Tesco’s new social media chief wants digital to “enrich and simplify”

Tesco’s greatest digital marketing challenge is to find ways to use technology to “enrich and simplify” customer’s lives, according to the supermarket’s incoming digital chief.

/n/p/k/tescoonline160.jpg

Speaking at a seminar about multi-channel marketing in London, Tesco’s group digital marketing officer designate Matt Atkinson said he will explore how digital marketing can “enrich and add value to the customer journey”.

He adds: “Today what we are trying to do is find ways to use creativity and technology, and data, which is an important ingredient of that, to add value to the shopping experience, to make buying easy, make choosing easy, make being healthy easy – to make all those things which are challenges for us in our daily lives much more simple, enriching, engaging and of real value.

“There are a lot of different things you can do to do that. You can build a better website, you can do stuff on Facebook, you can produce better magazines.”

Atkinson, currently chief executive of digital agency EHS 4D, will join Tesco later this year. He has been hired to review the supermarket’s digital operations globally.

News of his appointment followed chief executive Philip Clarke’s admission to Marketing Week earlier this year that Tesco had to improve its use of social media.

Atkinson says that many of the social media issues he faced agency side – developing integrated campaigns, demonstrating return on investment and proving value – are the same as those he will tackle at Tesco.

“The questions that Tesco is asking at an executive level on the UK board and international board are almost identically those questions,” he adds.

Recommended

/a/d/h/MarkChoueke.jpg

Growing mistrust will not stop at the red-top

Mark Choueke

Poison spreads. To stop it doing so requires more than just applying a hopeful tourniquet or executing a half-hearted amputation. Witness last week’s attempt by News Corp to sweep all of its bad news under the carpet with the dramatic closure of the UK’s biggest newspaper. Certainly the News of the World needed to be […]

/u/i/n/MarkRitson.jpg

Murdoch’s house of brands is crumbling

Mark Ritson

The demise of the News of the World made headlines all over the world. But while there has been a concerted attempt by executives at News Corporation to bury the scandal by closing the brand, the reality is that this saga is only just beginning. This is the week that the stakes and implications of […]

Insight transforms data into rocket fuel

Marketing Week

Michael Nutley is right to say that the understanding of data is vital to any modern marketer (MW 23 June). There isn’t a company out there that doesn’t claim to have data but far rarer is someone explaining what that data means. Data on its own has little value. It may indeed be the new […]