Helen Normoyle is Chief Marketing Officer at DFS where her responsibilities include brand building, marketing, insight and communications. Before that she was Director of Marketing and Audiences at the BBC. She’s been Director of Market Research and Director of Media Literacy and Convergent Media at Ofcom. She’s also a member of Women in Advertising and Communications London (WACL). We caught up with Helen to hear about DFS’s digital strategy and how she views developments across the industry
What does your role as Chief Marketing Officer involve?
As CMO I am responsible for ensuring that as a company we, DFS, are always mindful of the voice of the customer and their evolving buying habits, tastes and preferences in everything we do across the organisation.
This is as much about understanding how customers research, interact, engage with and ultimately buy from us as it is about how we proactively communicate with them. Therefore a large part of my role is around brand building, marketing communications, research and insight, as well as managing our public profile to earn consumers’ trust, which ultimately will help facilitate further growth.
DFS was always a brand recognised by its endless sales and low price tags. Now, its marketing focuses on little everyday moments in the home. What fuelled this shift?
We’ve been a well-known brand for many years so our opportunity lay less in raising awareness of our brand and more in communicating the other relevant things we stand for, above and beyond great offers and sales. It was important to increase our emotional connection with consumers.
Our customer research and insight—as well as our own experience—has demonstrated the emotional importance of the sofa, and the everyday things that happen in and around it in peoples’ lives. For most of our customers, the sofa is at the heart of their home. That’s why, in recent years, we’ve started to engage with them on a more emotional level by featuring everyday sofa moments that people can relate to in our TV advertising.
There are also things that we do—things that sit at the heart of DFS—which we have started to communicate more. The fact that we have over 45 years of expertise in upholstery; our manufacturing expertise that comes from having three factories and two wood mills in Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire; the fact that we have our own design teams based here in the UK; the fact we offer a free 10 year guarantee on frames and frames springs and the fact that our interest free credit offer has been awarded ‘best buy’ by [independent researcher of financial products] Defaqto. All of these are great messages to have in our marketing and engagement arsenal and allow us to demonstrate that our prices are great value.
As a result, we have been able to retain our core customers and attract a more affluent shopper who is now, as a result of our both our marketing communications and our product range, more reassured that we can offer both style and quality as well as good value for money.
With DFS planning to float on the London Stock Exchange before the general election, do you see any potential challenges for the brand on the horizon?
We’ve prospered as a business for 45 years and we’ve seen all sorts of political and market environments. The important thing for any retailer is to stay focused on the customer—to offer a great range of products that offer great value for money, backed up by great service. That’s the best way to deal with whatever challenges life throws one’s way!
What was your first job in the marketing industry and how have things changed since then?
My first job was as a market researcher for Infratest and GfK, based in Germany. It was the early 1990s so things have changed massively since then. Probably the biggest changes have been driven by the way in which digital technology has transformed how we browse/purchase/shop and how we receive, consume and share information and content; also the data that we have now about consumers’ behaviour in each of these areas and more. There’s more specialisation than ever in marketing and it’s matched by the need to be better than ever at integrating activities, not just in marketing but across the organisation.
Are there any words of wisdom you wish you’d taken note of at the beginning of your career in marketing?
At the beginning of my career I was advised that it’s useful to see it as a marathon and not a sprint. It’s hard to take on that advice when you’re young and keen to make an impact. You tend to be more impatient to see results. With the benefit of more experience under my belt I have learned to see the wisdom in that advice. That said, I am not sure that any of my colleagues would describe me as a patient person!
You worked as Director of Marketing and Audiences at the BBC. Is there one campaign that you’re most proud to have been part of during your time there?
At the BBC I had the privilege to work with a great many talented and creative people within my own team of Marketing & Audiences, and across the wider organisation. I am so proud of so much of what we did that it’s a challenge to pick one thing, but if I had to it would be the campaign for London 2012. It was a great example of the power of working as a team across marketing, audiences and content creators for a once in a lifetime event.
How did you first get involved with Women in Advertising and Communications London (WACL) and how has this affected your outlook on your career in marketing?
I first got involved in WACL when I was at the BBC and was lucky enough to be invited to some of the fantastic events that WACL organises. I was impressed with the network from the get-go and WACL has been an extremely positive influence for me. Having access to a network of the most influential women in media, advertising and communications is not only inspiring but a great asset too. I’m proud to be part of an organisation that encourages more women to start careers in the sector as well as enable women to reach their full potential and stay in senior roles.
Any organisation that encourages any kind of diversity in the workplace is a good thing. It’s important that companies can recruit talent from the widest possible pool which includes both men and women from all walks of life.
Which other brands’ marketing strategies do you admire and why?
Lego is a brand that I very much admire in the broader sense of a marketing strategy. I have two boys (aged five and nine) who are Lego mad and I am struck by how much the brand has stayed true to its values and relevant to its target audience despite intense the competition from innumerable toys and screens.
They went through a challenging period some time ago but have, I think, come out it stronger than ever. They’ve successfully stayed relevant to children today without losing track of who they are and what they do best. I love the way they have developed their products and linked them to the popular children’s movies and online games, and also the way they have gone a step further again with the Lego movie (great content creation!) Loved the Lego ad break too!
Is there anything else you’d like to tell us about the current state of digital marketing?
Digital marketing is constantly evolving and it’s easy to see how people get caught up in the hype of the latest shiny new toy without really being clear on the benefits to the business and its customers. The emergence of new channels rarely equates to an increase in marketing budgets so you have to be smart with the budget you have and manage how you create the space for test and learns—it’s important to take risks and try new things and it’s an imperative to evaluate and learn from them.
I’m a firm believer that if you understand your customer well and have strong and relevant insights at the heart of your marketing then a targeted and carefully selected omnichannel approach is the best way to engage them.