creativebrief: Can you tell me a bit about your career history?

Helen Tupper: I studied Business Management at Nottingham Business School on 3 year degree with a 2 year integrated placement. It was an innovative course, with a year full-time studying at University and then 2 years working full-time in company, completing your degree in your own time. I spent my placement at The Boots Company working in a range of roles including Buying, Store Management & NPD. I graduated with a 1st, some great experience and a confidence in my ability to multi-task!

After Boots, I initially went into Sales-based roles with Britvic and then Procter & Gamble. Working so closely with customers gave me great insights to embed into the next stages of my career within Marketing and Innovation roles at Capital One, E.ON and now BP Castrol. Some people are critical of Sales-based roles, but for me it provided a strong commercial foothold and helped shape my communication and influencing skills which have been crucial in my progression.

The breadth of organisations I’ve worked at has rapidly accelerated my learning and provided me with a high-level of objectivity in the way I approach my current role.

I’ve always tried to supplement my ‘on-the-job’ experience with additional learning and have recently completed the Advanced Management Course at Ashridge and been awarded a scholarship on an amazing programme called The Marketing Academy.

creativebrief: Why did you choose a career in marketing?

Helen Tupper: When I went for my interviews at Boots 10 years ago, the recruiter asked me what I wanted to do in my career. I naively answered “I want to work in marketing” to which they replied ”Yes, but where in marketing? It’s quite a broad discipline…” At the time, I felt rather embarrassed at my inexperience but the comment has stuck with me and become one of the main reasons I love working in this area.

From customer insight, to trends tracking, to NPD to launching and managing your product portfolio, a career in Marketing has allowed me the variety and excitement I need to stay motivated whilst also enabling me to develop a specialism that has allowed me to progress my career in seniority.

creativebrief: What do you think makes a successful career in marketing?

Helen Tupper: Three main things….

• Ability to get behind all the analysis and reports and opinion to the heart of what customers really want and be able to bring that compelling insight to life in what you create
• Ability to work cross functionally to make things happen, primarily with your business leaders, sales teams, technology teams and finance colleagues. Without their buy-in, great insight goes nowhere
• To always fail forward. I’ve actually stolen this point from a mentoring session I had with Russ Lidstone (CEO of Havas Worldwide, London) as it really resonated with me. Essentially you need to push the boundaries, accept you fail sometimes but always learn something from your failure so you continue to move forward

creativebrief: And who is a great example of this?

Helen Tupper: The Marketing Academy has brought me into contact with some great leaders who exhibit many of these skills. I found Phil Rumbol (Founding Partner of marketing agency 101 and previously UK Marketing Director for Cadbury) in particular able to demonstrate many of these attributes through his ability to make the emotional connection between the consumer and the product and his ability to leverage this insight to convince people about the direction that should be taken. The success of this approach is demonstrated in campaigns like the Cadbury Dairy Milk Gorilla and Stella Artois’ “Reassuringly Expensive”, both of which Phil was involved in developing.

creativebrief: What do you think are the main challenges facing marketers today?

Helen Tupper: New channels and influencers are emerging all the time. Customers are increasingly expecting personalised service and if they are not happy they tell people, who then tell more people and suddenly there is a significant PR challenge to handle.

Delivering against these expectations with a cost effective and responsive business model is hard unless your business was born in these times and has this as part of its DNA. I admire brands like O2 for how they appear to be managing and responding to this challenge.

creativebrief: How do you keep up with constant stream of innovation in marketing comms?

Helen Tupper: Good question! I have a few trusted sources that I regularly go to, such as my weekly subscription to Marketing and a regular perusal of the content on the B2B Marketing site. I also find Twitter and Slide Share to be good sources of information and can spend a lot of time following and reading links to content that gets my attention. Finally, I shamelessly leverage my network, so friends in marketing and agency contacts are often questioned by me in my search for knowledge.

creativebrief: How does this impact your relationship with agencies?

Helen Tupper: My role oversees all agency interactions for my global division, so I have a number of relationships with agencies. I look both for their unique value in their specialism and also whether they have a voice and an opinion that I and my wider team can learn from. This is a key value-add for me when I’m in selection decisions.

creativebrief: How do you know if you’re getting the best from your agencies?

Helen Tupper: The first and most important indicator is whether we are producing insight-led activity for our customers that drives commercial value and is successfully delivered within the defined parameters (e.g. budget/time).

If the agency are also challenging the way we are thinking, suggesting new solutions and inspiring creativity within my wider team then I would feel confident that we were getting the absolute best from them.

creativebrief: Of your recent work, what makes you particularly proud and why?

Helen Tupper: I’m very proud to be developing the team I’m leading right now. Over the next 6 months we have an important and exciting roadmap to deliver – including looking at our customer relationships and developing our thought leadership messaging.

creativebrief: How do you think marketers can raise the profile of marketing within their organisations?

Helen Tupper: I think being less divisional helps. So to raise the profile of marketing, it’s not just about  marketing!  Cross-functional working not only results in a better outcome for the end customer but means that you touch more people internally. When people are engaged in successful activity and recognised for the part they played, I believe they feel more positive about the marketing team and will advocate them.

This blend of internal advocacy, strong commercial results and thought leadership makes marketing a high-profile asset within an organisation.

creativebrief: Do you see yourself as a generalist or a specialist, does it matter?

Helen Tupper: I see myself as a generalist within a specialism (marketing) if that’s not too much of a cop-out?! I favour the front-end of the pipeline, so insight, trends, innovation, positioning etc… but I could happily work across many roles within marketing providing I felt a connection to the customer in what I did.