British Brands Focus on Customer Experience, Analytics

In the UK, two major brands have underlined their focus on customer experience - British Airways with an appointment and Morrisons via an announcement by the CEO; while a third, publisher Trinity Mirror, has raised eyebrows with a new analytics-led business approach.


The Drum (www.thedrum.com ) reports that BA has appointed former Avis and Kimberly-Clark marketer Troy Warfield to a new role, Director of Customer Experience, following a marketing reshuffle and refocus in January. The new role includes responsibility for 'customer experience and service proposition as well as overseeing more than 14,000 cabin crew and all customer insight, customer relations, product development and partnership activity'.

Warfield spent six years at Kimberly-Clark, latterly as VP, Family Care, Europe, before joining car rental firm Avis in November 2012 as Chief Commercial Officer, Avis Budget Group EMEA. Earlier in his career he spent eleven years at Unilever.


While The Drum notes that John Lewis and Tesco have also created more customer-centric roles for their senior teams recently, an article in www.mediapost.com flags up an announcement by the CEO of fellow retail major Morrisons. Newly appointed David Potts has opted for a reduction in high-profile ad campaigns, preferring a focus on 'improving the in-store shopping experience'. Ad spend was down 33% year-on-year for the first half of 2015.


Meanwhile newspaper publisher Trinity Mirror says its new 'Connected Newsroom', part of a 'digital first' strategy, will target a more engaged local audience with the use of audience analytics and trends analysis.

Trinity Mirror owns the Manchester Evening News and Manchester Weekly News, and the announcement has generated alarm in some quarters with the possibility of 'click targets' for individual journalists forcing them to 'dumb down' content and include more of what NUJ union spokesman Martin Shipton calls generic, celebrity-focused 'click bait'.