THOMPSON HITS THE JACKPOT

Dianne Thompson could not have given her first interview as the new commercial operations director of Camelot in more trying circumstances.

First, the National Lottery operator lost its balls on Saturday night – the machine that selects the numbers failed to work. Even worse news came two days later, when the Labour Party vowed to stop Camelot reapplying to run the Lottery when the contract runs out in five years’ time, preferring to give it to a non-profit making organisation.

Should Labour win the election, one part of Thompson’s job – preparing to apply to run the licence in 2001 – would disappear.

But that is in the future. For now, existing Camelot staff have the worrying prospect of a new boss taking over. Will the incoming supremo come in and change everything?

When that new boss is 45-year-old retail marketer Dianne Thompson – possessor of a formidable reputation for shaking things up, the prospect is even more worrying. Thompson joins the operator in February, and Camelot staff must be wondering what is about to hit them.

She was given her present job, marketing director of jewellery retail group Signet, two years ago with a brief to review root and branch the marketing and brand positioning of retail chains H Samuel and Ernest Jones. Her job before that – director for marketing at Woolworths – required her to design a new advertising and sales strategy for the chain.

But Thompson is seeking to calm the worries of the sales and marketing teams at Watford. “No changes for change’s sake,” she says in the no-nonsense accent that comes free with an upbringing in Batley, West Yorkshire.

And she has more comforting words for marketing director Jon Kinsey, sales director Richard Elliott and the 200 other Camelot staff who will report to her. Kinsey is believed to have applied for the 200,000-plus commercial director’s role.

So is she going to force them to change things? “Of course not,” she answers. “A lot of what they have done has been done incredibly well. What I hope I will bring is an outsider’s view to see if it could be done better. I’m not going in to do Jon Kinsey’s or Richard Elliott’s jobs – there is no indication that they have been going in the wrong direction.”

This is true – up to a point. The online game has been a success, and as Camelot never fails to point out, it is the most successful lottery launch ever undertaken. It is also the only lottery ever launched as a private monopoly, so perhaps this is not so surprising. With the launch of the midweek draw in February, coinciding with Thompson’s arrival, the omens for this side of the business look good.

But the scratchcard business is flagging, and Camelot seems to have misjudged the strategy for selling Instants. Sales have more than halved since the launch last year, and low sales over the past six months have led to Camelot missing its sales targets for the online and Instants combined of 90m a week by up to 10m.

Thompson declines to comment on her plans for rejuvenating Instants, as she says she has not yet been briefed about her role by Camelot chief executive Tim Holley. But she adds curtly: “There is a job for me to do. Instants is an area that needs looking at.”

Another tricky area Thompson will have to cope with is Camelot’s relations with retailers. The organisation has already had its wrist slapped by regulator Oflot for failing to install sufficient Instants terminals in retail outlets. When the mid-week draw goes online, the chances of technical glitches and the sort of confusion that accompanied the Lottery’s launch in November 1994 will be multiplied.

Thompson replaces Norman Hawkins, who previously worked for Cadbury, one of the Camelot consortium’s members. Hawkins took the job as he was approaching retirement, and some sources suggest he was content to avoid too many waves or take too many risks.

After two years keeping a low profile at Signet, Thompson is in a very different position – she will have to make waves and take risks. Every mistake made by Camelot, a highly public organisation, is plastered over the pages of the national press. If the mistakes concern sales or marketing, the buck stops with Thompson.

She admits she is a private person and no great self-publicist. She comes across as efficient, rather than brimming with the slick self-confidence that characterises many marketers – more of a technician than a show woman. Slight of stature and straightforward in conversation, Thompson prefers to give a “no comment” on sensitive issues than to use some of the conversational sophistry loved by her marketing counterparts.

She has worked across the board in commercial, marketing and general management jobs. Following a degree in English and French from London University, she worked for the Co-op and ICI before becoming md of her own ad agency Thompson Maud Jones in 1981.

But her first big job in marketing didn’t come along until 1992 when she was hired as director of marketing for Woolworths, with control of a 30m budget. She was charged with implementing the every day low pricing (EDLP) policy of Geoff Mulcahy, chairman of parent company Kingfisher. This resulted in her launching the Street Value pricing campaign, but Mulcahy’s EDLP strategy proved unsustainable; it was later dropped and Mulcahy was demoted to chief executive.

The experience, no doubt abetted by the fact she left before EDLP policy was reversed and Mulcahy demoted, helped Thompson into the job of marketing director of Signet, formerly known as Ratners, in 1994.

She set about creating separate positioning for the H Samuel and Ernest Jones brands, developed new formats, and moved them away from discounting to more stable pricing. She claims success for the strategy, which last year saw Signet return profits of 25m after years of losses.

But the glamour of advertising and marketing no longer has any great attraction for Thompson as she has “been there, done that – I’ve had my moments of glamour”. Woolworths and Signet might not be everybody’s idea of glamour, but she is now looking forward to working on the profit and loss side of Camelot’s business. “What I enjoy is being able to make a difference. I like working across the business.”

There is plenty of scope for Thompson to make her mark at Camelot. She says: “I like to change things and make a difference. I would be bored somewhere safe and solid – my worst job would be marketing director of Mars, Coca-Cola or Pepsi.”

But the work has taken its toll on her personal life. She blames the constant travelling involved with being the managing director of Sandvik Saws & Tools between 1988 to 1992 for contributing to the break-up of her marriage. Her husband left, and she now lives with her daughter, Joanna, near Camelot’s head office in Watford.

She seems to enjoy the status of being a successful woman in a world dominated by male executives and recounts almost boastfully of attending an industry conference where there were “299 men and me”.

Thompson declares she will hang up her sales charts and do something else when she stops learning. “You are never too old to learn, and every job has brought something to what Dianne Thompson is now.”

The bigger question for everybody at Camelot remains: what will Thompson bring to it?