Speaker Q&A with Pete Markey, CMO at Boots UK

We caught up with Pete Markey, CMO at Boots UK ahead of him presenting the Ogilvy Lecture at Amplify 2024. 

Pete is Chief Marketing Officer for Boots where he is responsible for brand and marketing for the UK and ROI. Pete is also the Exec Sponsor for Marketing for Change and the Boots Pride BRG network as well as co-Exec sponsor for the Boots/Macmillan partnership.

Pete has previously held senior leadership roles at TSB, Aviva, RSA and MORE TH>N with his early career at One.Tel, the AA and British Gas. He has experience of working across a range of disciplines including marketing, sales, digital, data & analytics, customer experience, operations and strategy.

Pete has been awarded five prestigious Marketer of the Year awards and is a Fellow of the Marketing Society and the Chartered Institute of Marketing. Pete is very active in the marketing industry and is Vice President at ISBA and was appointed Chair of the Advertising Association’s Front Foot in 2022. He has regularly featured in the “Hall of Fame” in the Campaign Power 100 and the Marketing Week Top 100 most effective marketing leaders.

Pete has been recognised for his extensive work on diversity and inclusion winning both the Diversity Ally award at the European Diversity Awards in 2019 and the Corporate Ally award at the Rainbow Honours Awards in 2022. Pete is also a mentor for The Marketing Academy and Solent University.

Can you tell us a little about what your day to day looks like as CMO for Boots UK?

The exciting thing about my job is that no day is the same! I get to work with my own amazing team and an array of other brilliant and super talented people in our business and agencies to help drive our plans and growth. So each day is a mix of looking at the short, medium and long term – this week I’ve been working on summer, autumn and Christmas all in the same day! My role as CMO involves a healthy dose of looking over brand health and sales performance as well as mapping and planning out all our activities for the periods ahead – it’s a great way to keep your perspective on the tactical and strategic all together!

What has been the most significant challenge you’ve faced since joining Boots, and how did you overcome it?

Coming out of Covid we needed to show that Boots was the destination health and beauty retailer with highly relevant content that meets our customers needs today. And to achieve this we have introduced loads of great new content, including some fantastic new beauty brands and an improved shopping experience.  Plus we’ve introduced our new purpose “With You. For Life.” All of this combined has helped Boots performance, including  over twelve quarters of consecutive market share growth.

Our central theme of Amplify this year is ‘marketing for good’. What does marketing for good mean to you and how do you incorporate it into your working life?

For me great marketing can really help to shift the dial and be a positive change. As well as my role as CMO I am also the Exec Sponsor for the Boots Pride Network. So I get to see first hand the impact that being an ally and champion for diversity, equity and inclusion can be. Great marketing for me should reflect a view of the world that is truly inclusive and embraces the rich tapestry of diversity that we have in the UK today – this is so key for a company like Boots given the wide mix of customers we serve up and down the country every single day. One campaign I was most proud of was our “Joy For All” Christmas campaign featuring a real drag queen that our Pride Network helped to shape and develop with us to ensure we had a truly credible and impactful narrative as part of the work.

Can you share an example of a marketing campaign you’ve worked on that aimed to have a positive impact on the planet or society?

With a brand purpose of “With You. For Life” we have several examples! Our health campaign earlier this year promoted our free health MOT service. Not only did we do thousands of additional health checks on the back of this (helping support the NHS) we also saved lives – one lady came in and she had blood pressure of over 220! She was sent straight to hospital and spent the next two weeks as an inpatient recovering.

Another example is our work over the past year on the menopause. We took a leadership position in creating a campaign that directly worked to both educate on the menopause (and the various symptoms) and to provide clear solutions through the products and services that Boots offers. We partnered with Gen M to introduce an “M Tick” where all menopause products online and in store were clearly signposted. We did see a sales uplift but this was not the primary goal – most importantly we helped our customers in a key life stage and have testimonials on the difference this has made.

What are some key consumer trends you’re currently seeing, and how are Boots adapting to these trends?

The cost of living crisis has magnified the need for consumers to find real value for money across the board in how they shop. We’ve changed our Boots Advantage Card to offer “Price Advantage” which is immediate discounts in store and online on some of our most popular products, plus you still get points too. We have also recently introduced a series of price drops and have a regular rhythm of promotions including our popular £10 Tuesday and monthly pay day deals. The trading calendar is a vital part of how we ensure we are providing timely and relevant offers to help our customers every single day.

On a personal level, where do you draw inspiration from?

I took up improvised comedy 6 years ago and that has introduced me to an amazing new friendship group of creative people from all backgrounds. I get to create fun scenes with this amazing group at Dingbats Improv and we get to perform in front of 50-100 people each month. And they inspire me so much! I love getting to hang out with such a fun group of people each week and we even get to make each other laugh too (and laughter as they say is the best medicine!)

Tickets to Amplify 2024 are on sale now. Find out more and book here.

Published on 24 June 2024