Asda’s outgoing marketing boss on effectiveness and being finance’s best friend
In his final interview as Asda’s chief customer officer, Andy Murray explains why being distinctive is more important than being different and how he became finance’s best friend.
Andy Murray’s parting piece of advice for Asda is probably what you would expect from its outgoing chief customer officer after four years at the supermarket: “Always put the customer first.”
But Murray didn’t travel half way across the world to tell Asda that. He came to show one of the UK’s largest supermarkets how to get insight from insights; how marketing can build a better relationship with finance; why being a chief customer officer is more than just a marketing role; and why putting the customer first is the “unlock” to being distinctive, which is far more important than being different.
“I’m not a big fan of brand differentiation but I do think you should be distinctive,” Murray exclusively tells Marketing Week in his final interview as Asda’s CCO.
“Getting distinctive means being the most relevant and salient to a customer, whereas differentiated just means being different. You want to be distinctive in terms of how you connect with the customer and that is only going to come from being very salient and having loads of empathy for the customer and what their challenges are.”