What kind of role would constitute your dream job in B2B marketing? If you could handpick a number of attributes for this fantasy position, what would they be?
It is likely that the following would be on most if not every marketers’ list: a seat on the board; an MD who is a committed supporter of marketing; a well-recognised brand with three decades of heritage in the UK; a secure US parent worth $5.6 billion; and a blank sheet of paper on which to design and recruit your own marketing function.
Oh yes, and if that were not enough, this dream employer was prepared to move offices from an anonymous industrial suburb to a small country town in one of the most beautiful parts of rural England, which just happens to be a stone’s throw from where you’ve recently moved.
If all this sounds too good to be true, you may be surprised to hear that this is precisely the position that Robin White found himself in when he accepted the role of marketing director at Ryder in February 2005. The logistics, truck leasing and van hire business, which has been operating in the UK since 1971, had effectively dissolved its marketing function by declining to replace key staff when they departed, and was looking to start again from scratch.
Even though Ryder has been in the UK for 35 years, this was effectively a green field site [for marketing], says White. It was a successful, profitable company, but had no idea of what marketing was about. It had not employed a marketing person for five years. This was a very rare opportunity, and a role I couldn’t turn down.
The marketing challenge facing Ryder was also a critical part of the appeal for White. I was personally aware of Ryder, but had no idea about the full range of services. It is a single business with a huge breadth. At its most simplistic level, the problem is that, most people still think of us as ‘the yellow-van-people’, explains White. Ryder’s most visible role as a van-hire operation was obscuring its range of complex and high-end logistics and fleet leasing services that it provides to clients such as HP and Applied Materials.
This is the paradox of the Ryder brand: whilst at the most basic level all three offerings are similar in that they relate to the general area of transport and vehicle provision, in terms of the target audience, pricing and proposition, they couldn’t be more different.
Awareness was good but understanding very narrow, White continues. The challenge for us is how to market in a coherent way to promote all our products and services. In three years I want Ryder to be seen as a thought-leader in all the markets that it operates in. In other words, the brand had to learn to be all things to everyone: a considerable challenge, and not one for the faint-hearted.
Whilst the role would have been highly desirable to most marketers, Robin White’s skill and expertise made him a perfect fit. He has first-hand experience of both the automotive sector with component distributor Unipart (beginning as a graduate trainee and rising to channel development manager) and logistics with Endeva Service as head of marketing. White’s CV also includes spells at a marketing consultancy (Business Performance Solutions) and at the BBC, providing him with a broad and diverse level of mostly B2B expertise across a 14-year career. Despite this imbalance in his experience, White describes himself as a marketer, rather than a B2B marketer. Most aspects are the same: insight, planning, execution and evaluation.
Robin White realised that marketing would be his vocation during his sandwich year work-placement at British Gas as part his business studies degree from Plymouth University. The placement convinced me to specialise in marketing. When I left university, I was looking for a broad-based graduate role. Unipart had a three-year programme, allowing me to experience all different aspects of the business, including a year in sales. He believes such a background is critical to create a rounded practitioner. It will make you a better marketer and will give you a better career. The importance of marketing working with sales is paramount.
Having taken up his post at Ryder in February 2005, White was required to call on this diverse expertise and broad understanding of business to navigate his way through a hectic and challenging first six months. Although the green-field nature of the opportunity was without doubt a major part of the appeal of the role, it was in fact a double-edged sword. Specifically, it meant that there was no marketing infrastructure for him to work with, learn from, or to assist him.
For about six months, I was the Ryder marketing department, he explains. I had a budget, but no team, structure or plan. When I arrived we had already booked a big stand at the Commercial Vehicle Show the very next month, which I needed to fill.
Once such immediate headaches had been addressed, White identified four priorities: to understand the market’s perception of Ryder; to identify means of generating new business; to focus on customer retention; and finally to recruit a team to deliver it.
These areas constituted the focus of activities for his first 18 months, which he describes as putting in the basics. A marketing team of three was recruited in the summer of 2005, comprising a product and marketing development manager, campaign and communications manager, and customer retention manager. I’ve also picked up responsibility for the customer development call centre, and I implemented a CRM system.
Marketing communications has been fairly limited to date as Ryder’s marketing function gradually ramps up its activities, although White says there has been a concerted effort regarding PR. This is because its very cost-effective, and its better than advertising for getting a discussion of services, says White. Awareness is not our problem, but there are big issues about the understanding of our services. White points out that PR is effective in helping develop Ryder’s role as an important commentator on some of the rising political and environmental issues surrounding transportation and road-use. Meanwhile, all unexpected fringe benefits have been the effectiveness of PR in actually creating business. Ten per cent of our appointments are now from inbound leads. Lots of these must be down to PR.
This gradual increase in dialogue has come alongside the launch of new brand positioning for Ryder. This retained the core red and black logo, but incorporated a new strapline ‘Keeping things moving’, aimed at tying all the various disparate elements of the business together under a coherent and relevant message (see B2BM March 2006, page 06).
How successful has this first period been? There is a three to four year timescale for the whole project, but we are very much on course. We are still very opportunities-led, but the tide is turning. We’ve been working hard to convince the internal audience of our value. The credibility of the marketing function has been established.
White says other areas of the business are becoming increasingly aware of its new marketing function, and the number of ad hoc requests for information it’s receiving is rising. These can be distracting, but they are a good barometer. We’ve not moved out of set-up mode, and the priorities are about sustaining the momentum we have developed and executing the plan flawlessly, as agreed.
The challenges of the role, however, remain. One of the foremost of these is the distributed nature of the Ryder business. My feet have not touched the ground since I started. We have four administrative centres in Manchester, Slough, Devizes and Northampton and around 20 rental locations in all the major metropolitan centres. Many of our teams [in the leasing and logistics] businesses are also physically based on customers’ sites. As a result, I spend no more than two days a week at my desk, and a lot of time travelling to different offices and on conference calls. This is one of the challenges of a multi-site operation, but I’d go stir-crazy if I was stuck in the office all day. It is challenging to get programmes agreed, but you have to make that extra effort.
And White has also managed to turn the distributed nature of the Ryder operation to his advantage, when the company mooted the possibility of locating the new marketing function in an existing office in the Wiltshire town of Devizes just 15 miles from Marlborough where he and his wife had recently moved. As you can imagine, it was a tough choice to swap an hour commute to a 15 minute one! he says.
But can working from such a relative backwater really be good for business? White acknowledges that there are disadvantages to operating from what is a fairly remote location. However, he says finding good staff is, surprisingly, not one of them. Within an hour from here you can be in Bristol, Bath or Oxford. There is a big catchment area and a rich pool of talent. I’ve been incredibly fortunate with my team.
Eighteen months in, White remains clearly highly engaged with, and motivated by, his job. It’s a very rewarding role, he says. It can be frustrating because we know where we are going and want to get there fast, but inevitably it takes longer than you expect. But it’s a very stimulating place to work no two days are the same. We’ve also got a very motivated team.
A crucial element in White’s job satisfaction has been support from the board, and particularly the MD (and VP of Europe Peter Bankhouse) that was promised in the recruitment process. He has been absolutely true to his word, says White. In the interview I felt there was great chemistry. I walked away with a great sense of passion, belief and ambition about what the company wanted to do. Marketing was supported right from the very top, and this was crucial for me.
As well as being respectful of the role of marketing, White says Bankhouse has fostered a culture at Ryder where marketing can have wider influence within the business. I take pride in the fact that marketing has acted as a catalyst for change across the whole organisation. Marketers don’t have to move out of marketing to have a broader influence on the business if they are already sitting there at the top table. The big challenge is getting there in the first place.
White acknowledges that above all he is fortunate in that he is practicing his trade at an organisation where marketing is embraced and respected. Being offered a clean slate to design your own marketing operation at a well-known brand in an office just down the road from your house are all appealing factors; but ultimately support from the top is the one that will makes the real difference in terms of getting things done and job satisfaction. Therefore, in the final analysis, is the only factor that really matters. Remember that, next time you are looking for your dream job.
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