Meet our 2021 awards judge, Andy Daly

Andy Daly is Vice President, Global Pampers Upstream Innovation at P&G.

Andy has worked in the FMCG industry throughout his career, predominantly in product management and marketing.

More recently he specialised in digital marketing, particularly e-commerce, leading an e-business with turnover of $250m.

Andy is one of the judges for The Marketing Society Awards. Here is his advice for anyone entering in 2021.

Why is recognizing marketing excellence through the Society’s awards so important for the industry?

Being exposed to and recognising outstanding work raises the bar on creativity for everyone. It’s important for all marketers to benchmark externally both within and outside of their own categories. 

What advice would you offer brands entering our awards to make their entry stand out?

Explain how you used the media plan to amplify creativity. Historically we thought of “advertising” and “media” as unique and separate spaces. The advertising department developed advertising and then passed it on to the media department to air. Today the lines between advertising and media are blurred, with the latter playing a much more important role in driving and amplifying creativity.   

What’s your golden rule?

The aim of advertising is to create value for a brand. We love to admire beautiful, entertaining and creative advertising, but the most important question is whether it increases brand value.

What is your most hated business expression?

For 2020, it was most certainly “You’re on mute”, closely followed by “Can you go on mute, there’s a bad echo”.

What’s the biggest risk you’ve taken in your career?

The thing that becomes obvious over time is that the biggest risk is often taking what’s perceived to be the safe option. It often leads to “doing things the way we’ve always done them” which in an ever-changing business environment can quickly lead to irrelevancy. With the benefit of hindsight, many of the things that felt like risks at the time e.g. moving from mass to 1:1 communication; early-adoption of ecommerce as a retail channel and moving from product-focused to cause-related advertising were actually sensible, low-risk actions.

What inspires or motivates you every day to do what you do?

The constant desire to improve what we offer to our consumers. Each time a baby is born, a parent is born too, be they a first time parent trying to figure out how to do the best for their baby or a subsequent parent trying to figure out how their new baby will fit into the family. Consumer values and parental trends have shifted dramatically in the past 5 years and it’s exciting to find new and better ways to serve both parents and babies.

2021 entries are now open. Find out more about how you can enter The Marketing Society Awards here.