Not On The High Street marketer on why you can’t cut corners with brand advertising

I’m originally from a small seaside town in the south of France. I moved to the UK about 20 years ago with the goal to become fluent in English. I fell in love with London: the multiculturalism and the culture around opportunities for people that were really eager to succeed.

My first office job was with The Birch Group. I had a great mentor, and he showed me how exciting a career in marketing could be. The business sponsored me to do the Chartered Institute of Marketing qualification. My first real marketing role was at Search Office Space. One day, the managing director of the business decided he was not happy with the PPC agency. He sacked them and gave me that responsibility. I had to learn on the fly. It was scary but at the same time, it was the best opportunity.

The foundations of my career were in digital and performance marketing. I learned from scratch. Moving away from real estate, I went on to work for Cheap Flights, a business that was more aligned with my hobbies and my passions. I became a growth hacker, focusing on internationalization, bringing the marketing efforts in house, and optimizing to guarantee ROI and and getting that gross for businesses.

Next I moved to Viator, a tours and activities marketplace which was shortly acquired by TripAdvisor after I joined. I had been lucky enough to work on both brands and run their SEM efforts which meant that I primarily worked with engineers, data scientists and lots of analysts. There I became passionate about machine learning, AI and the need to embrace new technology and change. Then I moved into retail – to Not On The High Street, a gifting and lifestyle online marketplace. I joined the business with the aim to accelerate its growth but also to diversify its marketing channels with profitability in mind.

Initially I worked on acquisition and retention, with further automation for efficiency, CRM migration and development of a new attribution model as top deliverables. The dream for me was to one day lead the entire marketing function including the brand, creative and comms functions: to embrace the creativity and bring it into a single team together to get great results.

I have been with Not On The High Street six years and as part of the senior leadership team, reporting into the CEO for just over two years now, in the VP marketing role. I’ve led the marketing function through many phases of the business, growing fast at all cost, doubling the size of the business through COVID but also worked on our acquisition by Grey Hill partners in 2021, and more recently, the rebrand. I consider myself today to be a very versatile but also resilient marketing leader with so much passion for what I do.

As you look forward to 2025 what are you focusing on as the marketing lead?

Considering the current economic backdrop and the volatility of the market in recent years, we have been laser-focused on nurturing our customer relationships and ensuring that our proposition is relevant and strong with customers. We’re putting more effort into our retention activities and across the customer journey and look to continue developing further our membership which got a very warm welcome from our customers.

Our brand has been around for 17 years now – we are almost a heritage brand. We did a rebrand a few years ago, allowing us to modernize our creative but also allowing us to broaden our appeal to new audiences. We continue to work on this effort today and widening our proposition beyond gifting.

Not On The High Street’s homepage

What is the offer at Not On The High Street?

Not On The High Street is a lifestyle and gifting marketplace, curating the best of small UK creative businesses. We help our customers find the most creative gifts alongside items for themselves in categories such as jewelry, home and garden or food and drinks.

Our marketplace is there to make it easy for customers to find the perfect gift or item to treat themselves thanks to our team of trend experts.

What are your key responsibilities?

I'm part of the senior leadership team and we drive the long-term vision for the business: we ensure that our proposition remains relevant and competitive, but also support the best culture we can within the business.

I also lead a team of amazing marketing and creative experts: there’s the brand and creative team, and also the channel marketing teams. I help to establish the marketing strategy and encourage a culture of ‘test and learn,’ and innovation, driving success so that our marketing activities align with our business goals.

Leaning into customers’ needs helps to shape Not On The High Street campaigns

What is your first memory of a marketing success that you were part of where you felt: ‘This is the role for me.’

A long time ago, when I was at Regus in my first international role, I was working in a very large business with complex worldwide operations in a number of countries. I was brought in to consolidate all of the online marketing efforts in London. There were multiple languages, markets and different marketing budget owners scattered across the globe.

The business was also taking a big risk: they were leaving many agencies that the business had worked with for many years and building a team in-house. We had to deliver on ROI and growth, the expectations were high.

Within less than 18 months, we were able to deliver triple-digit growth and significant improvement on ROI. The gains on both growth and profitability were so significant, it was a huge success. But more importantly, I was really proud of the team that I had recruited. We trained our team from the ground up in PPC and other crucial skills as we primarily hired based on the language spoken. The numbers were great, but personally, I think the success of building a team in that way made me feel really passionate about a future where I could build, lead and coach more teams in this way.

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

It is crucial – especially when you’re thinking about long-term growth. Working more in the brand space, and working with creative teams, I have come to appreciate this so much more. It is all about the customer.

You can’t really think about long-term growth if you’re thinking about acquiring transactions rather than customers. In order for your brand to acquire a customer and to nurture their relationship, dialling up creative storytelling and nurturing those connections is crucial.

Not On The High Street has been a successful business built on a strong brand.

I have done a lot of work and testing over the years, and without a doubt, when a brand is able to build a relationship with a customer through emotional connections whilst showcasing how it serves the customer’s needs, this is the formula that wins every time.

Not On The High Street’s out-of-home campaign in 2023 asked shoppers to think before they buy

Could you tell us about an initiative, on your watch, that you’re especially proud of?

I’m proud of our last Christmas campaign. I feel it is where our brand acquired a stronger voice and created the emotional connection we needed post our rebrand with our customers. We took a stand for what we believed in and had a challenging message to drive fame.

Our campaign was called “Don’t Gift.” We said: “Don’t just give for the sake of it. Give something meaningful – or don’t do it.” There’s so much waste in our world. We really need to take care of the planet and consider the future. The campaign was supported with OOH installations across the UK, talking to the mindful consumer.

As a business we stood up for something, and our community of small business partners were behind us and so were our customers – they were shopping with us in a way that they had not done before. With this messaging, we were able to cut through the marketing noise last Christmas.

Not On The High Street asked shoppers to consider the impact of ‘throw-away gifts.’

What is the value of creativity in effective brand advertising?

Creativity is a way for us to capture customer attention and for them to understand the role we can play in their lives. Creativity is so important because it delivers on diversity and innovation – and that’s how we approach our campaigns or everything we do across the entire business.

How do you navigate the plethora of media choices are available today, from out-of-home to email via addressable TV to name but a few?

One word: test. Test as much as possible. Don’t be afraid to fail – but make sure that you’ve got learnings. In terms of media choices, we have a wealth of data and information about our customers (qualitative and quantitative) and we do our utmost to understand where they are and where they spend their time.

Testing helps us establish the mix across all media – making sure that we deliver the best results. The results are judged on whether we hit our established and very specific KPIs. Whether it is out-of-home versus PPC, CRM or TV, the media as a channel in these applications has very different roles and different KPIs. Be clear on your KPIs, understand your customer and then test and test again.

What myth about marketing would you most like to bust?

I’d like to bust the myth that a business does not need brand advertising. I met and worked with so many businesses that focus entirely on the bottom of the sales funnel, when in fact you need to fill the sales funnel at the top – which means working on your brand campaigns. You can’t cut corners and assume everyone will be considering your product or service when they are in the market to purchase. You have to be a great storyteller and ensure the customer understands why you exist and how you can help them.

Too many businesses still think that advertising through PPC alone is going to deliver long-term growth: it isn’t. Channels, like SEO, SEM are easier to track for your return on investment. And in today’s world, you have to fight hard for your marketing budget. But, like Not On The High Street have done, marketers need to invest in brand campaigns to drive long-term growth.

‘Make time for dad’: one of Not On The High Street’s targeted campaigns.

Advice that you might give to your younger self if you could go back in time?

Build your network early on. I’ve been part of of a community called WITSEND (a society of senior Women In Technology), for about three years. Having a network helps you grow as a leader and strategically. You can learn from other people’s experience and then bring that experience to your own role.

Also, always be hungry to learn. With machine learning and AI things are changing fast. When I think about how marketing has changed since when I started running the PPC campaigns 17 years ago… it is so important to stay on top of everything. Embrace change and be resilient.

What is your question for the next senior marketer that I will interview?

What impact do you think AI will have on marketing and creativity in particular?

The senior marketer question for you is: how do you get the senior people in your business to take risks when they don’t understand marketing as you do?

I think there are a few stages to this. First you must understand what makes your senior team ‘tick’: understand and have empathy with each individual, and then consider the language you are using. If I’m speaking to my Chief Financial Officer or our VP of Engineering - these are all very different conversations.

Next, I would say: numbers. Show evidence of your past success, or tests that you have been running or even using data from other businesses that have been successful. In some cases, you need to build your own case study.

Let's say your CFO is not comfortable with a type of campaign, or isn’t convinced by your choice of media. In this case incremental testing – and sharing the results – is key. I keep telling my team to test: if they are proposing something new, they can have it as long as they have tested and can show me that it works.

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

Marketing success cannot be achieved by focusing solely on creating financial transactions. First you must value the voice of your customer – and really listen – not just to the quantitative but also to the qualitative data. Then you must use creativity to nurture your relationship with your customers, ensuring they’re able to perfectly understand the role you’ll play in their life and the problem you’re solving for them..

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.

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