Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Nick Adams

NickAdams_PassportSize_72dpi_RGB_0a38.small Chief Marketing Officer
Westpac Banking Corporation, Sydney, Australia


Nick Adams has just been officially named CMO of Westpac’s Retail and Business Banking division after a fast two-year rise within the company.  Nick actually rejoined Westpac in 2008 to drive a bank-wide customer relationship management program before moving to head up Cards and Direct marketing.  (He also served as a Senior Marketing Manager at Westpac from 2002-2005, before he left for a Vice President role at American Express.)

 Nick’s no stranger to marketing notoriety.  Six years ago, he was named one of the four young stars of Australian marketing by the prescient local Marketing magazine.  In November 2009, Nick was awarded Australian Direct Marketer of the Year by the ADMA/ Australian Direct Marketing Association for his program at Westpac.

 Now in his Chief Marketing Officer role, he’s responsible for customer service, sales and marketing for 4.4 million consumer, small and medium enterprise customers. 

So what’s the secret of Nick’s success?  He’ll simply say it’s knowing that above-the-line (ATL) and below-the-line (BTL) can work effectively together to provide highly-targeted creative that’s relevant to the consumer.  

“My key focus has been on developing best-in-class marketing campaigns that fuse direct marketing data and know how with highly-targeted above-the-line (ATL) campaigns.  For the launch of Westpac's 685 new style bank managers into the Australian marketplace, we created a campaign that geo-coded our 4 million customers and plotted them into trade areas—essentially linking our customers with our 685 branches and bank managers.  Into these trade areas we also plotted the location of all outdoor assets, press distribution boundaries and every Westpac ATM.  

Once we had built the database of our customers and media assets, we then delivered a nationally-driven campaign tailored to each of the 685 trade areas.  We created tens of thousands of pieces of creative tailored to each branch and bank manager, and ran the campaign across television, press, outdoor, digital, direct marketing including letterbox drops.  It was a huge team effort, but it was also hugely successful.

 Nick also recognizes that marketing risk-taking is essential today.  In fact, he has been taking the focus off price and promotion to drive product demand.  “More of our campaigns are now focused on higher-level value propositions and insights, rather than incorporating a more traditional price or promotion lever.  In these campaigns, we have been able to stimulate considerable demand and deliver the organization a greater outcome without reverting to price.  It is largely counter-intuitive to lead with this approach, particular in financial services where the products can be very homogeneous and competitors are pushing in the price/promotion territory to drive demand.”

 Nick Adams’ passion for marketing is clear.  Firstly, I love the fact that when done well, marketing can make a real difference to the bottom line of any company. We can take a discretionary investment and turn this into incremental value for an organization.  And I love the fact that no two days in marketing are the same; each day is a new challenge requiring you to stay at the top of your game.



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