FT’s Fiona Spooner on structuring the marketing team around the customer and their journey

I started my career at Centaur, now Xeim, during the “dot-com” boom in 2001. I started as a marketing assistant for New Media Age – a print magazine about digital marketing. After that, I moved on to Marketing Week conferences, organizing events where brilliant senior marketers shared their strategies and creative ideas. I loved hearing about what they were doing. That was when I realized I wanted to be on their side of the conference – to be a senior marketer myself.

A job came up at the Financial Times (FT) marketing events. Originally, it was my intention to gain experience and then move on to a dream role in FMCG for some fancy consumer brand. And yet: 20 years (and some 15 different roles) later, I am still here.

I was promoted to marketing manager, then moved into the brand team. I enjoyed it for a while but I became frustrated with the continuous struggle to attribute the work with commercial goals – it’s a challenge now but it was even harder back then with very little data to work with. At the same time, I had started to become aware of the move into digital content and data-driven marketing. This sounded really interesting and exciting to me: it also sounded like a big challenge.

With the demise of print media sales, I realized that for publishers and journalists, there were significant decisions ahead and that the industry needed to transform. I approached the team working on it and asked to be involved. The only open opportunity at the time was a short-term, maternity cover in the acquisition team. I took the risk, moved to FT.com and loved it. Being part of the business transformation over the last decade has been a real privilege.

The FT wins Best reader Revenue Award (Press Gazette 2024)

The FT was among the first publishers to embrace digital and we pioneered the metered model. Since then, I’ve worked across the entire customer journey – from acquisition to engagement and retention. I’ve covered three maternity leaves, had two of my own children and have seen the company evolve from a print-reliant model to one where digital content and reader-focused strategies drive revenue.

There’s been a huge number of changes that have kept it interesting and varied. People talk about career ladders, but for me, it’s been more of a career path, with many twists and turns along the way. My progress at the FT has most often come from seeking out new opportunities, pushing myself, and adapting to changes in the industry.

The FT reported that all major revenue streams are up and the FT made over £500m for the first time in 2023 with growth in all its major revenue lines. The FT group had a global paying audience of 2.57 million and you reached 1.4 million paying readers, of which 1.3 were digital subscribers. What does 2025 look like for you?

In 2025, our ambition is to keep growing our audience and revenue – building a sustainable business model so that we can continue to produce quality journalism. My role as managing director brings together consumer marketing, customer care and business development, with a focus on laying the groundwork for our next growth phase.

As the Consumer Revenue Group, our purpose is to provide the revenue that funds quality journalism. While we have clear profit targets, our focus is on understanding our readers, engaging with them meaningfully, and continuously innovating. We’re fortunate that the FT has always been a leader in what we do, but we’re never complacent. My team drives a quarter of the company’s revenue, and we need to keep experimenting with formats and platforms to stay relevant and connected to our audience.

The FT model is predicated on giving subscribers the information needed to make the most informed decisions

How do you summarize the FT’s offer?

The FT helps people make informed decisions. We’re the most trusted news brand for global business and political news, with an audience that’s ambitious, curious, and deeply engaged in world affairs. While professionals are our core audience, we often hear from new readers, “We didn’t know the FT was like this.”

Our readers include influential people – from business leaders to policymakers—who rely on us for insight. We want to ensure they have the information they need to make ethical, financial, and inclusive decisions.

How is your marketing team structured?

My team is very much structured around the customer and their journey, from acquisition to customer care and retention, with about 180 people in the Consumer Revenue Group across multiple global offices, including London, New York, and Hong Kong.

We have teams who specialize in audience strategy, pricing, creative and customer insight. Customer care is part of our group to keep customer feedback and insights front and center. Business development is another key function – looking beyond subscriptions to explore how we can maximize our reach and impact. We’re one of the few newspapers where our print subscriptions are growing again, so we have renewed focus there – especially around FT Weekend. We work closely with editorial, data, product and tech teams to ensure everything we do aligns with the FT’s goals.

What is your first memory of a marketing success that you were part of where you felt: this is a role for me?

Implementing the paywall was a big moment. Initially, there was skepticism across the industry and even within the FT about whether people would pay for news online.

Seeing readers subscribe despite the paywall was exciting. We could track where they went on the site and what they read, which provided valuable insights. It was a pivotal shift for our business, and being part of that change felt impactful. Since then, we’ve evolved the subscription model continuously, adapting to audience needs and industry trends. You can’t just set up an access model and leave it alone. It keeps my job very interesting. We are always learning: what we do at The FT wouldn’t be right for another publication. It all depends your content, your audience and the financial climate. There’s a constant evolution of what should be free and what should be paid.

The FT Edit service offers 8 stories a day to explain surprise and inspire

How do you rate the value of emotional connection with a marketing campaign?

It’s huge, and it’s one of the best parts of the job. Our most recent campaign, ‘Source FT,’ is based on the insight that the FT is trusted. Through global interviews, we found that our customers value the FT because it allows them to form their own opinions confidently. That idea drives the entire campaign.

Having an emotional connection with our customers is crucial. We’re not just competing with other news sources; we’re competing with all subscriptions for a share of the customer’s wallet.

Tell us about an initiative on your watch that you’re especially proud of.

Leading the global marketing team during Covid is probably the proudest moment. It was a difficult time for everyone personally, but it also brought clarity to our mission. We saw that when the world turned upside down, people came to the FT for reliable information.

We had to work out how to keep delivering our journalism, support our employees and serve our readers. While our advertising and print circulation took a hit, digital subscriptions helped us sustain the business. During a period of great adversity, our team came together with a real sense of purpose. and we hit our business targets while supporting each other. I look back on that with a bit of post-traumatic stress but also immense pride.

The FT display takeover at Penn Station, New York

How do you see the value of creativity in great brand advertising?

Creativity is only becoming more important as AI, misinformation, and consumer expectations evolve. It sets your product or service apart. But it’s also about internal culture – your team needs permission and space to be able to be creative and push boundaries or the work just stays the same.

At the FT, for example, our approach to data visualization is a unique strength. Presenting data to this high standard reflects the excellent quality of the content that we’re producing and keeps us distinct.

How do you navigate the plethora of media choices available today for your own marketing?

We don’t have the biggest budgets so we’re very strategic with our media choices, working closely with our partner agencies to reach our audience effectively. Being global requires precision, and our marketing effectiveness team helps ensure we’re using our budget wisely.

What myth about marketing, would you most like to bust?

My biggest frustration, having worked in the industry for all these years, is the general lack of understanding of marketing that exists in business. We frequently have to justify our work in ways other departments don’t. Marketing requires long-term investment and a strategic approach – it’s not about spending today and seeing results tomorrow.

If you could go back in time, what advice would you give your younger self?

I’ve been fortunate to work at a time where we are slowly but surely recognizing the value of women in the world and in the workplace. I would advise my younger self to focus on her strengths, stay authentic and be confident to lead with integrity. We no longer live in an era where ethical behavior and commercial success are mutually exclusive or where women have to conform to traditional “successful” male behaviors to get ahead. Today, I’d remind myself that kindness and integrity are strengths, not weaknesses.

I remember that when I came back from my first maternity leave, I saw it as a success when people said to me: “I didn’t know you had a child.” When I heard that I thought: “Great, I’m winning.” I never admitted to having anything outside of work. It was only when, having been promoted, and I had my second child, that I felt like I was in a stronger position to be able to own the fact that I was a mum. I spent years trying to hide all of that – when, in fact, it is a strength. I feel I have a real responsibility to the people around me to encourage them to champion their own qualities – and be their true selves.

The FT launched its 2023 campaign by projecting onto County Hall, London

What question would you like me to ask the next senior marketer that I interview?

I would ask: can marketers change the world, or are we fighting a losing battle?

Your question from another senior marketer is: how do you measure and connect and prove the effectiveness of your marketing?

Yeah, I think this is a permanent struggle and we are constantly re-calibrating how we do this. We’re a data-driven company, so we measure as much as possible – everything from media mix modeling to customer satisfaction. It’s about balancing the quantitative with the qualitative, and continually adapting.

If there’s one thing you know about marketing, it is?

Being able to adapt, while the key tenets of marketing remain the same: right product, right place, right person. So much has changed, but those basics are still what we aim to deliver. As marketers, our role is to connect it all up and make sure we’re always delivering value.

You might die tomorrow so make it worth your while. Worth Your While is an independent creative agency helping brands do spectacular stuff people like to talk about. wyw.agency.

Tim Healey, founder and curator of Little Grey Cells Club, the UK’s premier Senior Marketer meet up.