CMO Chats with Victoria Perea-Usher, Vice President for Marketing Communications Europe at JCB

Can you tell us a bit more about your journey and what sparked your interest in marketing?

Honestly, my career has not been that linear. My first foray into marketing was working for a sales promotion agency in London, in Kensington, for those who know the area, and I was 19, coming out of college. It was probably one of the most fun jobs I’ve ever had. Our clients were either in the alcohol sector or the confectionary sector, any kind of FMCG products, and so at any given time, we had a cupboard full of lots of goodies that we loved. Our campaigns were regional, and we’d go into pubs, clubs, and restaurants, and we’d have all these great campaigns and great learnings that lasted about three or four years.

I got the travel bug, and I came back, and I thought, “What do I want to do?” I tried a few roles and ended up temping for two weeks for this amazing woman who was then head of the brand at my previous company. Two weeks turned into five months, into five years, then 12 years. That was my role in marketing. So I’ve always worked in financial services marketing in different regions and with different groups and expertise, but that is my foray into marketing; not so linear, but Financial Services is where my niche is. 

What does your company do? 

JCB is one of six global payment networks globally. We are in the financial services sector, specifically in payments. JCB is headquartered in Japan, and we are both a card issuer to consumers and a merchant acquirer, so generally, where customers will want to spend their cards. It could be a luxury retailer, hotel, airline, etc. So our role is to make sure that when our customers want to travel anywhere in the globe, they’re able to use their card. Our organisation is related to payments, so the consumer, the retailer, and the processing of those things.

What is your current main marketing focus? 

It’s important to bring you on a bit of a journey because context is really key to these types of questions. I was the first hire at JCB Europe from a marketing perspective, and it took me a little bit of time to do my orientation, so I had to really immerse myself into who our customers were, who our target was, what type of organisation we worked in, and how we build a marketing strategy. So, I began by really thinking through what that orientation looks like and developed a marketing strategy. I started to build a team that brought in an agency roster and some of the marketing stack that we needed.

However, the biggest learning in the orientation is that while we are a very recognisable brand in Asia, people know who we are; we don’t have the same resonance in Europe. So, brand-building activities are really where my focus for the last four years has been and definitely is currently. Now, 70% of my budget goes into brand-building activities. So, yeah, that’s where my main priority lies right now, and that is where my main budget is being invested in.

Can you tell me about a particularly innovative or successful marketing campaign your team has recently executed?

With the orientation and the research that we did, despite all the micro-challenges that we’re facing, our organisation invested in building a very specific advertising campaign for our target audience here in Europe. And I must explain that my role is actually just European; it’s not a global role. The ethos of Japanese customer centricity is called Omotenashi, and our campaign is very much based on those principles. It’s not a new principle; it’s just a different way of articulating that. 

Our current brand campaign is called #BetterWithOmotenashi, and I think the reason why it is particularly innovative for us is because we’ve done a number of things. First of all, it is the first brand campaign that we have rolled out in Europe, but it has a modern twist. We did benchmarking against all of our other competitors, and we’re not using people in our images. We’re actually using illustration. We’ve partnered with a very famous illustrator to emulate Japanese strokes and use really beautiful imagery in our advertising. And for us, it’s important because it is a digital campaign, first of all.

So when we first started with our metrics, you know, we thought it would do well, but actually, it’s done 10 times better than we thought. So we’re constantly pivoting tactics to learn from the data, but I think even we were surprised at how well received it’s been. The reason I think it’s particularly successful is because it was curated with and for our target audience, so nothing goes out that door until our customers see it. So if they understand it and resonate with it, bear in mind that because we work across regionally, sometimes something might work in the UK that doesn’t work in Germany or Austria or Italy or Spain. So we’re having to constantly think through all of that. Our campaign has to transcend those values across the region. So that’s the most recent campaign that we’ve delivered, and it’s doing really well for us.

What are your biggest marketing challenges at the moment?

Oh, I don’t think I’m unique, darling. You’re probably saying that we’re all a bit worried, aren’t we? My biggest concern is we have a very small team, and there’s a lot on their plate, so my first concern is to make sure that they’re okay with the work that we have to do. There’s a lot of work that we have to do, so we’ve got to prioritise, and sometimes we have to say no to certain things, so I have to make sure that we’re focused and that we’re working with our agencies to really build that internal focus. My immediate priorities are my team and making sure that we’re okay.

However, from a big-ticket item, there are a few challenges working for a global company that’s been in business for around 60 years, and at the top of that list is digital transformation. If I’m honest, we have a lot of legacy systems, and we have to bring in that change. Do we have the right people to make that change, or do we have the right kind of tech stack to do that, even some of those little changes? Some of that prioritisation sits with me, and we are the change agents for that digital transformation. So I have to again look at my team’s resources and make sure that we’re able to do that. So that’s top of the list.

And I think probably more important than that is the articulation, the measurements, and the efficacy of what we do. We do have a responsibility to be able to translate back what we’ve learned, how we’ve learned it, why we’ve done it, back into the business, and the outcome that brings, so for us, it’s been a bit of a journey, if I’m honest, because not everyone has the same aptitude. We’re working as a global company. We’ve got to bring different stakeholders together. How we message certain things to different groups is pivotal to us as it makes sure that the measurements they want to hear are relevant to the way we want to message them.

Translating that back to the business is always a challenge, and making sure that, again, we’ve got the right platforms to be able to do that and bringing one source of truth, because our data sits in many different places, so we’re able to build that together and that’s taken a little bit of time.

How does JCB stay ahead of its competitors in terms of marketing?

Having worked in various organisations, I think it’s a number of things. First of all, I will say that because there are six global networks in the world, we actually partner a lot of the time together. We’re not necessarily natural competitors. In that sense, we build together. We might work in the States, Australia, or Asia, building either a merchant community or a consumer community. In that sense, we partner very well together, but when it comes to obvious differentiation.

So why would you work with one organisation versus another? I think that’s where our role is a little bit different. Because we are Japanese headquartered, and we’ve been established for around 60 years, we do both issuing and acquiring when we speak to our partners in Europe, specifically the richness of the Asian consumers, what they want, right? They want to welcome back those who spent post-COVID. 

Our role is to be able to articulate that value story to our retailer and to our bank acquire audience. What do the Taiwanese card members remember? What product do they have? What’s their average transaction value? What insights can we bring to them? So that’s one way that we do that. And we’ve got around 160 million card members, so the base is diverse, and that’s one way we do that. There are obviously a lot of products and services that are linked back to that and that are differentiated across different markets as well.

But I will say for me because my role is B2B, which is being intrinsically aligned with a commercial organisation. There are not that many organisations that do that well, and from day one, I made sure that we brought people into that journey. So when we look at things like, for example, what’s the messaging that we want to tell our external audience? I call it marketing sales and marketing alignment. We build case studies infographics, and we share them with the teams. We get them to buy into the story, and because they are a main distribution channel for us, they need to be able to articulate the brand story. We’ve made them into individual storytellers if you like. I think that’s another way that we particularly differentiate throughout brand positioning. 

One of the key tenets was that we’re really great at building relationships, and it’s important for us to continue to evolve that. And I think the third one that I mentioned before is the Omotenashi campaign from a marketing perspective. We do not use people in our imagery. We use illustrations, and it doesn’t make you stop in your tracks. That kind of benchmarking that we did was pivotal. So those, I say, were the probably three biggest things that we do in Europe that kind of support that story and that evolution.

Is there a reason you don’t use people? 

Because everyone else does. If we want to be differentiated, we did a benchmarking exercise with all financial services companies. Blue is a colour that comes up with probably most financial services organisations that you know. And if we want to differentiate, we should not use that colour.

For example, people, people on beaches, laughing in cafes, or whatever, different types of things. So again, if you want to be different in a crowded market, you need to think differently. And that’s where we thought that. And because we have a Japanese heritage, we wanted to bring that Asian flavour into what we do in Europe. So again, that illustration really shows that.

What does the future of marketing look like?

Did you know that when I saw that question, I loved it? Because we’re in it. We are actually in the future right now with AI. I know, I know, everyone talks about it, and I think we’ve just scratched, or we are just scratching the surface of that from our perspective. The thing that I think AI will do really well is process efficiency, and especially with teams like us that are quite nimble, it will help us prioritise some of those things from a B to B perspective.

The other thing that I’ve seen from a channel perspective and content is video. The video’s just gone up. I mean, our results with video are staggering, and I’m always kind of really surprised and pleasantly surprised at how well that’s doing. And it wasn’t necessarily part of our channel strategy two years ago, but it definitely is now, and because I think we’ve suffered in B to B marketing as the boring guys or the niche guys, or the whatever, you know, B to B is half the economy, and I think that we haven’t done ourselves the best justice when it comes to creative storytelling. Watch this space. It will be the B2B decade because I’m now starting to see real creativity in that space.

If you could describe the role of the CMO in one word, what would that word be and why?

They’re an alchemist, aren’t they? Let’s face it: it’s the mix of science and creativity, problem-solving creatively. It’s the emotional connection to the customer. It’s taking calculated risks and experimenting. You know, I’m constantly pivoting tactics, and I’m pretty sure that Chief Marketing Officers are as well. They bring that kind of holistic integration with the 4Ps and that kind of learning from the data.

Like I said, the scientific aspect of it, if you like, is to bring better business outcomes. And I think the really, the thing that underpins the alchemy is that storytelling piece. You know, they’ve got to be great at articulating what they do and bringing that generation of marketers behind them and their organisation. So, ‘Alchemist’ is the word that I would use.

What career advice would you give to other upcoming marketing leaders across your career?

You’ll be given lots of different advice. And I think the one that’s always really stuck with me, and it’s one that I always talk about, is to have courage in your conviction. You know, we have so many obstacles thrown at us, and I think if you’re able to articulate your ‘why,’ then you’re absolutely winning. So, have courage in your conviction. Don’t let the ‘no’ sidetrack you, and you know, think, ‘Oh, why?’ Let that fuel your passion. And then have courage in the thing that you want to get to. And I feel that that will help any marketer, or anyone really, in whatever role they’re in.