Implementing AI effectively with Rightmove CMO Matt Bushby

0:10Molly Innes: Hello and welcome back to the Marketing Week podcast. I'm Molly Innes, Working Careers Editor and Podcast Lead at Marketing Week. And today we're coming to you live from Festival of Marketing. Our guest today is Matt Bushby. Matt is the Chief Marketing Officer at Rightmove, the UK's leading property platform. Before joining the brand, he spent over five years in marketing leadership at Just Eat, overseeing a period of rapid growth for the brand as he's doing at Rightmove. So you joined Rightmove in 2022. So you're four years in. I know you've been doing a lot of work around innovation, AI, so much.

0:41Molly Innes: I know you've spoken to a few of my colleagues before about a lot of this work. Can we start with the AI approach from Rightmove? Does that feel like a good place to start? I know you've been doing a lot of work around that. Rightmove is a funny business because lots of people feel very familiar with Rightmove. People use it to buy in the house, people use it to buy in their neighbour's kitchen, to look at what a 10 million pound mansion looks like inside. There's lots of different... Are you chucking my way from my internet history? Watching your internet history. But actually as a business, it's not that well understood.

1:11So it's the number one property board in the UK. We are in the FTSE 250. We have about 2.6 billion visits every year. and about 80 % of those come direct. So it's a brand that's kind of a case study brand in a lot of ways in the way in which consumers think of ride move almost before anything else when they think of property. So that's quite helpful when we think about sub-framing AI in particular. So we've kind of let into it. We've invested in Mometh City probably about a year ago and really talked through the fact we wanted to invest quite significantly. So invest about£60 million and see what we do with our own technology, how we build services for our consumers, but for our partners as well.

1:56So Rightmove is a proper marketplace business. It's got a load of consumers on one side and a load of estate agents, our partners on the other side. And lots of those are small, medium enterprises. So we're trying to help them to run their businesses. So we've invested a lot on both sides of it. So from a consumer point of view, it's about helping people in their home within journey. So we've launched a platform called Ask Rightmove and that's everything from sort of conversational search to the top of the funnel all the way through so when you're actually looking at property, understanding, well, what's the area like?

2:28Where's the nearest supermarket? Where is the nearest pub? Have there been any planning applications on this particular thing? So you start to have a deeper relationship with our brand but also with the properties you're looking at. And we've looked at various other things. We've launched various other platforms including helping people like me who fundamentally lack any sense of imagination when they walk into a house with using AI to start that house. So actually with a swipe you can change the decor in the front room and you can make it your own, you can make it miniverse, you can make it country chic, you can do whatever you want to do.

3:03So we're trying to make that consumer experience a more seamless one. On the partner side it's just really providing tools that help people run their business. So we're helping them to do a lot with their telephony. So actually when there's lots of incoming calls, how do they understand what sentiment to those is, where there's opportunities for them to do more as a business. But also when they're getting lots and lots of information about the house viewings, sentiment around those viewings, where the market's going, what we're creating, are effectively AI overviews for each one of those, which makes our partner's lives a lot easier.

3:39So we're in the early stages, but we've really focused in on how do we solve problems for both sides of our marketplace using AI and really coming up first with what's the business problem, what's the challenge we're trying to solve for, and then how does technology help us to solve that?

3:55Molly Innes: It's really interesting. You said 60 million, is that right? You saw 60 million around the AI. Also, that's a huge amount of money to be investing in sort of anything. with that is that coming you know is that sort of across the business of specifically within I guess like wider marketing division what's the so it's primarily uh going into our products and technology side of the business so actually how do we build stuff but increasingly we're thinking about ways from a marketing point of view which are really around how we help to enable our teams and I think that's probably something that's worth mentioning that across rhyming of our focus is very much on how do we enable people how does the technology enable people to get stuff out in their way and to give them the tools that enables them to sell problems or think creatively so a lot of the investment has gone into the product tech side but from a marketing perspective we've really thought about how do we really go through three different lenses either that we want to do things more efficiently?

5:01Do we want to do the greater scale? Or we want to do things or enables, it enables us to do things that we couldn't have ever let us done. So I guess a couple of examples have been in the production side of the business. We're not big performance marketing spenders. So some of the early use cases for AI scaling don't necessarily apply to us. But we thought really about how our workflows were going to have to be affected. And we really only learn that by doing stuff and we we have done some stuff that's worked and i'll chat about that in a second we've done some stuff that's fundamentally failed as well we tried to do ai avatars for we thought it'd be a great thing to do with our partners because we thought it would enable us to really enrich the content to have these sort of people who were going to be able to present a lot of the content that we wouldn't be able to do otherwise because of the cost and the scale involved in doing that we had two problems one of which we really struggled to control these avatars.

5:59So I had my CEO, I couldn't get into my car. I had a head upon marketing, his eyebrows just started to wipe across her face. So the technology was always a bit of a challenge. But then actually, we got to the portal, we tested a few, we realised that our partners didn't want them. They were, it sort of impacted the trust that they had in the business because the kind of the perception was that we were doing things that were replacing people in the process and actually as a brand our trust and the way in which both our consumers and our partners feel about the brand and the trust they have in the brand is so important and i think it's a really good use case where we've got the technology to work but then actually that the underlying reason we did it in the first place that turned out not to not to bear fruit so we've definitely screwed a load of stuff up which is useful because it helps you to work out what you're going to do next and what you shouldn't do next in fact some of the stuff that has worked we did a invested quite a lot in our most recent tv campaign and think about how we use ai to help us to do more there so we've got more stuff we want to talk about but our multi-budget isn't getting any bigger as is the case with lots of people so we had to think about how we could change our production process to create tv or video assets all different types that we're going to enable our campaigns to tell that story.

7:24So we really let into it. We tried to, we tried a lot of different things. We realised pretty early on that some of our processes weren't going to work in this new world. So when we were creating certain things from scratch with AI, actually storyboarding is a good example of where actually we were able to do that in a more live way. We were able to create almost video scams that helped us to do that. So we were kind of taking elements out of the production process that was enabled by the technology um so that gave us some real efficiency and some speed up front but it also meant that we were working with our agencies in different ways and we were less of those big set piece moment we've tried as much as we can to think about how it helps us to solve genuine sort of strategic business problems so interesting

8:13Molly Innes: and obviously you know a lot to to go into with everything you've just said there so to go back to the AI avatars things I think obviously that's a really great example of I guess testing and learning in action and there's more a question for me around how you move on from an idea that your team and yourself can be really invested in you know you spent time on something it doesn't have to specifically be the avatars but you know as a marketing leader in a business leader you know dedicate time to something it doesn't work I don't know I feel like you get quite attached to things i don't know maybe that's just me but like i find it really hard you know something doesn't work it's really hard to move on from sometimes and how do you instill that in your team i think it's a culture you said to the team and i think people talk a lot about fail fast test and learn but the reality is you've got to set yourself up in a way that i think enables people to try things enables people to fail those things and then as long as you're learning what it was that meant that that thing failed and then you then applying that further forward.

9:15I think that creates the right culture, but you have really got to live it. I think there is, it's so easy to say it, but then it's so easy to jump on something that hasn't worked. Actually, what you've got to do is create that culture in your team and enable that culture in the team. The challenge as a leader is you've also got to work that up the organisation because you might have made an investment or you might have itched something pretty hard that you were going to do and you felt as though it's going to deliver outcomes and business and sometimes it doesn't work and actually that culture can't just live in marketing that culture's got to be one that you view across the organization and I think I've been very lucky that certainly across our leadership team across our exec team at Runtmove but similarly was also the case in a number of times during my time at JustE you were able to do that you were able to do it quickly you were able to bring stuff to market, you had to think about what the sensible stage gates were.

10:15You couldn't just chuck the kitchen sink at everything and then for it to go wrong. But actually, if you gave people the opportunity to try to, what you tended to find is they pushed themselves further, you'd even ask them to. And that was because they felt enabled and empowered to take a few more risks and that they wouldn't get, the world wouldn't come down around their ears, but it went a little wrong.

10:40Molly Innes: and I guess on the I guess in the team area as well and obviously going back to again what you're saying around processes in your first answer and how those are sort of developing and in changes there because I feel like process it's not something we always talk about but it's like so integral to how anything works it feels like a very obvious statement from me that you know if you don't do that and we what we've sort of been thinking about is how do we how do we set the team up and how do we set the processes up to enable us to do things in the future and the reality is in the case of AI but technology in general there's a lot of stuff that is that you can't do at the moment and the technology is going to move quickly and it's going to change but actually how do you set your processes up how do you set your workflows up so they are ready to be able to scale when the technology can do it because I think if you wait for that to happen sometimes the process is the thing that slows you down rather than the technology so we've thought about actually how do we bring a lot more visibility production's a good example how do we actually create a more singular view of everything that we're producing as a function we've got b2b b2c we've got all the various different parts of our sort of content and pr function we create quite a lot of content and we had to a certain extent been producing that in silo what we've tried to do is to kind of bring that together with a single view of all of it and that then means you could be a bit more agnostic about how you create that content so you could see it all and you can set processes up then you can think about the best way of producing that content underneath it so we've done quite a lot of that but also outside of the production side of things we are a high margin business we are we are the highest margin business in the footsie 250 so it means that we are often cases not not just able to sort of open the checkbook and spend other money on things so an example might be in our research team where we have about twice as much research that sits within my team that we're being asked to do more insight than the business ones They thought it was brilliant, but we aren't interested to hire any more researchers.

12:52So what we've done is effectively built a system of AI agents that help people to self-serve. So it helps them to write the questionnaires, helps them to run them with panels, helps them to pull the insight out, and then helps them to create a sort of a presentation of that. Would that be a written presentation or would that be a deck? and eventually probably will even end up being video contents as well. It means that we can enable the business. It means that the business can self-serve and it means that we can deliver even more, but it works within a high-margin business like ours.

13:28Molly Innes: I think we published a story recently which was about the percentage of marketers that are using AI day-to-day from the World Federation of Advertisers. I think it was something like 96%, although I bet it was 100%. like surely at this point like because it's in every it's not just obviously chatbots you know as you say there's so many use cases but we also identified in our um 2026 current salary survey like quite a big skills gap around ai and it not quite i guess people's capability to use the tech versus the expectation on them what they should be putting out with it wasn't quite matching up basically and i wonder what work if you're going to hear about the work you've done in terms of you know upskilling around AI like driving capability whether there are I know you mentioned there are you know not able to add loads of new research roles to the you know what what we're expecting from research in the business but any new roles you've added that kind of thing so I think I find it really interesting there are some cases where we have hired for AI capability and we've hired a data engineer which is the first we hired it into our data team which doesn't sit within marketing, but they are solely dedicated to marketing.

14:40So there are some very specific AI hires that we've made. We've done the things that a lot of organisations would have done. So we've invested in sort of AI literacy, AI training. We've invested in the tools that we get people. It's no good giving them training without giving them the tools to actually execute on that. But actually one of the big things, and we're seeing this, is that everybody gets the same training. everybody gets the same um enablement but you really it's the curiosity and the want to learn the want to test that really is highlighting those people who are driving it forward in our function so there's always going to be people who are moving at different paces and people doing different things in different areas but that mindset of i'm going to learn this i'm going to understand it i'm going to try it and get back to our conversation around being enabled and being able to fail and on the deuce, but within that, the research agents we talked about before have been created by people in the team.

15:40We've created a marketing writer, which acts as a kind of a system with fully armed with a brand book with various different pieces of comms that we've tested and run very well. And that has been rolled out across the marketing team, but it's now been rolled out across our CX team, rolled out across our sales team as well. So actually, those people that are really lent in and those people that have wanted to learn, it's been a mindset thing as much as it's a skill set thing. And we held with Google and spent time with them creating agents. And so we try to give people, as I say, the tools. But a huge amount of it comes down to, are people really feeling as though there's an opportunity here?

16:25Are they excited about the opportunity to learn?

16:28Molly Innes: I think that point you said around the mindset shift as well as the skills shift, and you can sometimes forget that it's bringing all of it along and not just the skills thing. I think so, and I think the reality is that nobody, the idea that you hire a 10-year, 10-year AI expert is rubbish, because the technology is changing and emerging and growing so much that, yes, there are people now who have really grown up here, the people who've got that depth of understanding, But we are growing up with this technology and actually the opportunity is to enable our people to do that. We do definitely, when we think about hiring, think about actually what does that mindset look like when we're hiring into content roles, for example.

17:13we might be looking at slightly different scoop sets or we might be looking at people who've got a different type of production experience or potentially thinking about how they write for the llms as much as for anything else so that there are some changes in the way we hire and

17:29Molly Innes: i want to tell you about to i guess what we started on as well in terms of the i guess ubiquity or right move like it's a massive i think i refer to it as a uk's leading property platform is what i said and I know you sort of referred to it as um sort of leading property portal I know you've been doing work around I guess driving awareness right move beyond just sort of like the house listings and the work there and the brand platform you have and so on but how's how's that going sounds like a really basic question but it's strange because the job of marketing at right move is not to really build awareness of right move as a brand we have 90 plus percent awareness and a prompted awareness.

18:08It's more giving people that breadth of understanding about what the business can do and the tools that we bring. And actually what we want to do is play a bigger role in the housing market for our consumers or for our partners. We describe this relevance of scale, which what we're trying to do is to make sure that we are playing that role. Because the reality is moving house is quite difficult. there's a lot of different stages to it it's currently taking way too long this country it takes longer to move than almost any other country in the developer world it takes a few five months on average and in sweden or in the us it's half that so there's a lot of manual stuff that goes on in the housing market if you combine that with the fact that it is a difficult time in the market generally it's a difficult time for our partners it's a difficult time for consumers if you're a first-time buyer it's an even more difficult time at the moment and there's some government legislation coming down the line that we hope it's going to help with that but our role as a brand is as much to drive I think awareness of what we do as much as it is to enable and educate and equip our consumers because and and we we've sort of seen this play out in the way in which we've thought about social media in particular and we we've thought about actually how that we, how do we work with people who can genuinely bring information, understanding to areas that whereby there is fundamental misinformation but there's also just a lack of understanding.

19:42We've done that in any number of ways from partnering with creators who are going through their moving journeys and sort of helping to show the tools that they use to do that and get through some of the sort of the bumps in the road there. We've done Get Ready With Me, Stamp Duty Explainers. We've tried lots of different formats in lots of different places to try to demystify some of the things that happen in the housing market and to try to show actually how our tools can help people go through that. And I think that's the challenge is that there's lot of content around homes around moving and around housing that exists on social media and in the internet as a whole but actually as a brand our trust and reputation that we've built but also the breadth of data that we've got as well means that we can genuinely help that home moving journey for people yeah because I think people are so interested like just so deeply because obviously

20:42Molly Innes: it's a really personal thing isn't it housing where you live where you're moving to and so on but I think it's interesting what you're saying around you know you've got a lot of data you're doing the call you're obviously partnering people on their channels but also doing the work on on right moves because I guess owning that content stream as well and it's the importance of it I was also just thinking then that's probably probably this will get cut but there's a guy who um don't even see him on tiktok he um he like posts like you know like really wacky houses you get on right move like you're like oh that looks like a normal house and you go in there's like a lion or something in there and that kind of thing.

21:17The biggest property channel on Reddit is as seen on Rhymu and it has nothing to do with us whatsoever.

21:25Molly Innes: It's just brilliant for you. It's an organic community of people who just post weird and wonderful things. Somebody painted their entire house in a Disney thing. So the living room was Aladdin the thing. And then, and this sort of moved all the way through the house. Of course, of course, he said, as to when that's for you or not. But it's brilliant because what you've got is a community of people who are on the platform and some of the time just showing that this is an amazing house, this is an amazing flat. Some of the time showing some of the quirkiest stuff that exists out there, but that's all organic and that's a community.

22:04And we've kind of lent into that in certain places. So we've just done a campaign called Rightmove versus Now. And that, again, wasn't started by us. That was started organically with people just showing the before and after shots of their houses. So their Rightmove listing shots versus what they've done to the house. And we've kind of worked with creators to build that into sort of bigger content pieces. But it shows the resonance that the brand has. And part of our job is not to get in the way of that. it's actually to amplify that and to give a platform for that as well yeah i think it's

22:39Molly Innes: been so interesting you know working and sort of you know being a leader a brand a brand which is really well liked and people have a lot of respect for but also in a sector which people have so many like you're saying how long it takes in the uk to move house like i don't know if there's like a not a conflict there but i don't know i've not really formed a question around it but i think it's an interesting contrast almost like the brand itself versus perceptions of the the wider bit i think there's an opportunity maybe even a responsibility for us to to use that trust and that awareness to help that process and i think that's something that we're doing in the consumer space it's something we're working with our partners on to sort of build awareness reputation the job that estate agents do it's something we're also doing increasing in the government as well to make sure that some of the challenges, but also some of the opportunities are well understood.

23:35So we think there is a big opportunity for us to play to those areas. It is a market that has its nuances and it has its challenges. It is way too long to move. We think there's a big opportunity for that to be digitised and we think there's a huge opportunity for all of the things that currently live in filing cabinets or obscure offline processes to bring that together, that could change pretty fundamentally the way this country moves. And I think that plays not just to us as a business, but it plays to the wider UK economies.

24:12Molly Innes: We are very nearly at time, but I wanted to, if I'll take it wider around, I don't know, it's getting a little bit philosophical here, but looking at, I guess, the role of marketing leadership today, obviously, it's changed. you mentioned a few of the challenges there you know high high margin business you know marketers across the board trying to get budgets and so on but for you like what is the like the job of the job of an effective cmo or what you know the role of marketing leadership how does that come through for you i think the role as a marketing leader fundamentally is to understand what the business is trying to achieve what the business is trying to deliver and how marketing could be a driving force at doing that because if it's not that if marketing isn't driving growth in a business if marketing isn't being seen as something that is a fundamental agent of growth across across what we do then pretty quickly we lose currency in any business and I think as a marketing leader our job is to make sure that we well understand what the business is trying to achieve that we understand how marketing can approach that we make sure that the way we set our teams up and the way in which we operate helps to deliver that and then really to advocate for what great marketing can do and great marketing grows business great marketing delivers delivers outside growth in a ton of different markets and so if we as marketing leaders can demonstrate that and show that and also grow teams that believe that as well what you start to see is the value that it's just a more interesting job to do fundamentally when you're there but also what I think we start to do is to grow a function that is as we think about marketing leads as they're coming up and through they're commercial readers they're people who are at the heart of the assist rather than just the people that do the advertising and there's not so the advertising is incredibly important but it needs to be the fundamental enabler of growth and of commercial outcomes as well.

26:13Molly Innes: Yeah definitely it reminds me of something I was speaking to Becky Moffitt from HSBC I think actually at this event last year and she was saying you know it's not marketing leadership it is it's leadership like it reaches all corners of the business it's important you know. So much change going on at the moment that part of our job is to try to navigate that and to sort of help people get comfortable with ambiguity um there isn't a huge amount of certainty at the moment so actually if people could fly in that environment they would go a very very long way in their careers so he's trying to build that resilience and trying to build that flexibility in in the teams in the future as well amazing i think that's a lovely note to end on so thank you matt so much for coming on to the podcast pleasure thanks for having me