As group marketing director of Land Securities, Lewis oversees the marketing functions on both the corporate and retail sides, and is involved in the company’s impressive 4.5million sqft regeneration project in Ebbsfleet, Kent, which will transform a disused quarry into a new town “the size of Sevenoaks”.
Lewis has only been in the role for 18 months, but already he’s helped launch a new identity, propelling Land Securities from a perceived “sleepy rent collector to a dynamic commercial property company.” He’s also been making changes behind the scenes ensuring the different factions of the marketing function come together to create a harmonised brand.
“I’ve worked on centralising our media buying which has driven cost and process efficiencies into the business. And we’ve started to promote ourselves at group level. Before, nobody had taken an overview of marketing so individual teams were doing great stuff within their own businesses, but nobody was evaluating how that fed into building the brand at group level.
“We now have a layer of promotional activity sitting above the business units. With some of our marketing themes, it makes sense to articulate our messages at this level,” he explains.
Lewis hasn’t always been a B2B marketer. His career began at Thomson Tour Operators and then travel industry heavyweight RCI. Lewis worked his way up to a senior level in travel before making a leap, after 11 years, into financial services, a sector he says could “teach travel a thing or two about mismanagement”. Starting as head of brand communications for Barclays Stockbrokers, after a variety of senior roles he ended up as marketing director of Barclays Premier Banking six years later.
He says it was a big change culturally. “There is more structure to financial services marketing, the metabolic rate is a bit slower,” he says. “In travel I worked with short lead times. We would talk to tour operators in the middle of the week about collaborative advertising and have that advertising running by the Sunday.”
Things aren’t quite as instant in the commercial property sector; the Ebbsfleet project will take around 25 years to complete, meaning any brand placing work is still a long way off. But there is still plenty going on; Land Securities is showing few signs of slowing down as a result of the credit crunch. New projects include major developments at St Pauls and Fenchurch Street with another half dozen in the development pipeline.
For Lewis though, the regeneration projects inspire him the most. “If you get this stuff right you can have a transformational benefit on an area,” he says. “It’s early days for Ebbsfleet, but that’s a project of breathtaking scale that I’m really excited to be involved in.”
In the meantime, Lewis has been busy working on group level campaigns, of which one of the biggest dealt with corporate responsibility (CR) and kicked off last summer. It resulted in a 300 per cent year-on-year increase in the number of downloads of the company’s CR brochure. Lewis feels strongly about the importance of CR. “I’m lucky in that it’s something Land Securities has taken quite seriously, it’s woven into the way we do business day to day. It’s really important for marketers to make sure those messages are articulated because if you’re not seen to be taking the issue seriously you’ll find yourself driven off people’s shortlists.”
He says his favourite corporate site in the Land Securities portfolio is that at Euston Square, London, “because of the way we approached it from an environmental point of view. We recycled 95 per cent of the demolition materials.”
Also on Lewis’s agenda is channelling more innovative design into Land Securities’ marketing campaigns. Last year he masterminded a direct mail campaign to property agents which included an iPod to talk the audience through the brochure. “There’s a lot of glossy literature out there that’s similar and we want to find ways to cut through that,” he says.
Whilst Lewis has injected plenty of energy into his newly created role, he still finds time to pursue other passions. He’s a keen rugby fan and takes part in the odd veterans tournament. “Last year we went to Italy. I don’t get a lot of time outside of work but when I can, I tend to go for short tournaments in sunny places these days,” he laughs.
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