The Torin Douglas Interview: Rob Rees
Torin Douglas speaks with ‘serial interim CMO’ Rob Rees about killing a Scottish Widow, stripping the fat out of creative agencies and advertising post-recession.
Rob Rees was the marketing director who, ten years ago, fired the Scottish Widow – and now he has advertising agencies in his sights, saying they must “reinvent themselves”.
The bigger agencies need to cut costs and jobs and be far more digitally aware, he told me in the latest of my interviews with marketing leaders about their use of media in the digital world.
Rob calls himself the ‘serial interim’ chief marketing officer. Fifteen years ago after a career with Unilever, Mars and Pepsi, he took the interim marketing role in projects for companies such as Vodafone, Orange, Bernard Matthews, Barclays, Dairy Crest and the aforementioned Scottish Widows.
“Infamy, infamy!” he laughs when I ask him why he did such a dastardly deed? The widow in question, Amanda Lamb, who donned the swirling black cloak for more than a decade, told a newspaper in 2005 she had been gutted at the time “and I still am”.
So why did he do it?
“Strategic reasons actually. Amanda had become better known as a celebrity on home-finding programmes around Europe (she was the presenter of Channel 4’s Homes in the Sun) and obviously the widow had always been this quite mystical, secret woman.
“We decided it was time to change the widow and move on. We were doing a big brand relaunch with a new look and feel – but obviously Amanda had been a great and loyal servant to the company and so we let her go gently.”
Some would say it’s easier to take the tough decisions when you constantly move on. So why doesn’t he stay anywhere longer?
“I like the fresh challenge – and marketing has changed so much since I started out 25 years ago at Unilever,” he says. “If you stick in an industry for a long time you can become quite stale, you can run out of technical skills. I suppose I’ve got a morbid inbuilt fear of obsolescence!
“I think that when you get more senior in a business you get very far removed from the consumers and the things you enjoy doing. I do the interim work because I get my hands on big meaty problems, I keep myself fresh and I keep extending my skills set.”
Those new skills are mainly digital.
“I’ve seen the revolutionary effect digital has had on some businesses,” he says. “I launched an insurance business in 2005 when selling off the page was very strong and we got very good cost per acquisition, it was very very effective – but within two years it had fallen off a cliff.”
In his recent project, for the pottery firm Denby, he not only used digital as a communication vehicle, but as a service vehicle for their own shops, and a marketing vehicle for their website.
“It was a very valuable tool for Denby because it didn’t have pots of money, it was private-equity owned, it was trying to make sure that every investment in the marketing agenda paid back.”
Rees thinks media agencies are adapting pretty well to the digital world. “But I think the creative agencies have got to look at themselves long and hard, because there is so much fat you can strip out – lots of different projects going on, too many people involved in the decisions, an agency staff of ten people to man-mark the ten clients…
“How can they afford big offices in the West End?” he says.
“I know the days when every account director had a Porsche have gone but there’s still quite a lot of excess. I’m certainly not impressed by nice boardrooms and almond croissants in the morning meeting.
“These days you have to fight for every last pound – and if it doesn’t add value you just don’t do it. That’s what the recession has brought us; we appreciate quality and clever ideas but we don’t want to pay for the fat any more.”
You can hear more of Rob’s views – including the impact of digital on TV and newspapers, and how Denby built up its own consumer panel – in the 12-minute interview above.
The Torin Douglas Interview is sponsored by Sky IQ – to find out how Sky IQ insight can help improve your TV advertising effectiveness and maximise your return on investment, click here.
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