Former Virgin Australia chief customer officer, Mark Hassell, has become the latest high-profile brand marketing and customer executive to join a big consultancy, taking up a post with KPMG.
Hassall joins KPMG’s Customer, Brand and Marketing Advisory business this week as a partner, bringing its total local headcount to 59 employees including eight partners. The practice was officially launched by KPMG in June after its acquisition of Australian market research firm, Acuity Research and Insights and is focused on customer experience strategy and design, customer journey mapping, sales and channel transformation, marketing, product and service transformation and customer insights.
Hassell was the chief customer officer at Virgin Australia for five years, sitting on the group management and executive committees. He left the airline last September following a reshuffle of executive ranks that saw the role removed.
Hassell played a key role in transforming the Virgin Blue airline into a full services player, creating and leading its customer, brand and marketing strategy. Those responsibilities are now under the remit of Inese Kingsmill, who joined Virgin last November.
He has more than 20 years’ experience in customer and brand leadership, having previously worked for British Airways and Qantas, and started his career as a flight attendant before moving up the ranks.
“For decades, the aviation industry has been the gold standard in innovating and transforming the customer experience,” partner in charge for the Customer, Brand and Marketing Advisory, Paul Howes. “Mark brings not just this understanding, but also years of experience at the coalface in all aspects of brand transformation, including crucially, how to implement and embed it to deliver on business objectives.”
Howes said KPMG is ambitious to grow its customer practice in the face to growing desire but ongoing challenges organisations have in becoming more customer-led.
Commenting on his appointment, Hassell said a customer-centric culture not only has to be driven from the top, it also requires organisations to give customers an effective voice at the executive table.
“To engage and galvanise a whole organisation behind a compelling customer and brand vision that meets or exceeds customer needs is key to transforming business performance,” he said. “Everyone in a company, whatever their role, has a customer. A company that recognises and fully activates this will truly have the customer at its heart.”
Other marketing leaders who have jumped ship and joined the consultancy ranks include former GM of marketing at Metlife, Paul Bennett, who joined Capgemini to head up its customer and digital enablement practice; and former Network Ten chief brand officer, Matt McGrath, who has joined Deloitte as CMO.
Welcome to Launch Marketing Council’s new 3-part series focused on unlocking the secrets of launching brands, products and service by exploring real-life examples from Australia’s marketing elite, in conjunction with the independent agency Five by Five Global.
In early 2020, I had the pleasure of staying at the newly opened Fullerton Hotel in Sydney. It was on this trip I first became aware of the Fullerton’s commitment to brand storytelling.
If you’ve been around advertising long enough, you’ve probably seen (or written) a slide which says: “They won’t remember what you say, they’ll remember how you made them feel.” But it’s wrong. Our understanding of how emotion is used in advertising has been ill informed and poorly applied.
The launch of a new brand, or indeed a rebrand, is a transformation to be greeted with fanfare. So why is it that once the brand has launched, the brand execution phase can also be the moment at which you kill its creativity?
Well, the conversion can be increased by just using marketing, but in general if you are considering an example with Magento, then it is ...
Bob
How Remedy is using digital marketing and commerce to drive conversion
yo nice article
Bob
6 Ways to ramp up Social Media to Your Web Design
Thanks for sharing with us. I just loved your way of presentation. I enjoyed reading this .Thanks for sharing and keep writing. It is goo...
Nisha
Cancer Council: Finding the physical-virtual engagement balance post-COVID
yes AI should be a course so many People Use AI https://g-techsolutions.com...
M Abdullah Khan
Is AI on course to take over human creativity? - Modern creative - CMO Australia
Extremely informative. One should definitely go through the blog in order to know different aspects of the top retail technology.
Pooja Gupta
Donut King takes in-store marketing to the next digital level