Tony Phillips leaves the supermarket giant after being appointed its first chief marketing officer last March
Woolworth has confirmed the immediate departure of its first CMO, Tony Phillips, after just one year in the role.
According to a statement from the supermarket giant, his sudden exit comes in the midst of a strategic review of its marketing functions and brand direction aimed at improving its customer engagement and services.
Current head of marketing for Woolworths Liquor Group, Andrew Hicks, will take over as interim CMO while a permanent replacement is found.
On 22 May, just days after Phillips' exit was announced, Woolworths also confimed its director of customer experience, Jess Gill, would depart after three years with the supermarket group and one year in the customer chief's role.
Woolworths has now stated that end-to-end brand control will all be placed in the hands of the next CMO, suggesting Gill will not be directly replaced.
Woolworths released details of a three-year turnaround plan last week aimed at helping reposition the business as a customer-led organisation. The strategy is based around three pillars: Improving the core offer, innovating products and services to better meet customer needs, and initiating new efficiencies.
These new efficiencies have already seen the departure of hundreds of staff and will result in a further 400 full-time positions go.
Related: CMO Interview: Tony Phillips talks cheap cheap, brand strategy and marketing
The news also comes weeks after Woolworths suffered a social media backlash for its Anzac Day campaign, which was subsequently withdrawn.
“We are proud of the work Tony has done in the past 12 months, including the reintroduction of the iconic fresh food people brand and the introduction of ‘Cheap cheap’, which has improved our price perception in the market,” the company said in a statement confirming his departure.
“We are undertaking a strategic review of our marketing functions and our brand direction as we refocus on getting our customers to put Woolworths first every time they shop.”
Phillips was Woolworths’ first-ever CMO, joining the organisation from its rival, Coles, where he held various marketing roles.
Follow CMO on Twitter: @CMOAustralia, take part in the CMO Australia conversation on LinkedIn: CMO Australia, join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CMOAustralia, or check us out on Google+: google.com/+CmoAu
Creating a strong company culture may sound like a daunting task, but it’s actually pretty straightforward. In fact, company culture is created in exactly the same fashion as a religion or democracy. Behaviours created from the organisation’s inception are reinforced over time by leadership, attracting like-minded people and eventually reaching critical mass to become an accepted ‘truth’.
The question I get asked most regularly these days is: ‘Do I need to rebuild my company’s systems on Blockchain?’ And the answer, every time, is ‘No, you’re asking the wrong question’.
Throughout my career, I have witnessed a litany of brand names that profess to have a unique customer value proposition (CVP). In reality, however, they’ve had little more than a ‘value proposition’: A simple list of benefits applied to a general audience.
In this bonus last episode of this new podcast series, BrandHook MD, Pip Stocks, talks with former ANZ group general manager of marketing, Louise Eyres, talks about the importance of thinking like a customer and using intuition to solve customer painpoints.
RE: Sales and marketing SLAs, often the choke point isn't the teams but them getting the data into the tools they want to use with the da...
Ed Fry
Why sales and marketing alignment is more important than ever
Amazing article Mitchell. I really enjoyed the read. Chatbots will be critical in the future evolution of banking and financial services ...
Giridhar Prathap Reddy
7 businesses successfully implementing chatbots
Thank you for the good and very helpful information. It is very interesting. I love all the things you share and see your beautiful creat...
รัตนาวดี ภูมิวรรณ
Former eHarmony marketing chief joins telco startup
Colin Kaepernick, not Mike Kapernick.
thisisw
Zenith's innovation leader: Mid-digital age not benefitting media, brands or consumers
AGA KHAN HOSPITAL is in need of kidney donors for the sum of 2 crore, Contact us today if you want to sell your kidney for money, and thi...
Sebastian Friedrich
Mindshare gets behind blockchain advertising alliance