Q&A with Gary Kibble, Chief Digital & Marketing Officer, Wickes (first published June 2023)

Thank you. Yeah, great to be here. Thank you very much. Absolute pleasure.

Yeah, sure. Okay. I mean, I think I'd probably sort of talk at it maybe sort of thinking about it in four ways actually in terms of responding to that question. I think the important point by the way before I sort of walk through maybe kind of four big things that I call out is that you know this isn't sort of rocket science what I'm going to describe. A lot of it is about sort of behaviors and the way you think and position yourself. I think that is important because it says this is accessible to everyone in my opinion and experience. I just wanted to sort of make that point at the start. So as I say sort of four things I'll be calling out. The first one actually is a really simple one which is all around sort of being curious, being inquisitive. If I think right back to my early days at WHSmiths, I was probably always the first person to put my hand up and want to be involved in new programs or projects of work. And it was that sort of sense of kind of wanting to put myself forwards, even if actually I didn't think maybe at the time I had the skill set, I definitely think that was something that stood me in very good stead from the kind of early onset of my career. So the first thing I'd call out is that. So be curious, sort of be inquisitive and put your hand up. That'd be the first thing.

The second thing is I don't think it had a name in the early part of my career, but I think it's very well trailed now, which is all around kind of imposter syndrome. And I just wanted to bust a myth if it was there, which is, you know, people at senior levels in the organization don't suffer with imposter syndrome. I think that's nonsense. I think we absolutely do. And just to call out that, you know, I suffer in inverted commas, but I sort of have faced into that at many points in my career and I face into it now actually and I'm sort of at peace with it. So the second thing I'd say is stop stressing about it. The reality is everybody has it. And what I'd say actually is I've sort of spun it a little bit from being a negative to a positive because for me the points at which I feel that I'm in that kind of mode of imposter syndrome is probably the point when I'm actually stretching myself most because I'm outside my comfort zone. So I tried to turn it from a positive to a kind of learning experience. So as I say, the second thing is just don't worry about it. Like hold it lightly and we all suffer with it. That's the second thing I'd say.

The third thing actually and it was really lovely to hear you say what you just said because the third thing I'd say is look after people. Yeah. Look after the people that are around you. So you know one of my favorite quotes that I try and stay true to is the Maya Angelou quote which many people will know but I sort of paraphrase it as you know people will never remember what you said. They'll never remember what you did. They'll always remember the way you made them feel. And I take that to heart and I really go out of my way to try and make people feel special. So that is a really important part of kind of my DNA and I think what allowed me to be a CMO in an organization like Wix.

And then the last one is something I really struggled with actually, but if I was a dog, I'd definitely be a Labrador. You know, I love to be liked. I need to be walked and fed and occasionally stroked. And I think probably one of the things that I've sort of grown into is acknowledging that not everyone is going to like me. And that has to be okay. And definitely in the early part of my career, I always wanted to be liked and therefore I avoided confrontation and difficult conversations as I searched for kind of serenity and sort of friendships. And I think in hindsight, I think if I'd learned the lesson earlier, that that isn't always going to be true. That would have been helpful. So, those are four things I'd call out, Susie.

Yeah, sure. Well, I mean, the first thing I'll say is, you know, I think I have been incredibly fortunate in my career. I've always loved what I've done. Work has never ever been a chore for me. Passionate about the brands I've worked for and always given huge amounts of opportunity which I've sort of relished. So there naturally as a consequence of that there's lots of kind of amazing experiences and amazing memories that I could talk to but there are three that stand out. I've sort of been reflecting a bit on this but definitely the first one is something I'm really proud of which is when we launched the Very brand, so Very.com, we launched that in 2009. And I love seeing the kind of financial and trading updates from the Very group because that brand has gone from strength to strength. I say I remember the hard yards of kind of getting that brand up to the position where we could launch it in 2009 and by the way it didn't come out of the blocks quickly. We had quite a few challenges and it was six months of hard work to get it to where we needed it to be but you know now it's a sort of two billion pound retail brand and I as I say I played a small part in launching that brand back in 2009 so that definitely has to be one.

The second one I think is actually more about an activity as opposed to the brands in which I conducted that activity. So developing the brand purpose for actually three brands but for Mothercare, for Argos and for Wix I've absolutely loved that and the reason I've loved that is it's the point in my time where you could really connect with colleagues emotionally rather than rationally because if you think about a brand purpose, you know Simon Sinek always says you know it's not what you do, it's not how you do it, it's your why and the minute you can tap into a brand's why you get a huge amount of sort of emotional connection with colleagues and I've just had so much pleasure from tapping into the brand purpose being able to share it and then seeing people connect with it. So that's definitely the second thing really passionate about that.

And then the third one actually is something which has happened a bit more recently. I do love data. And I think marketing is a blend of art and science. So, you can never get rid of that marketing intuition and gut feel, but it has to be augmented now with data. That maybe wasn't true in the late '90s, but it's definitely true now. And I'm really proud of some work we've been doing around an AI machine learning model which has created something that we call the Motivations Engine or the MME which effectively predicts the missions that customers are on before we know they're on them which means we can then talk to them about relevant communications at the right point in their customer journey. So that's the third thing. It's really about how we bring data in with that retail marketing intuition and gut feel.

Yeah, I do. I mean massively actually. I think you know if I go back probably to my time at Very. I joined Very, it wasn't called Very at the time of course but in 2004 and if I go right back to that point my sort of sense then is that you know customers back then were interacting with single channel, you know actually sort of retail commerce through digital devices didn't really happen but as it started to emerge through the back end of 2005, 2006, 2007 definitely customers were just engaging with a single channel they either shopped offline or they shopped online and then we went through this phase of almost a multi-channel experience where they would dip into the channels and go from start to finish on a channel whether that be offline whether that be online and when you stand back now I believe that we are truly omni-channel as a sort of nation of shoppers and one of the things that means is that we have to as marketeers we have to give seamless experiences agnostic of the channel that the customer is choosing to interact with you in. So I think that's a big change that we've seen over the last sort of eight to 10 years.

The next thing I'd say is that you know unfortunately in retail sometimes stuff goes wrong and what I have found is that as consumers have become more sort of digitally native when it does go wrong that display of dissatisfaction is much more public now than it ever used to be because of social media effectively. So I just think as brands in a digital world we need to be more consistent. We need to have a much bigger emphasis on sort of consumer to consumer kind of marketing rather than brand to consumer. So that's definitely a shift.

The penultimate one probably actually is around speed of resolution. So a little bit connected to that point when it goes wrong. But I think that in the digital world the customers expectations have increased. You know that they've shortened the time window that they give to brands to kind of put right any wrong. That's definitely that's been accelerated from a sort of digital perspective over the last you know five or 10 years.

And then I'll just finish by sort of reflecting on maybe a point I made in answer to the earlier question which is the role of kind of data. So for me digital equals data. And naturally the more data you have the better you can understand kind of the role of each of your channels, the role each of those channels has on the path to purchase which then allows you to understand better kind of channel and activity return on investment. So ultimately as marketeers making sure that every pound we spend is more efficient than the last pound we spent. So that would be a bit of a flavor Susie as to kind of some of the things I've observed over the past as I say sort of probably 15 years actually when I think about that digital shift and then obviously more recently the significance and importance of data within the teams.

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, connected to that, I think that's only going to accelerate. So, you know, I see some of this stuff about the metaverse is dead. They may be right, they may be wrong, but one thing I do know is from a sort of AI perspective, that is going to be an incredibly important skill set for the future marketeer. And I was chatting to some of our partners at both Google and at CARA, our media agency, and they were talking about the role of what's called a prompter which effectively is a new skill set which is developing now and you know commands big salaries. If you're really strong prompter then you can extract fantastic information from you know from an AI perspective. So all this is changing and changing quickly. So definitely one to watch for marketeers, isn't it?

So I think I probably sort of pick up with that with where you sort of left off that last question in as much as you know that whole world of AI, machine learning whether you're a believer or not but metaverse, you know within that some of the tools that sit below AI sort of ChatGPT etc. So holding as a marketeer holding that intellectual curiosity around all of these kind of developments that are coming and coming incredibly quickly the rate of change is going to be significant in this space. So that there's a big piece there for me.

I would then connect to that something a comment I made earlier probably which is how you as a marketeer balance the art with the science. So I think as marketeers we have to maintain a degree of sort of creativity, of kind of intuition of gut feel and actually that whole role of sort of data should augment that as opposed to take over that. So I think there'll be a real skill in the future CMO to work out you know when is it just when does it feel right versus when does the data tell me it's right and actually blending that is going to be a skill. So I definitely call out that.

Probably the third bit I'll just call out again I did mention I do like data and I love the contribution that econometric modeling makes to our decision-making as marketeers. And you know you'll always find cynics around the board table in terms of your marketing investment. I stress that marketing is an investment as opposed to a cost. It might sound very subtle but it's very important in terms of how you position you know marketing's contribution around the board table and I think actually socializing econometric performance around the board table does shift the perception of marketing quite quickly when you can say I know the pound that I spent in that channel generated this return and I know where I am on the diminishing returns curve so if you give me another pound I can give you this back and if you need to take a pound away I'm going to take it from over here. That's really really powerful and really kind of positions marketing as a lot more than just the art that it used to be seen maybe 15 or 20 years ago.

Again, it's not massively insightful, Susie, so I may let you down a bit here, but the important thing is anyone can do what I'm gonna say to that, which is for me the single biggest piece of career advice I think is literally just to be yourself. And I mean be your whole self. So that means being incredibly authentic and I think one has to acknowledge that if you want to be your sort of whole self, that does mean you do not leave your personality at the door. Even if that means risking that some people won't like the whole you. Which sort of goes right back to the sort of one of the comments I made right at the top that you have to be comfortable with that and again hold that lightly. That is going to be okay. So I think single biggest piece of advice I could possibly give is just to be yourself and your whole self. Warts and all.

It is absolutely and you know again something I've learned is sometimes you look at leaders in organizations and you think actually I need to be a bit more like them. And you know and I've tried that. The reality is if you do that you'll only ever be second best. Whereas if you're your true self, you have an opportunity to be the best. And I think, you know, I learned that the hard way actually, which is why, you know, I am who I am and acknowledging not everyone likes me, and that's a shame, but that's okay, too.

As I mentioned, I've been very very lucky. I've always genuinely always loved what I've done, but I'm particularly loving the contribution I'm making to the Wix business. The culture of the organization is incredible. We have an awesome executive leadership team and we've still got some fantastic work we need to do. So, I'm sort of unwavering on that path. I love mentoring people. I do a bit of work with diversity and retail mentoring. I mentor people internally and some people externally. That's a real passion point of mine. So, I want to be able to continue to do that, if not do more of that. And I think the third thing, if I just sort of lift my gaze a little bit, is I'd love to make contribution to organizations at a non-exec level. I think I've got a lot to offer from a digital perspective, marketing and a retail perspective. I'd love to be able to make that contribution to different businesses actually outside of my sort of exec commitments. So, sort of three things there really, Susie.

No problem. Thank you, Susie. Good to see you. Absolute pleasure.