Marketing Director at Homebase
Jo Kenrick is the Marketing Director for Homebase and a Non Exec Director for Safestore, the UK’s largest self storage business.
During her career Jo has held the position of Marketing Director at several leading British businesses, including Wilson Connolly, the housebuilder, Camelot, the operator of the National Lottery, and B&Q. From there she went on to become the CEO of Start, HRH The Prince of Wales’ sustainability initiative.
Since 2011 she has held the position of Marketing Director at Homebase, responsible for communications, customer proposition, and the Nectar loyalty relationship, as well as the website and all digital channels. Homebase has over 250 stores all over Britain.
Jo holds a degree in Law from Nottingham University.
Jo Kenrick: Getting it down to one focus area is really tough, but if you really pushed me, I’d have to say it’s making sure that the customer is in the room with us when we’re making decisions as a business.
Jo Kenrick: Our changing customer and the increasing role of women in home improvement decision making. We have done a lot of work on our store offer and started to upgrade our stores, including Habitat mini shops, Argos concession stores, coffee shops and enhanced home and garden offerings to appeal more to this customer.
Jo Kenrick: Massively upgrading the digital experience of the brand. I look after digital channels for Homebase and we have invested significantly in replatforming our website, launching new apps, and improving the inspiration and tools on the web.
Jo Kenrick: You have to be comfortable with data as well as emotion, and understand that analytics will drive a lot of your and your team’s decision making. You need to be able to understand what your role is in driving financial and commercial success for a business, and be able to communicate that in the Boardroom, whilst not losing sight of the importance of standing for your customer’s best interests. I think a sense of humour is critical, and personally, I have always found that I am much more effective when I use and believe in the product or business I am marketing. There’s no substitute for being your own customer and realising the reality of the service you are promoting to others.
Jo Kenrick: I broke some barriers down when I was at Woolworths, to create TV advertising that could be booked on air two weeks out from transmission and could be made within the week to go on air on a Thursday night. It wasn’t the most creative stuff in the world, but it was quirky and gave the business the flexibility of radio with the reach and power of TV, and involved some real creative thinking by my team and the agencies we worked with. Other than that, I’m most proud of what I’ve done in the digital space with developing the offer of B&Q and now Homebase, largely by creating space for awesome teams to do what they know how to do best.
Jo Kenrick: I’m loving the wave of really emotional brand ads that are around at the moment, from Lloyds Bank with 250 years of black horses, to the World’s Best Dad scarf in the Nationwide ads. The KFC work is nice too. I know it’s a cliché and everyone is probably jumping on the John Lewis band wagon, but as long as the brand experience doesn’t let you down when you interact with it, there is a lot to be said for building emotional connections through your advertising.
Jo Kenrick: I’m a bit of a fraud really – I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of WACL for 10 years and have enjoyed the friendship and support of some tremendous ladies as a result, but I haven’t managed to have time to be very involved beyond attending fantastic events and promoting it to colleagues and friends.
Jo Kenrick: Clearly the march of Digital will continue – with more and more focus on the device in our hands and the personalisation and tailoring it offers to make messages truly relevant and timely (and therefore useful for the customer). I’m a supporter of TV as part of the mix though – we are social creatures and we like to be part of a ‘herd’ and only TV offers the mass experience that we can talk about tomorrow at the water cooler. I also think we are essentially emotionally driven creatures and no communication channel is more powerful and with broader reach than a TV ad which combines sound and image to evoke emotional response.
Jo Kenrick: Specialist – I know how hard it is to be really good at more than one thing so I’d rather have experts in each field and do the coordination to keep them working along a similar brief.
Jo Kenrick: Woefully bad at this, mainly because agency management and even selection is something I think my team should own, not me. I try to stay away from the agencies as I don’t want to manage the relationship, or turn up with part of the story when my team have been involved in the detail and know the score far better than I do. I probably speak to agencies once a year, if that, so I don’t spend time with any agencies other than the ones we work with – although like every client I get about 150 emails a week from hopeful prospects. I have a standard response – sorry but we’re not looking right now!!
Jo Kenrick: Not often – I have a strongly held belief that if there’s something wrong with your advertising, the majority of the time you are the problem, not your agency. I’m not saying agencies are perfect, but clients are far too quick to move to another agency rather than fixing the deeper problems with their own strategy, processes or briefs. To me it’s like a marriage – the very best ones have lasted for years, and I’d rather get counselling to fix what I have than assume the grass is greener over the other side of the fence. So I only pitch if it’s absolutely the last resort!
Jo Kenrick: I wouldn’t throw the process away entirely as I’m not sure there is a better way to get to see what other agencies have to offer and how the chemistry might work, but I would make sure that they are paid for pitches if I possibly could. Otherwise there is too little skin in the game for the client – we need to have cash on the table so that we are taking some of the risk as well as the agencies who pitch.
Homebase recruits former B&Q marketing director
13.05.2011
Jo Kenrick has been appointed to marketing director for Homebase from charity Start, where she was chief executive.
Kenrick had been chief executive of Start, a Prince of Wales charity designed to promote sustainable living, since March 2010. She will start her new post in mid-August and report to Paul Loft, Homebase’s managing director.
She replaces Ajay Kavan, who left the business earlier in the year.
Jo Kenrick, marketing director, Homebase
29.11.2013
Homebase has increased its focus on service under Kenrick’s guidance: improvements include offering next- and named-day delivery on more than 160,000 lines. It has boosted investment in multichannel areas, with apps starting to appear.
MEET THE JUDGES - 2012
Jo is the Marketing Director for Homebase, with responsibility for communications, the website business, insight, customer proposition, and the loyalty relationship with Nectar. She is also chair of The Marketing Society’s sustainability workstream, and is a Non Exec Director of the Principality Building Society.
Prior to rejoining the world of retail, Jo was CEO of Start, setting up and running HRH the Prince of Wales’ public facing initiative for a more sustainable future.
Looks like you need to create a Creativebrief account to perform this action.
Create account Sign inLooks like you need to create a Creativebrief account to perform this action.
Create account Sign in
