Nissan on reducing complexity and thinking holistically
Nissan’s head of customer experience loves to solve a puzzle whether that’s navigating Covid-19 or communicating the complexity of electric vehicles.
Nissan’s vice-president of brand and customer experience, Gareth Dunsmore, loves to solve puzzles.
Whether that is marketing electric vehicles or creating a seamless digital customer journey, he thrives on working out how to put the pieces together.
However, he has not always been so adept at thinking holistically. One area he considers somewhat of a failure is his early years in digital, which he describes as “too focused on just selling the benefits of the products”. He started working on Nissan’s digital marketing in 2007 but failed to look holistically at customer needs.
He tells Marketing Week: “I was very focused on driving the individual products rather than taking a step back and thinking about the customer. As soon as I started to look at it that way all of our metrics and customer satisfaction started to lift and improve.”
Dunsmore does not dodge questions on failure, noting: “Failing is almost the best thing that can happen to you because you can learn from it”.
Taking a holistic approach is something Dunsmore is faced with in his current role, working on what he describes as “the biggest challenge” facing marketing at Nissan. Complexity.
