In conversation with Pete Markey, former Chief Marketing Officer of Boots
Pete Markey is one of the UK’s most influential marketers. He led an impressive marketing transformation at Boots, making a 30% improvement in ROI on marketing spend and growing the customer loyalty base by three million. He was CMO at TSB, Aviva and the Post Office and is President of ISBA, which represents 3,000 leading UK advertisers. Marketing Week called him “literally the best CMO in Britain at the moment”.
He talks to us about being real with customers, where he draws the line with AI and leading change in chaos.
As CMO at Boots, you helped to change the brand’s message from Feel Good to With You. For Life. How did you lead that, especially in a business of that scale?
Pete: It was exciting but challenging. When I joined Boots in 2021, we had closed stores during Covid and lost relevance. We were seen as ‘good old Boots’. At a time when people were facing real struggles, Feel Good felt glib. So we went back to Boots’ history and purpose: being there for people’s health and beauty needs through every stage of life. My team and our agency WPP came up with With You. For Life. It says that whether you’re having a good or bad day, Boots is with you for all those moments in life’s journey.
So many brand articulations are about brighter futures and sunnier tomorrows, but for me it’s got to be about the grittiness of life as well as its brilliance. It’s bold and brave for a brand to admit that life is hard. But it’s real and speaks a truth. That’s why, when we tested our approaches with customers and staff, it connected from the word go.
To sell it internally, we created a burning platform around the brand’s health and why we needed to change, with some smart data showing what the commercial benefits would be. We were able to tell the exec team “Here’s what people are saying about it”, not just “I think this is good”. One of my proudest moments was getting the purpose completely embedded in the Boots strategy before I left.
When we’re facing so much uncertainty and chaos, how can leaders balance the need to focus on short-term goals with longer-term purpose and ambition?
Pete: It’s a question I get a lot and the truth is, the short term matters. If you don’t win in the short term, you don’t get permission to play in the long term. At Boots, I made sure we had a stable platform to deliver short-term sales and growth by focusing on the right products, services and promotions to go to market with. Once all the channels are running, such as SEO, affiliates and paid, we could create space to develop a plan for the long term.
Our first big post-lockdown summer campaign was a hit, and that unlocked more budget for Christmas. Every campaign we did had products and services at the heart, so they drove response and sales straight away, which meant we secured more investment for the next one. We got into a growth rhythm and by the time I left, marketing investment was 25% higher than when I joined.
I’m not a fan of doing brand work for brand’s sake. The best work narrows the gap between long and short term. You see an uplift in the first weeks, and the full impact plays out over time. That way, you keep the business confident in the now while building for the future. You’ve got to show momentum and growth in your short term and show you’re turning up the dial on everything. Then you can have the conversation about the long term.
Where do you see Gen AI having the most meaningful impact and how can marketing teams use it well?
Pete: AI can help you remove grunt work like writing emails, website copy and app notifications. It can ingest your research data and turn briefs around quickly and smartly. If AI is doing that stuff for you, you can add more value as a marketer into the bigger strategic piece.
But I’d never use AI to generate a big idea for a campaign. For me that’s the beauty and creativity of your agency network. AI can also help with design but there are constraints: at Boots I always said we should never generate AI images of people or hands or legs, as we’re a health and beauty brand. I think AI will take over day-to-day processing tasks more and more. Then the marketer’s job is less turning the handle and more strategic and interesting, thinking about where we’re going.
People are dealing with all sorts of crises: cost of living, their children’s futures, fears around AI and their jobs. How do you market to people at a time like this, in a way that’s ethical, relevant and doesn’t add to the digital noise?
Pete: To be relevant you have to talk about what really matters in people’s lives and things they genuinely need. I used to say we had to move from “good old Boots” to “oh my God, wow Boots” — a brand that makes you stop and think, “I need that”.
The way to do that is through smart personalisation. When I joined, the Advantage Card was struggling. We re-energised it with Price Advantage, giving customers 10% off all Boots’ own-brand products. We won three million customers back. Then we used that data to offer timely, relevant products and services, not scattergun promotions. We said no to things all the time, like will writing or savings accounts, because they didn’t fit with people’s health and beauty needs. You win and keep things ethical and relevant by understanding someone’s life and only talking to them about what truly matters to them, at the right time.
How do you balance acting on what your data tells you with staying people centred?
Pete: It starts with a clear data strategy — knowing exactly why you’re collecting data and how it helps your customers, business and supplier partners. Our goal wasn’t just to sell but to create a deeper emotional connection and show that we’ll only provide things that are relevant and talk about things that matter to customers. You’re not just collecting data to chuck a load of emails out to people.
We used sophisticated targeting; not just “women 35 to 45” but knowing what they care about, such as hair or nail care. There will always be an element of gut instinct too about what you’re putting out there, and that comes from a passionate team who know and care deeply about the brand. Every piece of communication either connects or disconnects, and one irrelevant email can quickly put you on the road to irrelevance as a brand.
What book would you recommend?
Pete: There’s a brilliant book called The Art of Making Sh!t Up by Norm Laviolette. He’s an improviser who’s brought those skills into the business world, helping leaders be more creative and spontaneous. I’m a big believer, from my own experience with improv comedy and musical improv, that improvisation expands your thinking, boosts creativity and makes you more effective at work. It’s a fantastic read.
Connect with @Pete Markey on LinkedIn
