Marketing That Drives Purpose, Vision and Impact with Boots CMO Peter Markey

Word on the Street

04-11-2021 • 56 mins

This week on Word on the Street we’re joined by Peter Markey, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) for Boots where he is responsible for heading up all aspects of brand and marketing for the UK and ROI. As you might expect from someone with such a top level position at such a renowned household name business Peter has a wealth of expertise and experience that he generously shares in this podcast. Due to scope of managing his in-house teams and the agency side of the business that he has to handle, this show has a lot of actionable advice whether you are in-house or in-agency.

Pete has held senior leadership roles with some of the biggest and well-known brands in the UK and worked across a range of disciplines including marketing, sales, e-business, customer experience, operations and strategy.

This show dives into the importance of big businesses tackling change, the focus that Boots have for social responsibility - an ethos that has run through the veins of the business for 150 years - the power of partnerships, why agencies need to support and push clients out of their comfort zones, working with those that share your values and why purpose is so powerful.

In this show you will hear:

  • Impacting the world through good causes
  • The importance of having an vision and purpose
  • What makes a good pitch
  • Where agencies miss the mark
  • How agencies can add more value

Links & References
Katie Street: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katiestreet/
Peter Markey: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petermarkey/

Series 5 of Word on the Street is sponsored by Tanba, The Agency New Business Academy, is a brand-new initiative aimed at equipping agencies of all sizes with the knowledge, content, partnerships and opportunities needed to accelerate agency growth by optimising their new business 'engine'. Tanba is an on-demand and affordable solution for agencies looking to upskill their team via training courses, content and insights delivered by our panel of industry experts, leaders, and partners.

The academy is all about empowering agency teams to get noticed, attract opportunities, increase conversion rates, and reduce the costs associated with the sales process. Visit https://tanba.io/ to find out more and start empowering your agency.

“People really cared about the customer, they cared about the business” - Peter Markey [10:02]

“You’ve got to go and sell your idea, pitch it to people, explain what you’re doing, communicate, you know, bring people on the journey with you” - Peter Markey [13:40]

“We’re a retail business, we exist to make a real impact on society” - Peter Markey [18:33]

“We want to do more with our lives and I’ve seen that manifest in different ways with a number of people” - Peter Markey [22:06]

“People are going to remember the impact on what we like as leaders, the way we treated people, the way we changed things for the better, hopefully.” - Peter Markey [25:48]

“Reach is important to a certain extent, but not really, relevance is so much more important” - Katie Street [29:17]

“I think the best agencies I’ve worked with are ones that you do have a true partnership with and you get this really nice tension between support and challenge” - Peter Markey [37:11]

“Sometimes agencies don’t realise the importance to show big brands or small brands, we spend time on personal development for our staff, this is something that’s really important to us” - Katie Street [42:20]

“The bad thing about LinkedIn is when sales people abuse it” - Katie Street [47:56]

“For me the best pitches are where you just have that ta-da moment of like, I really like these people, they get us” - Peter Markey [53:44]