Most Creative Marketers: Kerris Bright

Kerris Bright is known as one of the brightest marketers of our generation. I’ve of course encountered plenty of other smart marketers. But there are few who, like her, started life as a scientist with a PhD in molecular neuroscience. She’s a different breed of smart. Scary smart. Kerris possesses this nimble and omnivorous mind -“her left and right brain” as she calls it - that has led to a fascinating action-packed trajectory as a marketer. A career in science or academics, it wasn’t to be.

“I was not a brilliant scientist and didn’t have the dedication but was always interested, curious, and capable,” she confesses. “I’m also not a deeply creative person, but appreciate and enjoy the power of creativity, ingenuity and imagination.” Kerris says her creative joy and inspiration comes from product design and modern abstract art, buoyed by her partner who’s a graphic designer. “I understand the power it [creativity] can bring to unlock opportunities to grow a brand or a business. And I’m also quite good at getting the best out of creative people” she adds.

The recent ‘Backing British Creativity’ and the Tokyo Olympics BBC Trailer are testimony to just that. But more on her BBC role later.

When she’s talking of creativity, she means commercial creativity. Creativity, she says, that is not just bold but seen as an investment and a lever for change and growth. “I’ve enjoyed my career in the commercial world at the intersection of marketing, customers and business growth.”

Marketing Ambitions

She started her marketing career as a graduate marketing trainee at Unilever, but after almost a decade at the FMCG behemoth she cut the “umbilical cord” to go join AkzoNobel, (the owner of Dulux, following its acquisition of ICI Paints) in 2001 as its CMO when it was still a product-driven paints manufacturing business. This was followed by British Airways in 2010 - at a time when it was merging with Iberia and also needed to reignite its spirit; and Ideal Standard, a bathroom fixtures company, in 2011. All of these businesses needed serious marketing chops. Kerris then went on to join Virgin Media, where the role of CMO was reprised for her in 2015. Three years later, she joined the BBC to the newly created role of chief customer officer, to oversee the BBC’s existing marketing and audiences teams. She is tasked with helping the BBC double-down on personalisation and communication with its audiences; including licence fee payers and those signing in to digital services like iPlayer.

There’s a common thread here, she says. “I’ve always sought out opportunities where businesses want growth and where they have an ambition for marketing.” A career path most marketers would kill for, and one that needs celebrating. I ask if the real allure for her is diving into businesses that are navigating the most rapid and treacherous waters? I’m suggesting both an intellectual fascination and an adrenaline fuelled approach she might have. She half-agrees.

Her interest has always been marketing for organisations where marketing is much broader than comms and where she can build deep consumer connections, she explains. “I tend to gravitate to brands where creativity plays a big role because there’s licence to have a lot of fun. When I finally cut the umbilical cord to leave Unilever to go to a paint business- to me it was about colour, home, psychology. Dulux was also a brand with real scale and real presence. In my first week I realised that the business was in crisis. But that wasn’t why I went.”

At the time, the sales-driven business lacked not just a strategic marketing framework to provide brand focus but also a capability agenda that would drive the performance of the marketing function. Kerris put that right and eventually introduced the creative idea for its ‘Let’s Colour’ campaign, and also led the consolidation of AkzoNobel’s advertising business for its major paint brands into a single agency Euro RSCG (now Havas). “I took what was essentially a chemicals company and used creativity as a lever to drive growth and build the brand.

It was creativity with impact.” Commercial creativity.

It was to be the making of Kerris, she says, and admits that she subsequently looked for such roles that had that ambitions for marketing and saw marketing’s role to drive growth for an organisation. “I’ve become quite comfortable with discomfort,” she goes on to add.

The challenge at British Airways was find its spirit and purpose, and it led to the airline’s ‘To Fly. To Serve’ multi-platform campaign in 2011.

Creativity & Commercial Accountability

She was soon lured by her former boss at ICI, David Hamill, who had gone on to be the chairman and chief executive officer of Ideal Standard International, a provider of innovative and design-driven bathroom solutions. A role plenty of marketers would have shied away from. However, for Kerris it meant another challenge “at an amazingly interesting business” and one that appealed to her creative sensibilities and her love for product design. It also had a very clear commercial edge to it, accountable for driving customer uptake.

Kerris’ role at Virgin Media next was not too different either. Virgin Media resurrected the CMO role in January 2015, after scrapping it the previous year. It expanded the job’s remit by adding data, insight and analytics to her responsibilities at the time. “I just loved the pace, the dynamism and everything I did at Virgin Media.”

It’s that intellectual curiosity and that strategic ambition wanting to transform the business into a brand-led, customer-centric organisation that was shining bright again. “My role was to drive short-term demand and build a brand over time, and work with a team that enjoyed bold creative outputs while working with clear commercial accountability.”

One of her favourite campaigns is the Virgin Media Usain Bolt ‘9.58 seconds’ campaign– the time he broke the world record in, created by BBH. 9.58 seconds revealed 10 interpretations of why Bolt is the fastest man on Earth, each lasting as long as his 100m record at 9.58 seconds. “It was the most fun I ever had with creativity. It was a bold campaign and an epic production and I worked with brilliant creatives like Carl Broadhurst”. Carl Broadhurst is currently the group creative director at Apple. The opportunity to work with BBH also gave her one of her "forever" creative heroes - Nigel Bogle, founder of the agency.

Marketing That Doesn’t Get In The Way

Is the BBC role therefore an ultimate culmination of her journey as a marketer, a commercial marketer that is creatively astute? A role that was specifically created for Kerris.

“The deep joy of the BBC is that it allows for people that work at this very creative organisation to leave a mark on culture, people and democracy. I’ve been allowed a unique opportunity in time to be part of that positive impact and be part of a team that use its creative muscle to bring the nation together.” But this is no gushing sentiment. Kerris knows her role at the broadcaster is to respond to the rapidly changing events and keep its finger on the pulse of the nation. It is, in fact, both an ode to and an acknowledgement of the beast that is the BBC.

Let’s not forget how BBC has been busy fighting for its future in the last few years, with its heavy reliance on licence fee (a licence fee review is set for 2022, ahead of a full-blown negotiation in 2027, when the charter is due for renewal) and where its relevance and trust are being tested in the digital era. Tim Davie, the BBC director-general, has been more than outspoken about its need to better understand its audiences and to extend its focus beyond London into the UK’s nations and regions. It’s collaborating with ITV on the Britbox platform and is bringing back BBC Three as a broadcast channel in 2022, with a focus on younger audiences. And with the Covid-19 pandemic, its public-service responsibility was much lauded, with not just extensive news coverage covering the crisis, but also educational content for children when schools were closed. Last year BBC launched a film - a montage of real life footage - to demonstrate its role as a public service broadcaster in a time of this national crisis.

The film, says Kerris, was a focus on the things which can bring us together and the role that the BBC can play by using all its resources to keep people connected.

“Every other organisation that I’ve worked at, marketing is often the most creative part of their business and that is also the only function that engages with the audience. Not the same at the BBC, so the marketing role is very different,” Kerris explains.

“It’s a business not for profit but for purpose. It’s also a role that comes with a very clear focus - a customer focus and not just a marketing focus. I’ve put to work everything I have learnt, and I know that marketing works at its best at the BBC when it doesn’t get in the way.”