audience is undergoing unprecedented change and with extreme competitive pressure. The need for a dynamic, commercial and brave marketing team has never been more acute.
Commercial challenges
As a market leader, Thomson Reuters is the focal point for aggressive discounting and competitor strategies.
This was felt most acutely in mid-2017, with revenue goals 10% off track. The marketing team responded with a complete repositioning of our core content products (75% of total revenue) – Practical Law and Westlaw – that celebrated our premium pricing point. We challenged the legal community to consider whether accepting an inferior (yet cheaper) solution perceived as ‘good enough’ really was good enough. We took this to market through a brave, confident and fully integrated marketing assault across digital (programmatic, ABM, contextual), print, OOH, sponsorship and content marketing.
Our campaign – ‘Never settle for good enough’ – achieved a year one ROI of 189% and is credited for being the key reason for the business turnaround. It has since won a Drum award and been shortlisted for a Marketing Society Excellence award.
Along the way, we have also introduced advanced attribution methodology in 2018 and can now see that c50% of all revenue has a direct marketing attribution, yet 65% of all new sales have a heavy level of digital content engagement too.
Marketing has never been perceived so positively or been closer to the commercial performance of the business.
Individual contributions
- Nick Withersby is our creative guru, pushing our brand boundaries into new and exciting places. His unwritten challenge is to (almost) get us all fired!
- Matt Charlton is our innovative thought leader and content marketer. From podcasts to a socially-oriented legal debate series, Matt’s team ensure we’re at the forefront of all that’s hot in our sector.
- Nina Coelho Antunes is our proposition evangelist. She’s there to ensure we think about proposition and customers – not products – across a wide portfolio from legal books to artificial intelligence.
- Rory Crone is at the sharp end of demand generation, introducing new media, strategies and technology (Eloqua, Salesforce etc) to help us hit our sales and ROI targets out of the park.
- Guillaume Payen has a passion for digital CX and never ceases to amaze us with new technology and insightful analytics across all customer touchpoints.
- Erin Fung is our balanced planner and strategist that sets the tone and makes us even more connected and focused on both the customer and our commercial objectives.
- All are challenged, coached and inspired to greatness by our VP, Gary Hurry.
This team is united around a common vision. Everybody is clear on individual accountabilities, yet never loses sight of the bigger marketing ecosystem.
Perhaps most importantly, we have created a team without egos, with incredible diversity that supports each other, that is happy to make mistakes (with learning!).
We are so connected that we can even do the Michael Jackson Thriller dance with the entire marketing team!
Team working and collaboration
Our example here is one of (relative) failure. In Q1 2018, we had underperformed against expectations within software sales – a real test for our new team.
Top of funnel performance was exceptional, yet sales outcomes were low. We put all our analytic resource into action. And from here, we concluded – as a team – that a different customer journey and heavier nurturing programme would be needed. Within one week, our digital CX was changed to be more engaging and mobile-enabled. We adapted creative treatment and invested more (at the detriment of media) into practical user content. And we initiated a complete training refresh for all marketers on buyer journeys and personas.
All of this required budget and resources to be moved across teams – quickly. It was the best example of team work – calm, measured, collaborative and decisive. We have seen a 17% upturn in pipeline, only made possible by our team operating as one – in good times and bad.
Strategic alignment
Our team commits at least 50% of its time to collaborating across the business.
A particular high point is our work within customer experience. Marketing was awarded the lead role for the complete organisation. We have already brought about major changes to our trial and onboarding process, which has involved huge collaboration across sales, customer service and technology. Critically, marketing is now bringing the organisation together to create a customer-oriented mindset.
Team development and retention
We started our transformation with an external benchmarking analysis of capabilities and gaps. This has shaped our change programme and marketing strategy. Each team member also has the opportunity to complete a formal assessment of their personal capability and gaps, matched with an award-winning learning and development programme provided by CEB/Gartner. Everybody has a personal goal for their marketing learning and development, using a best in class framework.
Additionally, we have instigated a mentoring, sponsorship and coaching programme around leadership and/or broader business skills. A formal rotation programme across marketing (six months) ensures our teams keep learning and exploring new areas.
“As the strategy director, I’m well placed to comment on the significant progression in our marketing team. Commercial performance is strong, our brand is positioned well for growth and with new technology investment, I can see nothing but continued good things ahead. Critically, the team is also easy to work with and great fun”
