By NDA columnist Tom Ollerton, founder, Automated Creative
As the Director for Go-To-Market Strategy at The North Face, Jennifer Mohammed works with the brand leadership teams across the company to organise the end-to-end journey of campaigns, from conception through to the actual launch on the market. Her career spans over 16 years in DTC, with brands such as Puma, Guess, and the Arcadia Group.
Jennifer’s top marketing advice to brands is to turn towards loyalty as much as they do towards acquisition. In her view, too many organisations focus on understanding consumer interests and trends from the point of view of selling to them for the first time. However, to get to the bottom of what makes your brand attractive and unique, you should also listen to the loyal fans.
This will lead brands to a more authentic positioning and to growing a solid, long-term commitment with a consumer base. What is their best sellers’ data? What draws people back to the brand over and over again? What causes them to engage with your brand? These are all the key questions to ask in order to understand how consumers build trust and stay with your brand.
Beyond what could be considered a cliché – listening to the consumer and putting them first when planning – Jennifer’s advice is to also embrace remote working and the diversity and inclusivity it has enabled today’s brands. By making remote working a possibility (it doesn’t need to be 100% the case for all organisations, but there can be a percentage of the time spent in work or simply the flexibility for employees to choose), brands can attract from a wider talent pool.
Those who may not have been able to work for an organisation because of family commitments, personal background, or a number of other reasons, are now able to do so thanks to remote working. This gives brands a way to draw on people from different background, cultures, geographical locations etc. It diversifies the conversations within the brand and will eventually lead to a more diverse, richer message outwards, too.
Listen to more reasons why Jennifer thinks home working can yield great benefits, as well as to some more top marketing tips from her for those looking to balance work and life and be more productive, on the full podcast here.
The Shiny New Object podcast is a production of Automated Creative, an adtech platform that turns brands’ media impressions into marketing intelligence. Find out more at www.automatedcreative.net
