The Very Group, which owns brands including Very and Littlewoods, has promoted CMO Jessica Myers to the executive team in the newly created position of chief customer officer.

Her new role will bring together teams across the business in a new “customer-focused centre of excellence”.

As part of the reshuffle, she will now be responsible for marketing, creative, ecommerce, digital customer experience, and data and analytics.

She said: “I’m delighted to take up this new role, which focuses on key steps across our customer journey off and on-site, from marketing right through to conversion. I’m looking forward to working even more closely with more of our talented team, who are passionate about delivering for the customers we serve.”

Since being appointed CMO in July 2022, Myers has launched the group’s brand platform ‘Let’s make it sparkle’. The retailer’s Christmas ad was ranked the second most persuasive festive ad of 2023, according to Kantar, which helped Very UK increase retail sales by 3.4% year-on-year over the Christmas and Black Friday period, it says.

Very’s CMO: Understanding the 3Cs will help marketers break through the ‘sea of sameness’

Speaking at Advertising Week Europe last Thursday (16 May), Myers discussed the importance for marketers to build their strategy around the three Cs – company, customer and competition.

Understanding all three was one of the first things she did on joining the business 18 months ago, she said. This entailed understanding the company and how it makes money, digging into who its most valuable customers are, and getting to grips with the competition.

“Understanding all three will help you break through the sea of sameness,” she added.

Myers also explained how Very has 4.8 million customers across 10 different categories and over 2,000 brands. “The shopper data we have across all of our channels is incredible,” she noted.

Very’s CMO on harnessing a ‘huge’ amount of data to bring more meaning to the brand

In 2021, Myers was named one of Marketing Week’s Top 100 most effective marketers for her work at Metro Bank. She joined the business in 2019, becoming the brand’s first ever marketing director and growing the function from five communications specialists to a team of 35 marketers.

She was responsible for developing Metro Bank’s brand strategy and launching its first consumer and business campaigns, both of which helped to accelerate the company’s growth and establish it as a challenger to bigger rivals.

Prior to joining Metro Bank, Myers was head of brand management at NatWest Group for nearly five years. She spent the largest chunk of her career to date at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia based in Sydney where she held several senior marketing roles at the firm, culminating in her becoming executive manager for brand management and advertising, a role she held for nearly five years.