Mark Evans: leader of year?

A sneak peek at who's in the running to be Marketing Leader of The Year 2017 - we interview Mark Evans, Marketing Director, Direct Line Group 

 

Your critical role in persuading customers to think differently about insurance has been well documented, but what about now, how do you maintain momentum?

It took blood, sweat and tears from many people across the business to successfully reposition the Direct Line brand. It was as much about increasing capability and belief as it was about clever marketing. The results have been dramatic, moving from 16% new business decline in 2013 to 31% growth in 2016 whilst simultaneously improving retention and keeping up momentum. We retain a healthy dissatisfaction with our own achievements and remain intentionally a little bit paranoid. 

 

This means continually evolving our proposition and investing in innovative and ambitious projects that set us apart. These include more disruptive projects like the Shotgun brand which attempts to reduce to zero the deaths of new drivers in their first 1000 miles when they are eight times more likely to cause a devastating accident. 

 

Every so often we remind one another of the dark days to renew our commitment to keep pushing ourselves. A market leadership mentality is more about being humble and paranoid than it is about self-congratulation.

 

What advice would you offer to other marketers for embedding new brand positioning throughout a company?

We worked incredibly hard to distil the brand promise into its simplest possible form i.e. into one word: “fixers”. This made it intuitive for our people to connect to. We asked everyone to be “on it” and ask themselves WWWWD… What Would Winston Wolf Do? As a result we have had both customer-facing and non-customer-facing staff going above and beyond the call of duty. It is no coincidence that we have seen a 30% increase in employee engagement in the last three years.

 

What does bold marketing leadership look like?

To disrupt a market you need to be prepared to zag when others zig. Bold marketing leadership is about remaining curious, constantly driving innovation and looking at things in a new way. It goes beyond pure communications and should start with a vision that touches all parts of the business. At Direct Line, we’ve broken with the tradition of obsessing purely on price. Instead we have focused on the key moment of need i.e. high performance insurance when you make a claim. 

 

What’s the bravest thing you’ve ever done at work?

The Direct Line relaunch was a do or die context and the potential downsides were hefty. To go for something so radical was a big risk, but one that has unquestionably paid off. Retrospectively it all looks quite plain sailing but there were many uncomfortable moments along the way.

 

What’s the hardest part of your job?

Staying on top of the complexity of new technologies and business models, whilst not getting distracted by them. There is potentially no sector as ripe for disruption than insurance - from IoT, peer-to-peer sharing, block chain, driverless cars to connected homes and cities. For example estimates range between 20% and 70% in terms of the reduction in the car insurance market in the next 20 years due to autonomous vehicles. In this context we are trying to be as agile as possible. 

 

What advice would you give others earlier in their career looking to become successful marketing leaders?

On the night of my university graduation my best friend’s father said…

 

“As I look before you I am jealous…. Jealous because from this position you can achieve pretty much anything in the world.  However, I also pity you. I say that because for 20 years you will go in search of success but all too late. When your best years are behind you, you will realise that it’s not about success – it’s about significance. But the really smart people figure out how to achieve success and significance simultaneously”.

 

This speech haunted all of us, positively, and every time we meet up it’s the first conversation that we have. You can define success and significance in many ways but I think it was a gift to hear this provocation, so I always jump at the chance to pass that gift on. 

 

What’s the biggest challenge facing you in the year ahead?

Making a big step towards our next million Direct Line customers. This is the year when our growth rates really need to accelerate. However, there is no silver bullet and that means we need to find an edge in everything that we do.

 

We are ready for this challenge with a truly connected Marketing team. We are a full-service marketing function integrating Propositions, Communications, PR, Social, Insight, Customer Experience, CRM and Marketing Effectiveness which gives us great synergies and adaptability to whatever challenges we encounter in trying to stay on the front foot in a rapidly evolving world. 

 

Looking to the future, what will the marketing department look like in five years’ time?

Marketing as a discipline will become ever more digital. Marketers will need to become more data-literate. Within insurance, we can see the impact of AI already where, within the actuarial discipline, machine learning can sometimes beat the models generated by decades of experience in a matter of weeks. 

 

The big change I hope we will see is marketing teams having a greater appreciation of diversity of thought and becoming more neuro-diverse. Rather than expecting individuals to be both right-brained and left-brained I believe the best marketing teams will as a composite become more whole-brained. Many creative breakthroughs have come from people who suffer from dyslexia, like my daughter, as well as other aspects of neuro-divergence including dyspraxia, dyscalculia, and autism. [1158] 924

 

Marketing Leader of Year 2017: voting now closed
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