Margaret Jobling is the Group Chief Marketing Officer at NatWest. Margaret has spent the majority of her marketing career in FMCG, before to joining the utilities sector in 2014, as Director of Marketing at British Gas. At the beginning of 2016 she moved into a CMO role at Centrica, transforming the firm’s marketing capabilities across all regions. Then in 2020, joining NatWest as CMO.

In September 2020, Margaret was announced as one of Marketing Week’s Top 100 Most Effective Marketers for her work at Centrica.

What we covered in this episode:

How Marg went from laser chemistry to marketing
Blagging her way through her first job in marketing
Capturing an emotional response in a rational way
How to look smart giving creative feedback to an agency
The ABC of assessing a piece of creative
Why marketers face a much more complex context today
How marketing is like sex and driving
Using the language of business in the Board room
Why marketers should focus on customers and commercials first
The two hats every CMO wears
Creating a culture where people can test and learn
Inverting the pyramid and supporting the marketing team
Why the store manager is king
The power of showcasing what has gone wrong
Marg’s hidden showreel of what went wrong
Jon’s best training talking about his biggest failures
Why Marg wouldn’t go back to fast moving consumer goods
The importance of a consistent customer experience
How service sector and FMCG differ
Defining what marketing is
The inspiration behind ‘tomorrow starts today’
Why procrastination is the largest barrier to your success
What NatWest is doing to protect the climate
How banks can finance a greener economy
Which technology we should be paying attention to
Why not even the tech giants know what the future holds
If it saves time, money or effort it will work
What being in the Top 100 CMO charts does for Marg
Leaving the world in a better state than we found it

Sex, driving and how to be a CMO - Marg Jobling, NatWest CMO