New Look has been a staple on the British high street for 50+ years. 

Now, they’re fast adopting new frontiers. Ready, testing, and learning.

For this episode, Paul had the pleasure of interviewing long-time peer and industry pal, Raine Peake (Head of Marketing & Customer Growth @ New Look | ex-Director @ Jigsaw, Mint Velvet & Farfetch). 

Together, they dive deep into the importance of – and tactics behind – investing in the right brand strategies to purpose-build passionate communities. Their expert takes on personalization through AI, engaging gamification, Out-Of-Home advertising, store refurbishments & influencer marketing are all included.

 

Tune in to hear Raine’s advice for…

 

• Creating Strategic Squads to Build Local Communities: Right now, New Look is running a highly successful experiment. The brand has overhauled one of their stores in Manchester, supported with numerous marketing activations – led by a dedicated in-house ‘Squad’. Taking up 25% of the assigned team members’ time, the benefits seen in awareness, growth, and conversion have far outweighed the cost. Now you can learn Raine’s formula for ‘Squad’ success, too.

 

• Turning Employees into your Biggest Advocates: Often overlooked, at the expense of your easiest brand win. Your employees are easily your best Advocates – a fact that’s especially true when it comes to fashion brands. They know everything about your product, are (ideally!) incredibly passionate about the brand, and (one better) often model the clothes themselves. Learn why the next frontier of building Brand Advocacy lies with them. 

 

• Knowing the Place of AI, Personalization & Gamification: Big buzzwords here, for good reason. As Raine explores these domains for New Look, she openly shares her favorite insights so far. Her north star in these realms? Data, data, and data. 

 

All the practical and tactical advice any Brand Builder needs from Raine is waiting.

 

Rate & review Building Brand Advocacy:

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Connect with Raine:

• On LinkedIn

Raine Peake

[00:00:00]:

I think it's just a different way of reaching customers. I think it's just fun. And shopping should be fun. So I don't think it's scary, I don't. I don't know why you wouldn't like, want to do it. And I think they're. What? You know, they're on YouTube, they're playing games, they're on TikTok, they are not going through those traditional channels.

 

Paul Archer 

[00:00:27]:

Have you ever wondered why some brands grow exponentially, building legions of passionate fans that live and die by their logos and some, well, don't? I do, all the time. And that's probably because I'm a massive brand nerd. But I believe there's a secret sauce at the core of every remarkable brand. A formula that sparks the growth of passionate communities, of superfans, building a business and a reputation that will last for years to come. 

 

In this podcast, we tap into the greatest marketing minds in the world as they share the exact tactics and strategies used to build the world's greatest brands. Dropping actionable insights every brand builder can apply. 

 

My name is Paul Archer and I'm a specialist in Brand Advocacy and word-of-mouth. Having consulted for hundreds of brands on a topic co hosting with me is the wonderful Verity Hurd, expert on the bleeding edge of social media.

 

It's time to learn and build Brand Advocacy.

 

Paul Archer 

[00:01:25]:

Hello, welcome to Building Brand Advocacy!

 

My name is Paul Archer, I'm your host and I am joined by the spectacularly wonderful Raine Peake. Raine. Welcome.

 

Raine Peake 

[00:01:33]:

Thanks. Thanks for having me.

 

Paul Archer

[00:01:34]:

Well, Raine. So currently you are the Head of Marketing and Customer Growth at New Look, which is a great British brand for any of the US listeners here. But previously you were the Digital Director at Jigsaw, Digital Director at Mint Velvet and Customer Director at Arcadia Group and Topshop, where we actually first met.

 

Raine Peake

[00:01:52]:

We did. In lockdown.

 

Paul Archer 

[00:01:54]:

In lockdown. That was wild. About five weeks before it all went south. I think for those guys it was fun. And we're going to dig into quite a few different things at the moment. I'm really interested in actually some of your learnings that you've been going through around the idea of investing in brand and bringing it back. Because we're all about brand and reputation and what does it mean? 

 

But does that mean big out of home billboards? Does that mean communities of customers? Does that mean store like, you guys have shifted it and you looked and made some investments? Can you tell us a little bit about that?

 

Raine Peake

[00:02:29]:

Yeah, sure. So we've got 400 stores, so we're national so it's a really big brand. So what we've done is we've had a focus area in Manchester and really tried to do lots of different things that are brand building. Some things are really obvious, like out of home taxes. Those things are kind of, you know, what you would expect. We've also refitted stores, which I know is a really simple thing. We have, well, not so simple when you've got a lot, but you know, you would think common sense. 

 

We've invested in all of our store colleagues and really invested in visual merchandising and all of those things that they are much more within the brand journey.

 

So when they're speaking to customers, they're the more enthusiastic, know more about the product and then we've backed that up with up weighted influencer marketing. Local influencers community. We have a community of New Lookers which are based in store and they create content and, you know, are kind of local focused. And then we've sort of underpinned that with PPC and meta advertising in a local area. Well, I mean that's quite a big thing, but it's in a quite confined space.

 

Paul Archer 

[00:03:38]:

And is it working?

 

Raine Peake

[00:03:39]:

Yeah, it's really working. The main metric that we wanted to shift was footfall. So we wanted to have store footfall and that's quite unusual for, for us because we really look at kind of the p and l of online and the p and l of the stores and we don't necessarily mix them up. 

 

So to have online sort of traffic generators forcing people into. Not forcing, obviously it's voluntary, but encouraging people to go to store is like quite a different thing for us. And that's what the criteria is measured almost the foot course, because we know when you go in store there's a much higher conversion rate.

 

Paul Archer 

[00:04:13]:

So how do you know which one's working? Because there's a lot going on there. So it's like, okay, if we do a lot of marketing in this area, it's going to increase footfall. But which of those levers that you're putting on is the one that's having the most effect?

 

Raine Peake 

[00:04:25]:

That would be a bit of a gray area, I would suggest. We did do incrementality studies on Google. We've done a sort of testing of this algorithm called PMAx restore goals, which is a footfall tracker. So we proved that worked in a test area. We also have test stores and you have control stores and the actual stores, but. Bit murky, I would say, but it's working. But I kind of think that's good, right? People are talking about us, people are excited. Everybody's saying, well, look what New Look are doing.

 

Raine Peake 

[00:04:57]:

It's a combination of all of those things as opposed to one thing in isolation.

 

Paul Archer 

[00:05:01]:

Which one do you think is the most counterintuitive thing that's having an effect, in your opinion?

 

Raine Peake

[00:05:06]:

I think it's the store piece and I really think people are very fond of New Look as a brand, and I think when they can kind of see something happening, then we've got really great CRM programs, we've got local marketing around each of those stores. When we're telling them that there's new things arriving, we're telling them a refit. I think that's just people feel very sort of positive towards it.

 

Paul Archer 

[00:05:29]:

That makes a lot of sense. And then, actually, when you're kind of organizing your team around, trying to make this work, is there anything you're doing about shifting different roles and how are you kind of bringing together? You mentioned different teams that you've got the pr, you've got the media by team, you've got the affiliates team, you must have social and the influencers, actually. 

 

How are you uniting them around this sort of common goal of like, let's make New Look big in Manchester?

 

Raine Peake 

[00:05:57]:

This is something quite new for us. We've changed it to have a team that's focused around a problem. So very much like our product teams work in the digital space and tech, we have focused them around the problem of ‘we want more footfall in Manchester’. 

 

So we have almost seconded, but not. Not really, because it's everybody from all of those specific teams that you just said, and they form this kind of Manchester super team and they are, you know, they're really collaborative. They go up to Manchester, they have weekly meetings and everything, and it's kind of. It's. That in itself has actually been brilliant, kind of focusing around a problem rather than focusing around the area of the business that you work in.

 

So all of those teams that you mentioned that were particularly. That were quite obvious, we've also had in there things like branch planning. We've reviewed all the stock packages. We've kind of changed all of those things. So it's kind of really gone across the whole sort of business as opposed to just, we're going to do a Facebook ad and we're going to cover that taxi with like, a New Look print.

 

Paul Archer 

[00:06:56]:

That's quite cool. There's a movement in tech around building things of squads, where you bring these multifaceted, different engineers, product people, testers, loads of different elements that would be around it and just focus them on one objective. And I love to sort of see that coming out. Do you call it a squad internally?

 

Raine Peake 

[00:07:17]:

And we've got executive sponsorship from the retail director and the customer director. And the customer director is particularly keen on squads. So we really wanted to kind of form that. Yeah, that team, as you said.

 

Paul Archer

[00:07:31]:

And so all of these people have their own managers, their own line manager, or own teams, but they come together as part of this squad. Is it all that, is it entirely all their role at the moment, they're just focusing on or this is there on the 20% of the times on.

 

Raine Peake

[00:07:42]:

The squad work, 25% of the time, probably.

 

Paul Archer

[00:07:44]:

Cool, right?

 

Raine Peake

[00:07:45]:

It's quite intense.

 

Paul Archer

[00:07:48]:

And any learnings as well that you've kind of taken off from this that you didn't know previously?

 

Raine Peake

[00:07:52]:

That squad mentality, I think, has really worked within the business, and I think that's really got people thinking about how they work. I think that's a really different way of working. I think the testing and learning is. It's obviously always happened in lots of different areas, but within a retail function, it's actually quite difficult because it's quite difficult to change stores, but testing different product mixers, where the billboard is, can you make sure that billboard reaches that store? Can you have an influencer? 

 

All of those things, I think have really helped in that kind of. Oh, that worked. That didn't. But it's actually okay because we learnt, and that sort of test and learn is more tricky, I would say, in traditional retail.

 

Paul Archer

[00:08:33]:

Nice. And are you able to track it? As I know that you're the. You're big into this kind of cost, like this concept of offline to online retail. How does that play into it?

 

Raine Peake

[00:08:43]:

So we have customer. Well, we have customer identification through email. So we identify around 80% of our store customers, which is high because our store colleagues, they are incentivized to get email addresses. So then we can track them, so we can see where that we can see their journeys. And we look at our known and unknown customers, the movement between those two things. We have footfall trackers and then we can kind of work out whether it's click and collect. 25% of our orders are click and collect, so we can follow those. The return patterns we can follow as well.

 

So you can kind of see it, but you do need to know whether it's omnichannel customer, which by definition is a two purchase customer. So it is a bit of a kind of an echo chamber of your high value customers. You're able to track more, but you can look at all of those different metrics to see all that.

 

Paul Archer

[00:09:36]:

So are you seeing people? They're going into the store to check out an item and then they're going online to buy it.

 

Raine Peake

[00:09:42]:

A combination of all of those things, I'd say I think 90% of all online retail journeys, all retail journeys start online. So I think there's a lot of research online and then they go into store, we have store stock on our site, all of those things, so they can see whether it's there.

 

Paul Archer

[00:09:58]:

How are you, how are you leaning into that from their online experience and crossing the bridge into it? 

 

I know you mentioned click and collect, but what's actually happening emotively when someone is on the New Look website and what happens next? You can actually capture them, inspire them and then get them to make a purchase in store or online.

 

Raine Peake 

[00:10:15]:

I guess if we know them and we've got that and they're signed up for marketing, we will target them locally. We have all of our offers, our totally omni. So any online offer you can redeem in store and we have a QR code and that encourages, I mean, literally, the thing of just having the QR code on the email encourages the customer to go into store, to scan it. Like, look, I've got it. Which I know is, you know, it's not that obvious. 

 

We have, I mean, there's a lot of things around local marketing in terms of our New Lookers that I mentioned. So that kind of, that's where we kind of put local information out on the site. It's not as obvious.

 

In fairness, there's a lot better job we can do about that. But we are mostly through kind of that sort of customer targeting. We have all of our customer known customer information goes through all of our retargeting on Google as well. So you kind of have the same information going through everything. So we can retarget you to. Once we know what you've bought, we know what stores you've been in, we can target you to that store.

 

Paul Archer

[00:11:20]:

And so what are you finding in terms of we talked about the team and how you structure the team around your squads and getting after Manchester as an opportunity. If you're looking more generally, you're looking your online, your offline areas. 

 

What I'm starting to see a lot of brands is the world of performance, the world of affiliates, the world of social, world of world of PR. They're all becoming closer and closer together. Are you finding that with a New Look and actually how are you building that team now?

 

Raine Peake

[00:11:46]:

We've got paid and brand altogether. Paid, brand, affiliate, social, they're all under me. And I think apart from the fact I'm a bit power crazed, but I think it will mean that it's just a bit easier in terms of you'll have different KPI's and all the same KPI's and where the, you know, we've got over 3 million followers on Instagram is big. So where that team really tasked on reach and engagement and the paid social team are targeted on conversion and lower funnel and all that kind of dirty area. 

 

Obviously, the secret is getting them to work together and using each channel differently for the best use of that channel. I think we were a bit guilty of using all the channels the same and expecting the same result, whereas now we've got this kind of more of a full funnel approach that we've kind of tested in Manchester, that we've kind of got green shoots of proving that work to work, that we can kind of actually be much more specific in terms of socialists for reach. It's for engagement, it's for community. PPC is like, it's a last click, it's a shopping thing, it's a funnel.

 

So we don't have to be the same for everything.

 

Paul Archer

[00:12:56]:

So let me play that back to make sure. Well, I know, I love it. Just let me play that back. So I get it. So previously it was almost like competing channels. It's just like, okay, you have 100 grand, you have 100 grand, you have 100 grand. How much can you make from that? 

 

And now it's just like, how do you put them as part of a mix in a funnel and you have this part of the funnel and you have this part of the funnel.

 

Raine Peake

[00:13:18]:

Yeah. And the metrics for the 100 grand were different. So the metrics for, for instance, influencers was reach, you know, number of posts was tone of all of those things, which is very different from a conversion in a, in a social setting. So I think if you bring them together and they kind of have joint results, it just will make it so much easier.

 

Paul Archer

[00:13:40]:

How do you measure reach as a channel? I mean, obviously the performance channel is dollars. Right? But how are you actually measuring the brand vibe now that you actually have brand underneath you?

 

Raine Peake

[00:13:52]:

Yeah, yeah. So we work with Kantar. So we share. So we measure brand share and we measure salience and we ask the same questions all the time. So two of our key focuses are fashionability or trend and value for money. So those are two things that we religiously measure on a monthly basis we have a twelve week look back window and we see whether those move and then share of the market. We measure as well to see whether that's going up or down. And we measure that by total category, region, all of those different things.

 

Paul Archer

[00:14:26]:

Nice. What's the community look like at New Look?

 

Raine Peake

[00:14:28]:

Look in terms of.

 

Paul Archer

[00:14:30]:

In terms of your customer community and how are you activating them to drive, drive growth?

 

Raine Peake

[00:14:34]:

I think we've got a really passionate community and I think everybody is very fond of New Look. If you speak to anybody about New Look, they're like, oh, it was my first Saturday job, my aunt worked there. My niece always buys all of her clothes there. So I think everybody's really, really fond of it. 

 

I think we could do a more fun job of it because I think sometimes we are a bit serious and I think that comes across in terms of where the teams have been separate. I think a lot of the social is really fun. It's really great. But we don't kind of.

 

We don't pulse that through the whole of New Look as much. I think our site is quite serious. I think there's no video in it. There's not as much ugc as potentially we would like. So I think those are kind of things to work on. I think from an offline point of view, I think. I think there is a real community vibe to it. As I said, we have New Lookers.

 

They are community based. They are based in stores, there's a lot of them and they are their kind of local representatives for all of those different regions and stores. And we've got tiny stores where it's three people work there and it's on a high street. And then we've got things like the traffic centre, which are massive. 

 

But those local community stores have fantastic community engagement. They have, you know, really brilliant outreach with the community and stuff. So I think that's something we can definitely build on. I think.

 

I think it's from a community point of view, I think it's actually. I don't think anybody's brilliant at it when you get down to a local level and I think for somebody, our scale, because we've got so many stores in high streets, I don't think anybody is particularly fantastic at doing any of those things. 

 

I think there's some brands that are doing a really good job of marketing at the moment. And earlier we talked about Marks and Spencers. I think they're doing a really great job and being fun and all of those things. But I think in terms of bringing the online and offline together and kind of getting that community. I don't think there's anybody that's particularly amazing. I would say, yeah, it's massive.

 

People buy from people and it's, you know, and they, you know, you know your story. 

 

There was. I live in a very small town in Surrey and we had a Baby Gap. The manager in Baby Gap was this amazing woman. She was a school mum. She told every single mom in the playground when the special offers were coming, when the new stuff. I think she single handedly kept that store open for about two years because she was so passionate about it and just engaged with everybody else. And I think that's kind of an amazing thing of how you can kind of empower those people.

 

Paul Archer

[00:17:01]:

I think there's tons of opportunity and some brands are doing a job of it where they're trying to activate these store associates, but in a world where they're all hyper connected on social, if you're 20 years old or even 17 years old working at New Look, it's like all of our first jobs and stuff working in retail. 

 

Like, those kids all have a social media presence, they're all connected to all their friends, they all follow each other at different schools within the town, and it's like a hyper local social engagement. But brands aren't really able to engage. To be fair, it is hard. Like, it's hard incentivizing them in the UK. It's all right if you just want to do the UK, but you can't really do it in all of Europe and in the States. It's hard because you got to do it state by state from a tax piece giving product and stuff. But even so, I mean, they should be your number one advocate.

 

They've got the product, they're in the store, they know how to tell the story. They should love the brand. And if you don't love the brand, then they probably shouldn't work there.

 

Raine Peake

[00:17:53]:

Our store colleagues are obviously our number one Advocates. 

 

One of my favorite meetings every week is a Thursday morning, 09:05 meeting, which is every territory leader, and they take it in turns to kind of talk about what's happening. They are so passionate, so engaged, really just care for the brand this morning. We launched sale today and there was this hilarious, I want to say video. Is that. Is that the right term? Do I sound 300? By saying video? 

 

Anyway, the buying a merchandising team did a film about saying how many millions of units they had to sell this week because the scale is massive. So they're like, you know, we have to sell however many millions of shoes, tops, all of those things. And it was hilarious and it was, you know, but advocating to these like, superfunds and super Advocates, it was, it's a really powerful meeting and it kind of really gets the energy from the, from all of those kind of, I'm going to say frontline because they're dealing with the customers much more directly, gets kind of the sort of the excitement around the rest of the building and everybody's kind of dials into that meeting with glee.

 

Paul Archer

[00:18:57]:

And I remember that being one of the things that, I don't know if we can cut this or not, if it doesn't get approved. But I remember when we were chatting to Arcadia and Topshop and we asked around the, around the group who was wearing it and not a single hand went up and it was like, well, what's the discount that you give? It's like 25%. It's like, well, anyone who was a student or a medical professional got 30%. So their own staff weren't even using. 

 

It was like, if you haven't even got the Advocacy from your own team, how can you imagine anyone else is going to do it? And how on earth are you going to expect to grow at this sort of rate? 

 

So I love the New Looker. I love that New Look of doing this. 

 

I'm going to change gears a little bit. I'm a massive nerd, so I like this stuff.

 

Right, like this kind of conversion of fashion in gaming. It's a bit of a trend we see. Well, you've got obviously twitch with people who are wearing things. Charlotte Tilbury is leading the way with their kind of gamer channel and doing the makeup for gamers on there. It's such a big playground with all these different platforms, different tools. You've got Fortnite being one, and we've got loads of different games as a channel. And brands are starting to tap into this as an opportunity, as an advertising channel. Last year we had a names such as Louis Vuitton, Coach, Tommy Hilfiger, Crocs and Clarks, all with campaigns in gaming.

 

What are your thoughts on this and how much have you dug into it?

 

Raine Peake

[00:20:23]:

I think it's super exciting and I think you've got to go where your customer is. And if, I mean, I've always worked in, so I'm going to refer to her as a she, but if she's there, you kind of want to pop up there and you want to get her excited about it. And I think it's just a different way of reaching customers. 

 

And I think it's really, I think it's just fun. And shopping should be fun. So I don't think it's scary. I don't know why you wouldn't want to do it. There's a lot of tech companies that are saying they're doing it really well and they're saying, look, we've done this thing for this luxury brand and they're like, that looks beautiful, but not how we can scale it.

 

So I think there's some challenges in terms of how you would actually execute it, but I think it's amazing for brand awareness. I think it's brilliant for the community spirit as well. And that community thing. And also, I mean, newly is quite a young brand and gaming traditionally is younger, but it's kind of like how you kind of garner that support from your community and how you kind of are present in that community. And just the fun bit.

 

Paul Archer

[00:21:28]:

Hey, it's me again. This podcast is sponsored by Duel, which is my company, actually. Duel is the leading Brand Advocacy platform used by the top retail consumer brands, including Unilever, Charlotte Tilbury, Elemis Loop, and about 50 more to manage, measure and scale their advocacy member, affiliate, creator and brand ambassador operations. The platform offers unparalleled scale for complex brands by automating nine out of ten of the standard Advocacy management activities and allowing them to focus on arming their Advocates with the right tools to tell the brand story and drive social commerce, they can grow faster for less. 

 

We only work with 15% or so of the brands we speak to, but we try and add value in many other ways, this podcast being one of them. So if you are a brand that's interested in this, maybe a large consumer retail brand, ideally you're doing $20-$30 million as a minimum, and you're pretty advanced on social and you need to know what the next stage is, then please get in touch. Email me at paul@duel.tech, that is Paul @ D, U, E, L Dot T, E, C, H or Google Duel dot Tech.

 

Paul Archer

[00:22:34]:

This is it. You want to be where people's passions are. Marketing is basically all right. How do I find out where people's attention is? And how do I make my brand sort of sneak in where their attention is? It used to be attention to sat watching tv for hours or listening to the radio or reading.

 

Raine Peake

[00:22:49]:

Yeah, exactly. Or it's like, you know that placement for that weird cereal on Love island? His name completely escapes me, but this bloody box of purple cereal is everywhere and you're like, that's, it's just not subtle.

 

Paul Archer

[00:23:00]:

But it's working and it's like, well, if you're not watching tv anymore, apart from watching Love island and you're playing games, like, the brands need to shift their budgets and their attention and understand it and people are spending more time playing games and watching tv.

 

Raine Peake

[00:23:13]:

Well, the new generation, and I think they're what? You know, they're on YouTube, they're playing games, they're on TikTok, they are not going through those traditional channels. And also all of those things in terms of actually ad spend and ROAS and all of those things are going to be cheaper because there's not as much competition. So you can advertise on a game, you can get that early advantage and all of those things. 

 

So from a kind of return on the investment, it's going to be better.

 

Paul Archer

[00:23:41]:

Yeah, it's a huge area. Have you played around in it so far? Have you made any investments?

 

Raine Peake 

[00:23:45]:

No, I haven't made any investments. No. We have done tested. We've tested connected tv. We couldn't work out how to prove it worked, but we tested it and then, you know, we're obviously on all of those other channels. I am a bit obsessed. 

 

My team particularly, love it when I say, oh, why can't we sign up to these things? So we're launching Snapchat, we're launching Pinterest, all of those other channels, because I think it's to the earlier point, you got to be where the customer is, right, and they're different people on different channels and they're doing different things 100%.

 

Paul Archer 

[00:24:24]:

I think Snapchat's got some very interesting potential.

 

Raine Peake

[00:24:26]:

I think it's got real legs, potential.

 

Paul Archer

[00:24:28]:

That we've barely scratched the surface on.

 

Raine Peake

[00:24:31]:

Because I think it's such a. I think it's. I think Snapchat because it's a more community thing and people talk to each other on it. Even the map, even if you're in the map and you can see where the store is, I mean, there's some really obvious things on it that could be really monetized.

 

Paul Archer

[00:24:47]:

Funny story on the gaming side of things, actually. Do you know, one of the biggest brands in it is DHL, believe it or not. Who sponsored a. What was it? I think the story, but they sponsored a. One of the teams, the famous team who became very big and then DHL people are turning up wearing DHL t shirts and stuff like that as a way of backing their League of Legends teams. I think it is. 

 

I'm going to massacre the story, but we can check it later. Are you playing around in any other immersive technologies in this is New Look or any of your previous roles, how do you treat something that's coming out that's very nascent? 

 

Like, let's take VR, let's take gaming.

 

Not that it's nascent, but like understanding how brands can be in there is relatively new. Like, how do you approach this? You have like a test and learn methodology. Do you have a little bit of budget on the side? 

 

If we're going tactical, how would you recommend others do that?

 

Raine Peake 

[00:25:40]:

As I said earlier, I think a test and learn methodology is really good. I always like to keep a little bit of budget to one side for all of these things. And I think you can kind of shave off a bit of budget for all of these tests if you really want to. And I think it's just about making, making it a MVP and it doesn't have to be perfect. 

 

And I think where especially retailers need to get over that point of it doesn't have to be perfect because it's very fast and it's going to change. And that content that you're producing really doesn't have to look as if it should be a print ad in vogue. It just needs to sell the thing and because someone's scrolling or doing something different with it.

 

Paul Archer

[00:26:16]:

It used to be that the CFO was the biggest blocker to marketing and ingenuity, but I think ironically, it's the chief brand officer or a vp, a brand that is holding majority of retail brands back. It's like, okay, we're going to one of the guys, my team always says, what's the classic campaign for a luxury or for a perfume or something? We're going to get a celebrity and they're going to be riding through a desert topless on a horse and that's going to help sell some perfume. And it's just like, oh, God, it's so boring. That doesn't work anymore, particularly not for your Gen zs on it. So it's like, okay, cool. But they're like, oh, all our images have to be perfect. We can never use those people because they aren't quite right. And I need to pre approve everything that you post out to your own channels as an influencer, partnership or whatever it is.

 

It just is holding people back. They just need to be a bit more like, let's just go for it.

 

Raine Peake

[00:27:06]:

I mean, I'm not, I am very, I don't mind risk and I'll just go for it. 

 

So I do have to temper that with the expectations of other people in the company, but I did have a. I'm going off pieced, but I did went to this thing and they were going on about the best advert ever. The Guinness ad with the horses is the best advert ever. And they were like congratulating themselves, saying how amazing this, this Guinness ad is of the horses. And it was at the time that that dove advert came out of that real girl who had got like an eating disorder. And after this bloke had, like, pitched it and it was obviously my favourite thing because it was a load of men as well that I just went up to like, well, I don't think that's right. I don't think it did anything.

 

I know it sold Guinness, but it's. Did it well. Did it really? 

 

I mean, maybe it got small, warm. It was so self congratulatory, but then it wasn't, it didn't go viral like that dove ad. Every single person I know sobbed their way through it. I'm not sure it made me buy soap, but it's made me remember it.

 

Paul Archer

[00:28:04]:

And that's, I mean, I think that's a, there's a whole different way to.

 

Raine Peake

[00:28:08]:

Your point of beautiful, polished, get a celebrity, do all of those things or really engage with your community, really engage with the, you know, what you are trying to do.

 

Paul Archer

[00:28:17]:

It’s the human element of it. And like, it's about storytelling. And I do get that. But I do think there was this sort of heyday in the nineties when creative agencies were king and like, it's, okay, cool, here's it. We're gonna spend, you know, a million pounds on an adhd. Sell some bread or something like that. And then the creatives are going to come in and straight their chin. It just doesn't really work anymore.

 

In a polo neck. In a polo neck. And they go, and then they're all going to go to Cannes and then pat each other in the back and say, oh, we won an awards. And then everyone else who's actually growing businesses are on the other side. I bet you didn't see Gymshark at Cannes this year. You didn't see Shein. Not that I'm advocating for them as a brand, but you know what I mean. They are grown like a weed.

 

What have you done in the space? And then let's get tapped. And like, how did you get into it? And how can you recommend others start to get behind this?

 

Raine Peake [00:29:04]:

So I think this, obviously, AI is a buzzword and there's generative AI, which is super exciting. And that's the thing that people need to get behind now. And there's machine learning, and machine learning has been around forever, and that is what everybody does all the time, whether you like it or not or know about it or not. That is what most of your campaigns were based on from a paid perspective and all of those things. 

 

But I think that the sort of generative AI, where it's all of the suggestions and chat duty and all of those others are available, there's some really exciting things about scale and volume and how you can just create an inordinate amount of content that's personalized. And I think testing into that is super exciting because you can then make it specific for what the person is actually searching for, wanting the occasion. 

 

I think there's a lot of things around generative AI, image recognition, and then what that actually produces at the end. So if I want to, if I'm going to a wedding, I want to wear a green dress, it's in Italy, show me.

 

It can kind of. Then if you are working with AI in a kind of smart way, you will then show up with that because of that kind of long search style query within the sort of premise of actually all of those different things. Does that make sense?

 

Paul Archer

[00:30:25]:

It does. So are you thinking that I'm just using a text query, but it's using that to really analyze the content of the side of it? Or actually, you think people are uploading their own content and getting recommendations based on that?

 

Raine Peake

[00:30:37]:

Based on all of those things. And I think one of the things with it is I think it will amalgamate platforms, it will amalgamate retailers, and it will kind of give you things in a very different way to be able to consume it. So if you like, you know, you google something and you just get the shopping thing and you get all of those things, but you'll. You'll probably be able to have much more content that's relevant to what you want harvested from all of those different things and showing it you in the context and making it easier to shop. 

 

So being channel agnostic, I would say.

 

Paul Archer

[00:31:09]:

So do you think that this is going to be. I mean, it seems to be. Unfortunately, the way of the Internet is that it's the winner takes most on most of the businesses. If you think about Meta, Google, Nvidia, the magnificent seven, they are not only taking most of our data and they're taking most of the stock market at the moment. 

 

Do you think that there's going to be a world where a few brands are going to be better than the majority of brands because they have more data about you and what you like. And it means that in a way that Amazon, like, we buy from Amazon from convenience, not for the love of the brand or anything like that necessarily. We buy because they know more about us and they have our data and I can do one click and purchase and I know it's going to hit my door 24 hours later, which is, you know, that's the ease side of things. Do you think there's a world where we'll buy will start to get stuck in our way? Like, for example, New Look is my look.

 

It's got all my data, it knows what I buy and I say, I want this, it knows my size, my very specific size, and it can recommend a look without me having to worry about things.

 

Raine Peake 

[00:32:10]:

I think it might go the opposite way.

 

Paul Archer

[00:32:11]:

Okay.

 

Raine Peake

[00:32:12]:

So I think if you are, I think people generally are, I would hope, rallying against those kind of bigger, you know, massive companies, not New Look, obviously, but I think, I think where people kind of, it should throw up more choice by the definition of having different things that you're after. I would, yeah, that's my kind of. I don't know, I don't even know how it would work. But that would be my working assumption is that the more data you've got, whether you're a small company or a big company, you've got some amount of data about the thing you sell, not necessarily about the customer. So the thing you sell has got actually tons of data. So how you then show up, I think, is a different way to actually knowing the customer. So kind of looking at it a different way.

 

Paul Archer

[00:33:00]:

Yeah. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. And like matching them up the right kind of things. 

 

Yeah. I'd be fascinated by this because I think that one of the problems with most of the recommendation engines is they actually have any data to any recommendation. But if you can connect your social handles and then you can then get an AI to scan your last ten posts, which is just like, oh, you go to the beach a bit, you know, you like to do this, you like to go out at night, you wear that kind of stuff. It'd be like, here are like five outfits that are genuine, super tailored to you and your style and your lifestyle and because it's your socials, like, not a bad estimation of that.

 

Raine Peake 

[00:33:37]:

No, exactly. So I think all of those things are super exciting and how that kind of shows up, do you think?

 

Paul Archer

[00:33:42]:

Because, I mean, chat, GPT being the LLM side of things, that's a conversational thing. We've had chatbots for years, but we now have chatbots at work from customer support side of things. Klarna famously got rid of 60% or something of their people, which is quite depressing, really, when you think about it, but it clearly shows that it's working from a support side of things. But do you see a chatbot world where it's kind of like conversational loyalty, where you are chatting with a brand and it's making recommendations of products and it knows about you?

 

Raine Peake

[00:34:14]:

Yeah, I think it would be cool, because I think people, as long as it's relevant, and as long as I think people want relevance rather than necessarily a human. I mean, the example of which I always give all the time is Liberty. 

 

During the pandemic, they also had a chat bot. And, you know, I knew it was a chatbot, but they had a picture of a woman. So I thought I was talking to this person, even though it's a chatbot. And I know that sounds ridiculous, and I know I'm not stupid, but it's kind of that. But it was serving me great content. It was giving me what I wanted to know, but it kind of has personalized it slightly.

 

So I think as long as it's relevant and as long as you're getting the information back that you want, there's elements of both that are good.

 

Paul Archer

[00:34:55]:

Yeah, it's really cool. I was playing around with ChatGPT and I tried to build Juul, so I tried to basically break the company using chat GPT, and I did a really surprisingly good. I got pretty damn close within an hour. We called it Duelia. So I thought that would make sense. And it gave the personification, and I just got it to have build a brand ambassador program and engage with me as a messaging product. And it was unbelievable. Like trained it on a, just literally gave it a website of a brand that we work with, said, you are for this.

 

And it took all of the language and it was, everything it said was totally on point from the brand point of view. And it had all this banter and it then started, like, it was one point when it asked me something and I said, oh, that's not right. And it commented back, oh, my glitter. 

 

And then it kind of goes, it was just this wonderful kind of camp language that came out, just came from Noah. The Persona that it built of its own regard was just so interesting and engaging. And I. You could do incentives and you can upload things, it could scan what you've uploaded. It was fantastic.

 

So I can see so many different interactive points where brands currently don't live, where they can live, because actually the AI is able to be there. Obviously, we talked a lot about your store associates. The inverse of that is also how do you use those store associates in the digital worlds as well.

 

Raine Peake 

[00:36:14]:

Yeah, exactly.

 

Paul Archer 

[00:36:15]:

And so these are all very high level ideas, but if you want to get tactical and you are recommending to people that they were trying to figure out what works in the future from an AI perspective for their brand, they've got a little bit of budget. What would you recommend?

 

Raine Peake

[00:36:33]:

The next steps are; it's going to sound really boring. I think a lot of it is data. I think making sure that you've got the foundations, because all of this is based on the amount of information you've got about your products, if you're selling products. So if you are not describing those products correctly, I would be running them through every single thing to get as many different descriptions and all of that data, and having that data accessible to everything, I think, is a really kind of key thing, because then that can be more efficient rather than just having, like red dress, is it long, is it short, has it got sleeves? 

 

You know, so I think, I think all of those things, and I know it's a really kind of a bit of a boring housekeeping thing, but I think it's super important. And then I think it's just about having fun and testing. But thinking of it from a customer viewpoint, I think there's a lot of things that can get really carried away with data and tech and all of those things. But actually, is this going to make it useful and is this going to help sell something? 

 

So my example of this a lot of the time is avatars. Everybody thinks avatars are the most brilliant thing in the history of the world.

 

They are obviously really, really good. But it's proven that if you are over a size, a UK size twelve, you don't want to see yourself because you don't imagine yourself looking like that and it actually decreases conversion. So you've got to kind of think about it from a practical point of view as well, because it's not baked beans. You're selling something that's aspirational and you're selling something that is not necessarily a need, it's a want. 

 

So how do you do that within this kind of context and make it exciting?

 

Paul Archer

[00:38:08]:

What have you seen historically? We're looking to the future of this happens. I mean, you've been always at the forefront of technology throughout it. What have been the pivotal moments that have shaped your approach to building these digital strategies here at New Look mint Velvet jigsaw. Previously at Arcadia. 

 

Where have you seen this happen before and what have you learned from it?

 

Raine Peake

[00:38:29]:

I'm going to use Farfetch, even though I was there pre IPO, so it was super exciting. And I think the main thing that I learned from that was this whole test and learn and just see what happens and have a hypothesis, have a testing criteria and test it and is it going to work or not? And that not fear of failure. And I think that is such a key thing that retailers are very risk averse and they are very nervous about lots of things. 

 

Some things you don't want to kind of mess up, like, you know, you need to kind of have the winter coat in the store in August. That's a non negotiable because that's when people looking at winter coats. But how you actually advertise that winter coat, you can kind of change it. It doesn't, you know, you can stop, you can change, you don't have to, it's not going to be there forever. 

 

So all of those things, I think that kind of risk piece and that testing and learning is.

 

That was a fundamental mind shift for me, for actually how you do things differently and how you then are curious about the new things and how they're going to work and you're not going to be like, well, no, that's the way we've always done it, so we're going to do it like that.

 

Paul Archer

[00:39:33]:

So tell me about your level of OKRs.

 

Raine Peake

[00:39:34]:

So obviously, you know, objectives and key results, but the traditional retailer is all about, it's all about revenue. Obviously that is the main thing you do need to make money, but having it in an OKR framework just gets everybody on the bus so much easier. And you've got results that you're accountable for and it makes everybody in the whole business accountable and also gives them something that is common across teams. So when you're running it like a squad, you've got the same result, but the way to that result is very, very different and it encourages collaboration.

 

Paul Archer 

[00:40:06]:

That's huge. And was that because Farfetch was more of a startup, more of a techie company and so they had adopted this mindset and was it just culturally, if things went wrong, that's fine, as long as you reported it. 

 

Okay, cool. And have you managed to implement that successfully in the retailers you've been to since? Or is it always quite a challenge?

 

Raine Peake

[00:40:26]:

Sometimes it can be a challenge, it can be a challenge in terms of the confidence to be able to do it. And I think when you're managing a team, I think empowering the team and giving them the confidence to test something and it work or not work, I think it's really beholden on you as a manager because that's how the team's going to grow and it's that trust piece. 

 

So I think, you know, we're all adults, we all go to work to do the best job we possibly can do. And I think reiterating that to the teams, I know it's a really simple thing, makes a massive difference. You can imagine Philip Green versus Jose. I mean, they're two such completely different things. So in Arcadia you've got someone who's saying, no, we're going to stop all of our customer support because it costs money. But then people just moan on Facebook, it's like, so, you know, you've got to kind of think of it in the round.

 

Paul Archer 

[00:41:17]:

I see. And I think that is the mix is it's just like if you just do the right thing, it tends to make a lot of sense. There's also these innovations of way we run teams. We work as organizations that I think startups are.

 

Raine Peake

[00:41:29]:

Startups are easier because you don't have a legacy and you don't have historical ways of doing things that have been probably very successful. So that change piece is obviously quite difficult.

 

Paul Archer 

[00:41:40]:

And is it possible though?

 

Raine Peake 

[00:41:41]:

I think it's totally possible.

 

Paul Archer 

[00:41:43]:

And what do you think is the most fundamental thing that has to change for it to be possible for these? If you're coming from a legacy.org, most retailers are trusting leaders. Trust in the leader. Trust in the team.

 

Raine Peake

[00:41:55]:

No. Trust in your team.

 

Paul Archer

[00:41:56]:

Trust in your team.

 

Raine Peake

[00:41:57]:

Trust in your team to be able for them to execute anything well on that.

 

Paul Archer 

[00:42:01]:

I think that's a great way to end things. So one last piece for anyone who is of early in their career, starting out on this, what piece of advice would you give them?

 

Raine Peake

[00:42:10]:

Always be curious and always want to learn. I've done lots of different things in my career and I didn't start out in marketing, I started out in merchandising. And I think just being really curious as to how to do different things.

 

Paul Archer 

[00:42:21]:

Fantastic. Raine Peake. We will connect to you in the show notes. But thank you so much for your time. That's been fascinating.

 

Raine Peake 

[00:42:27]:

Thanks, Paul.

 

Paul Archer

[00:42:28]:

If anyone wants to find you on the Internet, where can they find you?

 

Raine Peake

[00:42:32]:

Oh, super easily on LinkedIn. I've got such an unusual name. It's really easy to find me.

 

Paul Archer

[00:42:37]:

R A I N E Raine there is. I think you are one of the only Raine I know so. And you're the only Raine in my phone.

 

Raine Peake

[00:42:43]:

Oh good.

 

Paul Archer

[00:42:43]:

Yeah, there we are. Raine Peake, everybody. Thank you very much.

 

Raine Peake

[00:42:47]:

Thanks Paul.

 

Paul Archer

[00:42:49]:

That was another episode of Building Brand Advocacy, the world's top brand building podcast. To find out more about Building Brand Advocacy and how this podcast is part of a bigger plan for our brand building cookbook. Then make sure to search for Building Brand Advocacy in Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google podcasts or anywhere else that podcasts are fine and make sure that you click subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. 

 

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