Tamara Littleton 00:12
This is the Genuine Humans podcast, brought to you by Social Element. I’m Tamara Littleton
Wendy Christie 00:18
and I’m Wendy Christie.
Tamara Littleton 00:22
In our podcast, we’ll discover the stories of the leaders behind the brands and the trailblazers who are making a real difference in our industry. We’ll delve into how they got to where they are today,
Wendy Christie 00:33
and we’ll hear about the genuine humans who supported and influenced them along the way.
Tamara Littleton 00:44
Welcome back to Genuine Humans, and I’m here with Wendy Christie, my co-host. So, Wendy, how are you doing?
Wendy Christie 00:50
Hello. Yes, I’m doing really well, thank you. Just enjoying all this glorious sunshine. How are you?
Tamara Littleton 00:56
Fantastic! Feeling good, feeling good, and feeling especially good because today we are joined by Gareth Able. And Gareth is a seasoned chief marketing officer and marketing consultant with a truly international career. Gareth has lived and worked all over the world, bringing his expertise to the tech sector, spanning telecoms, digital services and consumer electronics, and also outside of his work, I’m particularly interested. We’re going to talk about this. But Gareth is a passionate food lover and shares his culinary adventures on his blog. Gareth The Globetrotting Gourmet. Welcome to Genuine Humans, Gareth.
Gareth Abel 01:32
Thank you. It’s great to be here.
Tamara Littleton 01:34
So, Gareth, I’m going to jump in because I really know that from our previous conversations, you were very intentional in your decision to pursue marketing as a career. So, can you actually tell us about your early career journey?
Gareth Abel 01:49
Sure. So, I did business studies at university, but I took a year out before I went to university where I worked, and during that year, I immediately realised that working with other people and solving problems was something that I was really interested in. I got an immediate buzz from working as part of a team. And I loved that, the way that you could see what was happening, understand it, and then make it better. So, I always knew that business was going to be for me, when I went to university, as soon as I started studying marketing as one of the, you know, the courses within the overall business studies degree, I kind of realised that this was the right area for me. And the kind of the foundation of it was, was that, you know, the marketing team was responsible for identifying, you know what the market is all about. You know, where’s the opportunity? What do customers want? Bringing that back into the business, and then helping to orchestrate what the business should then do in terms of, you know, what its product should be like, what experience should be, what you needed to build and deliver, and then taking it back out into the world again, and then influencing people in order to buy you. I found that absolutely fascinating, and that sort of foundation has stuck with me ever since.
After that, when I started working for real post-university, I started working for the Dixon Stores Group, and I was on their somewhat infamous product management training programme. So, that wasn’t for the faint-hearted, but it gave me, you know, immediate exposure to really understanding, you know, commerciality and what was going to deliver a real result. I could see almost immediately what the implications of any given action or activity would be in order to increase demand, improve my margin or something else, and it was a fantastic training ground.
Gareth Abel 03:47
But then after that, I had the opportunity to join Orange. So, Orange at that stage was just before its fourth birthday, and it had 1 million customers only, so it was actually number four of four in the UK mobile telecoms market. Orange had launched while I was at university, and I’d been absolutely amazed by how this totally different player had come into the world.
Fast forward 18 months, and Orange had 10 million customers and was number one in the UK market, and it was just incredible to be part of that rocket ship. But aside for obviously, the brand get lots of plaudits. But in addition to that, there was also the way that there was so much innovation in the product, you know, the experience that was delivered, and then how the company went about operating its business. It was truly fascinating.
I spent 11 very happy years there, more than five of them in the second half of my duration with Orange working within the Orange Group functions. And this is where I started to get the opportunity to travel and to see how the business operated in different parts of the world. And so that stood me in good stead for what happened next in the rest of my career.
Tamara Littleton 05:01
So, that was where you got that bug for the travelling as well, which we’ll go into in a little bit as well.
Gareth Abel 05:08
Yeah, exactly that, that was where, that was where that started to come from. I started to see how a company could operate in a more than one country situation. And it was fascinating to see the things that were similar, and then the things which are also very different. And so, the combination of those two things was a real interest for me.
Wendy Christie 05:28
As you know, because I know that you’ve listened to the podcast before, we’re always interested in exploring how childhood experience has influenced people’s adult lives and how they got to their career. So, what were you like as a child?
Gareth Abel 05:42
I think I was very fortunate. I had a very, very happy upbringing. Life was really important in our family, so and we were always busy. Education was key for us, but we were also really busy from an extracurricular activity. I did lots of sport. My sister was a really successful gymnast, at a part time job as a paper boy, and I, you know, I made the absolute most of that. And I was also a keen Venture Scout, and got involved not just in the activities, but also in the running of the group as well. I got really into mountain sports, actually, at that time, and, you know, that really sort of helped me to develop my resilience at that time. We used to do these crazy expeditions when we were, you know, when we were travelling with ventures. And I also did some super long-distance competitive hiking events. You know, the sort of thing where you do sort of 45 miles in a day, and they were physically super challenging, and also mentally, it was tough too. And I think you can probably trace resilience, which is one of the key things that I bring you know, down to being challenged and kind of molded at that time.
The other thing I wanted to add is that I was very fortunate. My parents were a huge positive influence. My dad was a chartered accountant, and he worked in a senior position for a large manufacturing business. I grew up in Coventry, actually, where my parents still live, and my mother ran her own clothing business, and she was always on the go. She was very entrepreneurial in terms of what she did.
Gareth Abel 07:19
She always had super high levels of energy and drive, and somehow she managed to fit running this very successful business around always supporting and chauffeuring myself and my sister to the variety of different things that we were doing. She was absolutely amazing with that. And, you know, I think also that sort of drive has also really rubbed off on me and kind of helped to develop who I am.
Wendy Christie 07:48
It sounds like an incredibly busy and thriving family environment and yes, I think it’s a really good point you make about the resilience that comes from but, you know, probably particularly that Ventures experience. It sounds like when you went to university, you were already pretty clear that you wanted to work in business, but before that, maybe when you were a good bit younger than that, did you have any ideas about what you wanted to be when you grew up?
Gareth Abel 08:17
Yeah. The other thing that I was really interested in is that I was quite keen on becoming a doctor. In my sort of early teens, I was really very good at science, and I was thinking, you know, that would be an interesting way, in order to be able to combine my love of science with a with a professional career. But actually, as soon as I started getting some experience in the world, and I understood the impact that you could have in business and the implications of working with a team, and that’s in a business environment. I was hooked. So yeah, there was, there was no going back down the medical route.
Wendy Christie 08:52
Fantastic. And other than your parents, were, there other people that you particularly looked up to as a child?
Gareth Abel 08:59
I wouldn’t say as a child, but actually, in my career, I’ve been fortunate to work with lots of amazing people. I’m sure we’ll touch on that. I’ve had the opportunity to live and work in lots of places, but there’s one person who I’ve worked with in quite a few different situations. A gentleman called Yves Maitre, he was one of my line managers at Orange, and what’s fascinating with Yves, is that we’ve done, as I say, we’ve done lots of different things together. When we first started working together, I didn’t fully appreciate how his totally different perspective on seeing the world and finding solutions, you know, the very creative way that he did that, you know, could be successful. You know, at the start I thought, “God, this can be, this guy can be quite hard work.” And we didn’t gel immediately, but actually over time, and we’ve now done, I think, four or five different things together, our skills and expertise have kind of become very, very complimentary in terms of how we work and so he’s been probably the single biggest impact that I’ve had in terms of an individual on my career.
Wendy Christie 10:08
Wonderful. Thank you.
Tamara Littleton 10:10
And Gareth, I know that you sort of said about the travel, so let’s, let’s go back to that, because you’ve worked across continents and different cultures. And why did you want to add such a strong international dimension to your career, and how has that global experience shaped you as a marketer, particularly in the tech sector?
Gareth Abel 10:30
So quite early in my career, my father-in-law actually gave me advice about looking at international work, so he had worked extensively outside of the UK himself right at the start of his career, and he’d sort of said, “look, it can give you a real boost. You will, you know, rapidly accelerate your experience by moving into a totally different situation, and you get to see the world in a different way. You know, it’s not travelling for holiday and travelling for work are totally, totally different in terms of, you know, what you see and what you experience.” I can remember his words at that time, and I remember thinking, “yeah, I really want to explore and do something with that.”
Gareth Abel 11:14
So, when the opportunity came for me to start, initially at Orange, working on a regional basis. So as the business expanded and the brand was running in lots of different markets, you know, I jumped at the opportunity to get involved in that. I was seeing different environments, different situations, different cultures, in real-time, and very much learning about that. And what I’ve really discovered is, and this is so vital for a marketeer, because for me, your first job as a marketeer is to bring this market orientation, to really understand, you know, what is the market when you add, you know, a certain amount of international expertise, it means that you’ve had to go to a different territory, and you’ve had to re-understand exactly what’s going on in that world. When you take that sort of, you know, formal and filtered look at what’s going on, it’s an absolutely fascinating way to be able to get under the skin of what’s going on in that particular business, in the tech sector, this is absolutely vital. So, you know, technology change, you know, is, is rapid. It accelerates. So, you constantly need to be reevaluating. You know, “where am I? What does the world want? What have I got? How do I bridge too?” And so, having this skill set, you know, as part of your fundamental makeup, I found really effective, you know, as a marketeer, and more from a like a personal point of view as a professional.
Tamara Littleton 12:45
So, what’s it like getting established in a new country as a professional? So, what challenges and rewards come with that?
Gareth Abel 12:53
I think the first thing to say is that the more times you do it, the easier it gets. When I first moved internationally and I started working in Abu Dhabi, I found it extremely difficult to get going, both on and off the pitch. So you know, the concept of finding somewhere to live, getting integrated into the kind of into the local network, from a career point of view, was really, really challenging. I found my way of doing that. So first of all, I make sure that I’m living very close to where I’m working, so that totally cut, you know, a huge slice of overhead in time and anguish in terms of, you know, you know, how ready and how organised I am. And then I lean into it from a work perspective. I’m leaning into understanding the people really trying to understand the situation that we’re in. And then there’s “why did we get to this particular point and why are we making the decisions that we’re making when?” So when you’re ready to be able to then engage in that way, what I discovered is that you can quite quickly understand exactly what’s going on, and then you can reflect on that and bring your wider experience to it and say, “Well, okay, you know, that piece seems to be working, but there’s a challenge here. How can I do something? How can I bring, you know, some elements of my experience, or, you know, a point of view and opinion that I’ve got in order to add some value, you know, immediately?” And I’m very keen to get under the skin and then to kind of start planting wins, you know, as soon as possible. That’s really helpful advice for anyone doing that.
Tamara Littleton 14:36
And I know also from our discussions that you’ve developed a framework that’s focused on profit and growth for business, and I’d love it if can you tell us a bit more about how that came together and why you also think it’s so critical in today’s market?
Gareth Abel 14:52
Yeah, that’s right. I’ve built this playbook basically focused on sustainable profit growth. What I did was, I looked back at my experience, and I worked out what had worked. I then complimented that over the last few years, I’ve done quite a lot of exec education. I’ve really invested some time in that. And then off the back of that, I then went into exploring the marketing science that’s available now, and you can really see lots of evidence which shows ways of working, things that you can do that will work regardless of industry segment situation. So, I put together this playbook that enables businesses of all types to leverage marketing really well in order to drive sustainable profit growth. And I focus very importantly on profit, partly because it’s a differentiated position. So firstly, it’s the thing that businesses really need to make. And you don’t hear that many senior marketeers talking about it, so I felt that there was a different approach that I could take because of that. And the other thing is, of course, is that marketeers are best placed when you really look at it, in order to drive profitability for businesses, because it’s the marketeers role to look at the market and to identify where there is a profit opportunity, then we’ve got to go through the process of building that positioning whereby we’ve identified what these profitable customers want. And then we are building the positioning that then directs the organisation in order to build and deliver exactly what these profitable customers want. And then, of course, you go into the execution whereby everything that you then put into the market, and again, you’re leveraging the marketing mix here. Everything that you put into the market is aligned with this. I found this to be a great tool for businesses that are not currently the profit leaders in their category. And I’m getting quite a lot of great feedback from CEOs, private equity firms on what I’ve built.
Tamara Littleton 16:59
Well, I’m sure that’s music to CFOs ears as well. Really interesting. Thank you. And let’s talk about our industry. What do you think is working well in the marketing industry right now, and is there anything that needs a bit of a serious shake up?
Gareth Abel 17:17
In terms of working well, we are definitely on a path of moving away from efficiency primarily, and into effectiveness first, and then efficiency once you’ve worked out what’s effective. One of the big benefits of the available marketing science and the amount of additional comment that we get in the industry now is you can really start to see what’s working. And more and more businesses are really starting to think about, okay, how do I make sure that I’m not just targeting the 5% of people who are in the market today, but also the 95% of people that are going to be buying in the category in the near future? So, that focus on moving away from efficiency, from the 5% into how do I make sure I’m effective in the 5% and in the 95% of available buyers, is really important, and that’s a growing strength.
Gareth Abel 18:15
On the weakness side, I still do find that marketers need to be less focused on short term tactical comms actions you are forever hearing about. I need a new piece of martech, or I need a different agency relationship. My advice is, you’ve really got to build your strategic foundations first and then select the appropriate tools in order to make sure that you can deliver the objectives that you are setting. I think that’s absolutely critical. The other thing I’d recommend is marketers need to have a stronger empathy with the rest of the business. There is a problem I’ve noticed in terms of marketeers and marketing teams often being considered a bit of a satellite and not being well integrated. Marketers need to be better connected. We need to understand much more the language of the business, and you need to have a bit more understanding of, you know, key priorities around profit, working capital and cash flow, not something that you hear senior marketers talking about at all, but actually it’s critical in the boardroom in order to get to get a deep understanding of that and something else that I know that you’re passionate about is continuous learning and, and I know that you’ve sort of invested in professional education.
Tamara Littleton 19:28
But do you think that has slipped down the priority list for CMOs and why does it matter so much to you?
Gareth Abel 19:35
So it is super important to me. Over the last few years, I’ve done quite a lot. What I found was that after studying business and then marketing at university, I then went into the world of work for 20 years, and basically all of my development was based on what were the individual companies actually doing. And I never took the time to kind of step back and say. “How does this really work? How effective in it?” Because you’re always caught up in the moment. When I invested the time and effort in doing lots of education over the last few years, I learned a lot more, and it made me technically better as a marketer, as a result, because there’s so much more knowledge and understanding now about what works and what doesn’t work. The development of marketing science has really come on in the last 10 years or so. I found that super powerful, I’m surprised by how few people actually do this. It makes you so much better technically, but also it gives you the confidence to lead better, you know, as a result. And I’d go as far as saying that I actually wouldn’t hire a senior marketer that hadn’t done a certain amount of recent training and education in order to make sure that they were current and up to date. You never see this with CFOs. CFOs never come across as being the professional that have just fallen into their chosen profession. And occasionally you do hear marketeers talk about it in those terms, and I’m afraid that doesn’t give us a lot of credibility in the boardroom. So, yeah, strong advocate of making sure that everyone has done their work from a training and education perspective.
Wendy Christie 21:21
Yeah, I think that’s a really good point, Gareth. And you could probably say the same for many other disciplines as well, outside marketing. Okay, thank you, Gareth. So, we’re going to move on to the last part of the podcast now, where it gets a bit more personal with some quick-fire questions. So, let’s start with, what’s your idea of a perfect weekend?
Gareth Abel 21:43
For me, it revolves around what I call my four F’s. Family food, football and Formula One, not necessarily always in that order, and sometimes these things combine. So, for example, my youngest daughter is a keen footballer, and we will like going to support her every weekend when she’s playing for her team. Also, it’s not just me that it’s a foodie, so at some point over the weekend, we’re always out eating it, talking about it, or cooking it. And so, you know, food is always going to play an important part in the Abel family weekends.
Wendy Christie 22:21
That sounds perfect, and I definitely share three of those F’s with you. How would your friends describe you?
Gareth Abel 22:29
I’m very lucky to have been close friends with the same group since I was a teenager. A few other gladiators have joined me along the way, but I know my friends would describe me as enthusiastic and passionate, particularly about the things I’m really, really interested in, they’ll always comment on my resilience and drive and that I’m always determined to succeed in challenging situations, doing things that other people won’t do. Very curious, I look for context in order to be able to understand better before taking any action. So, sort of zoom out before I zoom in, and that helps me to bring a fresh perspective to any given situation. I’m famous for zagging when everybody else is looking to zig. And finally, they would describe me as loyal and with a sharp sense of humour.
Wendy Christie 23:22
Thank you. So, if you on a completely different note, if in the blink of an eye, you could time travel somewhere completely different in time, but also in place, where and when would you travel to? And there’s no consequences, Nothing you do will impact the future or anything like that.
Gareth Abel 23:41
So as a child, I was always really fascinated by the dinosaurs, and I’m still really interested in the natural world. So going back to that period and to see what dinosaurs were really like, I think would be really interesting for me. If there ever was such a thing as a real life Jurassic Park, theme park I’d be sure to visit.
Wendy Christie 24:02
Fantastic!
Tamara Littleton 24:04
And Gareth, we talked about you being a foodie and the whole family being interested in food as well, but and you run your own blog, which I mentioned at the beginning. So Gareth the Globetrotting Gourmet. So, this might be an impossible question for you, but what’s your favourite restaurant or food experience?
Gareth Abel 24:22
I like all sorts of different types of food, but probably the favourite is American barbecue. And then the favourite individual dish would be the dumpling. It comes in so many different forms. The gyoza, the wonton, the pierogi, the soup dumpling. I think each one is like a little present, which is one of the reasons why I’ve always enjoyed dumplings. So, writing about food and restaurant reviews came from a colleague who, you know, noticed that I was particularly interested in trying different places, and thought I had a good take on it. I started writing less about the food itself, because when you’re eating out three meals a day, you know, the food itself, perhaps no longer is special, but actually it was more about the experience and about the things that happen in a restaurant so often. You know, this has been me in a foreign country, so I’m having to work out, you know, how can I order something like don’t recognise, maybe in a maybe in a language that I don’t speak, and I often have interesting experiences with the waiting staff for the things that happen in the restaurant. But one notable experience was Divino, which is an Italian restaurant in Taipei. I went there on a very wet Saturday night a dark and dingy street, and I went in, and the rest the small restaurant was absolutely packed, and immediately the waiting staff were very rude to me and said, you know, there’s absolutely no way that I could just walk in and think I could get a table. Then, bizarrely, there were three customers at the bar that turned around and were rude to me also, you know, called me an idiot for thinking that I could just turn up and, you know, expect to sit down. So that was this very, very strange experience. But I really like the look of it. So I never book when I’m writing reviews. But I did decide to book on this occasion, and I went back, you know, a few days later, again, on arrival, they were rude to me, which again, I just couldn’t understand. But then, you know, after I did sit down, and the Focaccia arrived, and then, “wow, those meatballs look good”. And “wow, look at that fresh pasta on the bar”. All of a sudden, the food and the atmosphere started to sort of transform my experience. And, you know, it was an incredible, you know, change in terms of what happened before I went from being, you know, completely vilified to having, you know, an incredible dining experience. So, you know, I absolutely loved it. And that’s probably one of the most memorable experiences, you know, that I’ve had.
Tamara Littleton 26:58
That sounds amazing. And, yeah, your blog sounds absolutely brilliant. I’m also remembering an incredible dumpling that I had in New York. There was a restaurant called Stanton Social, which then has closed down sadly, but they had French onion soup dumplings that just were, oh, absolutely stunning. So yeah, so a different question for you, how would you fare in a zombie apocalypse?
Gareth Abel 27:24
Well, I think!
Tamara Littleton 27:26
I like that.
Gareth Abel 27:27
We’ve already touched on, you know, I’ve got strong resilience, and I really like to take sort of simple actions in order to understand what’s going on, you know, and then plot a course. So I think the challenge of overcoming a zombie apocalypse would be something I’d go for, and I think I’d have a good, practical approach to making it happen. I’d recommend a book actually here, so Endurance, which tells the story about Ernest Shackleton, the Explorer and his expedition group more than 100 years ago, and the experiences that they had to go through, it really tells the story of human triumph over adversity. So that team would also be fine dealing with the zombie apocalypse.
Tamara Littleton 28:16
Brilliant. And let’s stick to books. Have you got a book inside you? If you were going to write a book, what would it be about?
Gareth Abel 28:23
I’m sure I’ve got a book in me. I’d love to write, like the business equivalent of John Grisham legal thrillers. I’d love to do a business thriller series. I think that would be great. But first, I’d like to write a humorous take on international business culture. So having worked in lots of different places and seen some incredibly, you know, interesting and funny things as a result of what different people and cultures do in different business situations in different places, I’d love to share some of my stories about that.
Tamara Littleton 28:59
Fantastic. Well, I would definitely read that. Gareth, it’s been such a delight to have you on the podcast. We’re so appreciative that you’ve been here and shared your story as well. Is there anything that you wish that we had asked you, that we didn’t that would or if you’ve got any closing thoughts, I’m going to pass the platform to you.
Gareth Abel 29:19
Well, thanks so much for having me. One thing you could have asked me was about, what other podcasts would I recommend? So, in addition to this one, I’m a keen listener to the Archers. Been listening to that uninterrupted for 15 years. But in addition to that, I would also recommend the High Performance podcast by Jake Humphrey and Damien Hughes, so they’ve been going for more than five years, and they’ve spoken to hundreds of guests from all different sorts of walks of life, athletes, business people, actors, politicians, all sorts of different people. And they’re talking about how they live their lives and what they’ve done in order to be in order to deliver success consistently. It’s a fascinating podcast, highly recommended. The key thing is not just the listening to the stories. It’s also about afterwards, reflecting upon them, letting them percolate a little bit, and seeing how you can apply some of these things to your own life. Great stuff. I highly recommend it.
Wendy Christie 30:27
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