Most Creative Marketers: Cheryl Calverley

Combining the role of CMO and CEO, Cheryl Calverley credits her training in classical FMCG marketing for setting her up to run a customer-focused business such as the mattress retailer - and aspiring lifestyle brand - Eve Sleep. “I don't think I’d be a CEO in a mining business,” she jokes.

But there’s also a serious side to marrying the two roles that Calverley, who has also had stints at the AA and Birds Eye, acknowledges. For a smaller company like Eve Sleep, without the budgetary cushions of her previous employers, she points out that advertising expenditure is the single biggest investment the company is likely to make; the stakes are high. It’s indeed a testament to her vision and bravery that she’s elevated something as prosaic and commoditised as the mattress category into something more aspirational and creatively exciting - as well as successful.

While Calverley describes herself as a “gut” marketer, her background and interest in psychology also helps inform her creative routes. “Psychology… it’s what I do in my spare time. It’s what informs my creative judgment. It hugely informs why I came to Eve,” she says.

The behavioural science aspect of sleep has subsequently also informed Eve’s repositioning under Calverley as a brand more intrinsic to our sense of wellbeing.

A campaign last year, created by Creature London, resurrected the highly recognisable ‘Test Card F’ that used to appear at the end of programming each night, in a bid to encourage the nation to switch off their minds and bodies and start winding down for bed.

It seems to have resonated with the public mood, particularly during the pandemic; the AIM-listed company said revenue improved six percent to £25.2 million in the year to December 2020, driven by 18 percent growth in the second half.

The brand has also just launched a new advertising platform in France, called ‘La Vie En Jaune’ (‘Life In Yellow’). To mark the launch Adam&EveDDB has created a new ad, ‘Le Coq’, featuring a stop motion singing cockerel, encapsulating the feeling you get when you wake from having had a really great night’s sleep.

While Calverley has taken a bold approach to the world of mattresses, she displayed a similarly adventurous spirit during her time at Unilever, where she worked on food brands including Pot Noodle, Marmite and Peperami. “Food is deeply psychological and deeply emotional and deeply human,” she comments. She was the brains behind Guinness Marmite and squeezy Marmite, and introduced dwarf fighting, spinning forks and the Doner Kebab flavour to Pot Noodle, the self-proclaimed “slag of all snacks”. A common thread is a commitment to creative marketing, in categories where product or promotion are frequently the only one of the Four Ps that differentiates.

She says: “I love brands, and quite egotistically I like doing stuff that has an impact. I got on a train once, I was about 24 years old, and someone opposite opened a bag of Marmite rice crackers, one of my products. I'd designed it, I'd created it, done the advertising for it. And I sat opposite watching them, happy as Larry."

“Creative advertising will tend to come out of places like retail, FMCG, telecoms, and for good or for bad, comparison websites. I mean there's no bloody differentiation and therefore they have to do interesting advertising. When you've got genuine product differentiation, or you've got the ability to differentiate on ‘place’ the advertising tends to not be as good. Coke has grown by being absolutely differentiated on distribution - it’s now the most distributed drink in the world - so they don't need to swing a whole lot of effort into being the world's best advertiser, because all their money goes in driving massive distribution.”

Having resurrected Marmite from decline and put the yeast extract on a new trajectory, informed by how people either love or hate it, Calverley was spotted by the AA - an organisation that was also slightly stuffy and needed to change. She dragged the AA into the digital age with the help of a brand icon of a singing baby, created by Adam&EveDDB.

“I really like finding these amazing brands that have an amazing impact on people's lives and picking them up and transforming them and giving them a kind of a new and a fresh and exciting life. That's my kind of personal gig,” she says.

Having made the step into general company management, albeit while retaining her marketing responsibilities, Calverley has ambitions to eventually move to a bigger and newer challenge. “I would love to go and work in retail,” she says. “Everyone is looking at it like it’s going to die, but it’s not. There’s a huge opportunity.” A stint in adland also has some appeal, having eluded her in the past. “It was never quite the right timing and I've had young kids. I would still love to in the future. And I also think an agency could probably do with being run by a business person every now and then.” Don’t bet against her.

The way I see it:

• What’s the secret of a successful relationship with a creative agency?

I was at Unilever and credit everything I see and do with Unilever. We were taught to work hard and be the best client in an agency.

• Who is your creative hero or favourite piece of creativity?

Tango

• What do you think has been your boldest creative play?

Probably “Paddington” for Marmite. The one that had the biggest impact was “Singing baby” (AA). The work that made me most nervous was “Sloth” (Eve Sleep)

• What excites you about the future

What’s really exciting for me is the changing ecommerce high street dynamic. Ecommerce businesses have grown up as very exciting website retailers, the challenge is how do ecommerce websites provide an experience. The question is how to make ecommerce an experience and particularly for us, I would like Eve Sleep to become an emporium of content.