Supermarket giant is not expected to directly replace the director of customer and will put end-to-end brand experience under the CMO role
Woolworths’ director of customer and brand, Jess Gill, will leave the group this week and is not expected to be directly replaced.
A spokesperson for Woolworths confirmed Gill, director of customer, brand and format, had decided to leave the company this week after three years. Her departure comes days after CMO, Tony Phillips, left Woolworths, having spent just one year in the role.
The Woolworths spokesperson would not comment on the link between the two departures.
“Jess has provided thought leadership over the past three years around store formats of the future, food for now and food for later strategies, own brand, store design and refurbishment plans,” the statement on Gill’s departure read.
Woolworths is now searching for a new chief marketing officer who will have responsibility for the end-to-end brand experience, suggesting Gill’s role will be incorporated into the CMO post.
Gill's was appointed director of customer experience, a strategic role, 12 months ago, at the same time as Phillips was brought on as Woolworth's first executive-level marketing chief.
The spokesperson also declined to comment on additional staff cuts, but said there had been no other departures from the marketing function.
Woolworths chief executive, Grant O’Brien, confirmed plans last week to cut 400 non customer-facing jobs over the next calendar year during the company’s strategic investor day.
Woolworths has already trimmed 400 jobs over the past year as part of a restructuring program aimed at becoming a more “lean” operation. However, the company said it had added 58,000 customer service hours per week into its stores to improve customer engagement over the same period, and plans to add a further 63,000 in the next financial year.
The changes are part of a three-year turnaround strategy aimed at putting the emphasis back on customer engagement and service.
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
Big brands were once protected from small brands by high barriers to entry. Big brands had the resources to employ big agencies, to crack big ideas and to invest in big campaigns. They had the luxury of time to debate strategies and work on long-term innovation pipelines. Retailers used to partner with big brands.
According to the World Economic Forum in its most recent The Future of Jobs report, the most important skills for the future are not technical, task-oriented skills, but higher-order skills such as creativity, social influence, active learning, and analytical thinking.
Businesses continue to highly value the attention they buy through paid media, yet at the same time, many continue to disregard and under-value opportunities to connect with customers using their owned media.
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.
Well written Vanessa!! Agreed with your view that human experience is marketing's next frontier. Those businesses who are focused on the ...
Clyde Griffith
Forget customer experience, human experience is marketing's next frontier
Great tips for tops skills need to develop and stay competitive
Nick
The top skills needed to stay competitive in a rapidly changing workforce
The popularity of loyalty programs is diminishing, though I'd say it is because customers are savvy enough to recognise when a loyalty pr...
Heather
It’s time for marketers to rethink their approach to ‘loyalty’
Thanks Nadia for sharing this blog. It has really useful and amazing information about Salesforce Commerce Cloud and digital engagement w...
Holly Smith
Adidas taps data and technology smarts to build personalised digital engagement with consumers
clearly someone who's jealous and only comments from the safety of being behind their keyboard
Peter Sibson
The purpose of purpose - Brand science - CMO Australia