Ruth Mcfarlane Email & Phone Number

Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom

Mexico City, Mexico

San Cristóbal De Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico

London, United Kingdom

- Reporting jointly into the group CMO and Managing Director, I was brought on as part of a business-wide transformation project to implement a framework linking the Marketing function with the commercial arm of the business, introduce customer-centricity into Marketing communications and set the seasonal comms calendar for the business.- Working closely with the Design and Sourcing Directors, CMO and MD, I devised a process map covering the total customer journey from range planning, product research and development to hero buy selection, campaign ideation, go-to-market strategy and finally execution.- Partnered with the Creative Director to develop 360 campaign concepts, ensuring all ideas and output were customer-centric and in line with the brand objectives and DNA.- Working with the product Design Director, set brand objectives and guidelines to ensure consistency from product inception to brand creative execution.- Project managed all departments to ensure they were working to concept and timing and communicating any changes to the schedule or plan.

London, United Kingdom

- Managed the Home Business Unit, with the addition of the Energy Business Unit with ownership over digital channels for both, line managing one Marketing Assistant.- Controlled seasonal and campaign point of sale, digital and advertising budgets, totalling circa £6m.- Managed relationships with our media and creative agencies as well as our Energy supplier, SSE.- Within Energy, I worked with our creative agency to develop a revised brand POV, identity and guidelines, and have generated a cross-channel media strategy to support a growth in brand awareness as well as drive ROI and customer acquisition.- Developed and executed an OOH campaign to promote the charity arm of our Energy business. This involved direct negotiation with the CSR branch of a media owner to deliver a £350K, nation-wide campaign on less than half of that cost. Despite the campaign being charity-focused, it resulted in a 42% increase in likelihood to consider M&S Energy as a supplier (in the context of people who had seen the ads) and a 6% increase in awareness of the Business Unit, after only two weeks of activity.- Working with our creative agency and our in-house design team, I set a clear POV and brand guidelines for the Home Business Unit, bringing it in line with the M&S Masterbrand ‘Spend it Well’ positioning. This involved stakeholder engagement at all levels, to implement a re-design of in store POS, our Home catalogue, our Department Landing Page and subsequent Product Landing Pages and all ATL creative templates.

London, United Kingdom

London, United Kingdom

- A guardian of the M&S brand, I oversaw the cross-channel customer journey for the largest cash areas across Home to drive sales and increase positive brand perception.- Worked with our Customer Insight team and external insight agencies to develop and embed clear customer segmentation and a targeting strategy, to increase our ATL and BTL efficiency.- Briefed in store, native digital and external multichannel content.- Managed media partnerships with external publishing houses to oversee media planning and advertorial content.- Briefed new packaging and in store design concepts, with the goal of simplifying complex product areas. As a result, received clear customer feedback that those areas were easier to shop and sales rose by approximately 12% YOY.- Led an end-to-end analysis of the customer journey to find opportunities to deliver the right content, to the right customer, at the right time, developing a set of principles for what content to create at each stage of the journey and how to distribute it. Implemented a new format of insertion activity through seasonal ‘newspapers’ to raise awareness of the breadth and style of our product offer. Research proved 75% reader recognition and 60% completion rates.

London, United Kingdom

- Supported the Marketing team with all aspects of Marketing strategy- Maintained administrative and seasonal documents for the Marketing team, and helped with seasonal set ups of the M&S mock shop - Project managed the execution of ad hoc projects, for example in store leaflets and brochures, and magazine features

Pgde, Secondary Education And Teaching

Ma(Hons), English Language, 2.1