Motorway CMO Naomi Walkland on leaning into change

0:10Hello 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 the Festival of Marketing. Our guest today is Naomi Walkland. Naomi's career has touched most corners of the marketing and advertising ecosystem. she began her career in PR before moving agency side in advertising she's also been a brand consultant and spent almost six years at Bumble rising to VP of International Marketing before joining Motorways at CMO in 2024. Amongst that extensive list she's also found the time to be an advisor, investor and a non-executive director of the Marketing Society she's also one of our 2026 top 100 marketers.

0:49So thrilled to have you join Naomi thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. I feel like there's so much we could go into in quite a short you know space of time but I think we'll probably start with your career because you've gone in so many sort of different directions and I wondered is there a sort of thread throughout like um you know what's the driving force behind your career moves? Yes so I I share this but I studied anthropology at university and I share it gives a little bit of context to my passions and what I'm interested in but I was always really fascinated by people and society and cultures and that really was what kind of sparked my interest in getting into PR and communications and advertising and just the role that marketing can play in consumers lives that's been a bit of a red thread but actually just before this I was speaking to somebody and they said oh wow you've done a lot of different industries you know dating is very different to automotive um I've worked in Luchy Lifestyle I've worked for consumer brands and so forth but what I'm really motivated by and it's been the red thread has been transformation and really working with businesses at key inflection points so when I joined Bumble as one of the first 50 people of the company globally and that was a big journey around making dating apps relevant you know there's a time when people were a bit embarrassed to say they met on dating app I proudly say that I met my husband on Bumble but it was a lot about how do we transform this industry and similarly at motorway i was really excited because automotive actually plays such a huge part in people's lives like cars are the second biggest asset that many people own and i could see there was just so much that we could do to disrupt that industry drive a lot of relevance and again have that transformation brief so i'm really motivated by how we can how businesses can thrive and grow and how marketing can transform them yeah amazing and i guess actually if we go as you mentioned there studying anthropology if we go back to sort of those those early years around you know university first roles could you tell us a little bit more around obviously I mean I know anthropology is but sort of moving into that sector was that a very intentional sort of move from you like when you sort of went into PR and communications did you have an eye to I don't know one day I want to be a CMO or one day I want to be a brand side marketer or did that sort of develop yeah I think um it you know for a long time like growing up somebody asked me what I wanted to be as a child as I just want to work in business I didn't really know what that meant um but as I got into university and you know I studied anthropology I did other modules and other degrees in politics I was just quite interested around communications and marketing as an industry I didn't have a specific goal at the time of wanting to be a CMO but I knew that I wanted to work in that industry and I was passionate about it so I was very intentional so they're doing internships and I started my first job on a graduate placement as well so I was very intentional about going into that role but at least for the the first part of my career as you kind of broke it out it was an agency world so a lot of what I was thinking around was how do I grow how do I become an MD or some thought in that agency world and it was really through my consulting my own business Bumble became a client and that's how I started to get that interest in moving client side from there yeah because I think one of the things you know I speak to a lot of marketers and people who work in ad agencies and you know sort of all you know as I mentioned they're all colors but sort of so many aspects of the industry and one of the sort of recurring themes is always you know people wanting to move from agency side to a brand or maybe the other way around or you know take different directions within the wider industry and I guess finding that quite challenging or feeling like there are a lot of you know barriers to making those pivots I know lots of people have done it really successfully I just wonder if you know for anyone listening who is wanting to maybe change tact within within the industry what would you say to that person like obviously you know these things change and evolve but you know in terms of making those moves and the stuff you should be doing really I think everyone has a unique story and offering to bring and as I said I've moved lots of different industries some in-house to client side and vice versa and I think one thing that I've really honed in is bringing that outsider perspective and I think agency to client side you bring a new perspective I think working agency you really truly understand what the client needs you have that breadth of clients you can see what's working for one business another industry to another as well so really work on what's that unique perspective that you're going to bring um during my time at bumble and also at motorway i've got a number of people on my team who've got agency experience and client side and that's really worked well because one we make really good partners to our agencies because we understand and we've been on the other side no one wants to be a awful client um but we also understand what they're going through and then connecting that to the business outcomes and so I think that really is a strength so I do have a bit of a slight bias to those who've had a bit of agency experience as well because I do think that leads to really great work and fundamentally we need strong partnership marketing is a partnership sport and so all of that experience helps yeah amazing and I mean we'll come on you know to talk more about motorway and all the brilliant things you're doing there I just wondered a question around you mentioned obviously Bumble were a client of yours when you were consulting what was it about the brand I know you've mentioned you know less than 50 people when you joined and that really exciting scale-up stage but what convinced you to go actually I'm going to go all in and work for one company rather than sort of consult for a few different ones I think there was a couple of things one when Bumble launched it was at the the cultural context at the time was that kind of post me too era there was a lot happening around women empowerment and Bumble was part of that cultural conversation you know the app was designed to empower women and to help women in all aspects of their lives dating business and friendship so there was a personal level of I really believe in this mission and then there was also the business growth potential of around at the time when I joined Bumble was really popular in the US it was starting to get popularity in the UK and I could see the potential of the scale of what that could be and it just I think it was the personal and professional which just aligned I was at a season where I loved having my own business but I also wanted to kind of put that energy into one business and one brand and then there was also just the kind of the great opportunity of being part of Bumble and there's that Sheryl Sandberg quote which gets used a lot where if you get an opportunity to join a rocket ship don't ask what seat and I think that was very much my journey um with Bumble yeah I love that quote that's brilliant and then obviously moving to now so you joined Motorway in 2024 so around like you know two and a bit years ago and we'll go into I mean I've got a list here of like loads of stats and all the different things you've been doing if we go back to that you know back to 2024 when you were sort of considering that career move what sort of drove you to it but also what was the brief you were set out to do and then we'll get into I think there's lots of great results from it so there was that you know I approach career decisions through different lenses around you know one is as I said around like the business and the industry how's the business performing um also growth potential for myself is there an area where I can actually grow and can I contribute and add value what are the people like and then financially is this a good move you have to think about all those aspects I think it's really naive to just say it's just the mission I'm really proud about that I'm really excited like it has to work for you in all aspects of your life and I was really excited after motorways founder-led business but spending time with the founders and hearing their story around the fact that they really want to change the way that car selling and buying is done they're fundamentally disrupting an industry it's a technology business I'm really passionate about technology and what that can do for customers and so it was all of those things combined where I thought this is a really exciting opportunity and the brief that I was set out to do was really to one transform marketing into truly being a growth engine and what I mean by that is really making sure that marketing was a commercial driver and people were clear on the role that marketing played and helping the business grow and scale the other part was helping reposition brands so when I joined motorway turn 10 this year so it was getting towards its kind of first decade and the industry had changed so when they launched they had no competitors but they now have competitors a lot changed macro and macro standards so what does motorway mean today so it's a big repositioning exercise and then also building and scaling the marketing team so those are all the things that I really enjoyed and that's been the brief since I started yeah amazing and I think as you're saying there around you know at the start a few competitors in the industry now you know a lot more like you read a lot around like the what does it say like the first mover disadvantage almost so that you know because then you know you're leading the way almost with a brand and then people can sort of come in and do a similar thing or iterate how do you because obviously as we'll get on to I mean the 2025 financial results for the business you know 18 % revenue grow things seem to be going really well to maintain that position over a decade it's quite hard hard thing to do really what is it about the business that sort of makes it a that sounds like a silly question why is the business able to do it but that sort of vibe I think it goes down to like fundamentals around um one is really making sure we are focused on our customer and so everything that we do and one of the things I've loved about motorway is just it's a very customer-centric business and a lot of businesses say that but then when push gets to shove that's not normally the case but everything we're focused on is making sure that we are delivering a great experience for people selling their car and our network of dealers buying our car so we are double-sided marketplace and so I think having that customer-centric view means that all of our roadmaps from our marketing to our product to our sales is all focused on making sure we're delivering a great customer experience and I think that really does help us stand out on the marketing and brand perspective we've been really clear on what we do and so a lot of our competitors do a lot and I think one of the things of marketing often is one of the things I encourage a lot of people is like marketing needs to almost be about constraints like we need to be really clear on like what do we do as a platform and a service and so we've been very clear that we are just about selling your car that is all we want to do we want to sell your car to a network of our dealerships as well and I think having that clarity around who we are has helped us in driving a lot of distinction around our offering as well and also clear to customers that we are just this so I think that's all compounded over the last couple of years yeah it's brilliant and with that work I know sort of the brand platform you introduced so it's not much like it's motorway and I know you spoke to my colleagues about the successes of the platform so you know we have here you know after the launch of it you know brand awareness in the UK sort of hit 56 percent could you tell us more about the brand platform the results you've seen from it and you know why it's powerful to be doing this over the long term yes absolutely I'll start with a bit of context so we as I said we wanted to really make sure you're clear on our positioning and how we could stand out in the market and this wasn't just a marketing exercise I'm always really clear like brand is the sum of all parts of the company this is not just a marketing team kind of doing a brand strategy in isolation so when I joined and with the team a key thing for us was around how do we bring all stakeholders involved in the brand strategy and defining that so that was a key part bringing everyone from customer experience to product to sales everyone had a right in who are we as a brand where do we want to stand up on and as going through that process we really realized that what makes us unique is our service it's our technology it's our innovation and we likened our personality a little bit to kind of like a magician so our archetype is this bold magician and that really inspired the platform of it's not magic it's motorway so really that's around you know it feels like magic but it's not it's our seamless platform helping you sell your car very effortlessly and that platform rolled out both internally through all of our touch points to how our customer experience team interact with our customers to how our sales team interact with our dealers and then externally it came to life through a new campaign that we worked on with uncommon which brought that to life but through a through full funnel marketing campaign as well so this wasn't just brand investment this was really throughout the funnel how we thought about it as well so how we can disrupt to kind of land this platform but what we called our kind of mid-funnel layers like demystify how do we start to unpack the role that motorway plays and then obviously our kind of demand generation side as well so as you spoke about we had all-time brand awareness we also saw great new customer growth as well and then ultimately played a part in helping the business kind of drive that great revenue growth that we're seeing that double digit growth as well and it was really important to me that one we measured everything through the funnel so we weren't just looking solely at brand metrics but we were looking at all those signals to make sure that our brand investments working but also making sure that we're hitting that short-term delivery goals as well.

14:24I think it's brilliant I think what you're saying there and just to reiterate that as well around the internal marketing of it the internal you know working with all the different functions getting it joined up you know convincing both that you say stakeholders but also you know people who work for the brand they might not work in marketing or you know in any of these functions but taking them on the journey because we see all the time you know brand platforms launch and it's just it's just an advertising yeah it's not that's not just it and i think i'm really passionate about this because your brand because customer doesn't know the difference between that's your crm team and that's your brand team or that's a customer service person they're speaking to every interaction is your brand and so you really need to make sure that runs through the company and that takes time and I think one of the things that we did was really make sure we understood and also educated internally around the importance of teams being part of it and supporting on this rollout as well yeah absolutely and you mentioned as well um growing the team and adding you know either making changes adding roles obviously you know marketing you know continuously evolves but fundamentals remain the same could you explain to us around what sort of marketing function was like when when you joined the brand and what you have added in terms of capability and skills and obviously those sort of two separate things as well and you know and this is not unique to me to it like quite a lot of teams that i've inherited have been very siloed so in one previous company i started and i said can someone send me the marketing plan I got about 20 plans back there was no unified marketing plan and everyone was really working in silo and so one of the things that I've worked on and you know with the leadership team joining as well is how do we make sure we operate as a full funnel marketing system one unified plan around shared jobs to be done shared outcomes and that takes time because that's also a behavioral cultural part and making sure that people feel accountable to delivering those shared goals and so a lot of that's been how we work together how we plan together how we measure our goals together to make sure that they're shared and also introducing a lot of new capabilities so one of the functions that I've had in quite a few of my organizations is integrated marketing which is a new capability to make sure that we are the name is in it but integrated and truly making sure we have integrated plans as well and one opportunity that I spotted at motorway which we didn't have was product marketing so we do a lot of innovation but we just needed to make sure that we were telling that story effectively so we built that capability up as well similarly um with the world as you said is changing um llm aeo is such a big part rather than kind of limiting that to one team we've got a squad system so for some of our activity we bring squads together around key kind of capabilities we want to build as well so it's been adding a lot more agility but also making sure that we fill up one team and unified goals and sometimes that's a forcing function where you know if we're planning something i'll say i don't want to see that separate goals let's have it one unified plan and i'll also encourage other team members who may not own or work on that function to talk about it collectively because it just brings that shared understanding that we are all one team and we all need to deliver against those goals i think it's brilliant and I wonder as well around you know because I think the squad thing's so interesting you mentioned we spoke to Ellie Norman from from URI last year and she spoke about a similar thing in terms of you know introducing squad-based working and the changes that brings but also not necessarily having to convince people who already work there that it's a good thing but also maybe sometimes doing a bit of that and you know because change can can be really scary yeah and I think sometimes you know we're all this is all of us but we're so governed by our titles and things and squads actually you know kind of remove a lot of hierarchy around it's like we're all just coming around shared outcomes and so it does take time to adjust but it also unlocks a lot of new opportunity because you could have someone who's day-to-day since CRM they've joined a squad they've been able to bring those capabilities but they've added a new fresh perspective to LLM acquisition for example as well so we are really moving into that squad model and we have that at company level but also in the marketing team as well amazing and I wanted to ask sort of switching gears a little bit but um around I guess sports sponsorship so I report on sports as well at my team as well as all the working career stuff but um obviously you've got the partnership with TNT sports it would be great to hear a bit around I guess it seems like an obvious question really but I know you know why why do the partnership why why go into the area how's how's it working for you obviously you know we've mentioned the revenue growth and those are really great signals already from that work but yeah can you tell us a bit more about that sports has been something even prior to me joining has been part of motorways dna and it's an area where our customers really index into but also has done really great for business great for the business as well so tnt is what we've done now but we've other we've done a lot of other sponsorships in the past with motorway being quite a low interest category and people are not thinking about selling their car every day like they maybe are thinking about dating or maybe going on that there's not that instant interaction so one of the things that we're always trying to do is drive as much familiarity before intent so when you're ready to sell your car motorways in your mind and tnt is a fantastic sponsor for us because we sponsor the premier league there are so many games so people are seeing motorway there's that repetition so many times and it's one of our best performing partnerships and activations even looking at our conometrics even looking at our own attribution and it is that familiarity it's that consistency and we have renewed that partnership a couple of times there's something around compounding and not thinking about it in the short term but I think one thing which has also worked is we've not just relied on the partnership we've brought it to life so we've had social extensions influence extensions we're kind of sweating our assets to really make sure that's really effective for us but I think also you know with the world that it is and customers and how we think at media channels sports is something where a lot of people tune in and they come together and they watch that live moment and so for us that's just a really good way for us to bring the brand in that visibility to us as well so it's an area which we'll continue to invest in and even for the world cup which happened we had a lot of media during that time as well but we did an activation with david seaman so these are areas which our audience are really passionate about so we want to make sure we're showing up in areas which are going to resonate for them yeah brilliant and i think one of the things i always found really interesting with sports marketing too is and obviously you mentioned new in the deal and different partnerships motos done in the past but they really stick even after a brand sort of stops the brand i still get asked about some of the others and i was like i wasn't even here when we were here but it was really great i'm glad you love laurence d 'ally just like the infinity just it just holds like when i always think about it's like vodafone and man united it's like people still think they're the sponsor yeah 20 years or something but no i think it's really interesting and i wanted to end by i guess a few questions around marketing leadership and the role it has today obviously you know there's so much going on in the industry there can be a lot of internal noise and you know you're one of the cmos you know really leading the way didn't brilliant brilliant work what's your i don't have leadership style is the right kind of question but sort of yeah how how do you approach the role of being a cmo i guess what does that mean to you because that sounds like welcome to whatever that shows culture what does it mean to me no um i no i um yes i how do i approach the role of cmo and the change there's lots of change and I it's interesting I was speaking to a few peers and people in institutes before this but there is a lot of change but it's really exciting and I know there's a lot of doom and gloom around lots of things and but there is a lot of excitement and I do think that marketing has a really unique advantage to be at the kind of heart of it like we are so connected to every part of the business that we can be that driving force how do I approach the role as the CMO I really kind of see myself a little bit more as a general manager I think that kind of commercial outcome to I take full accountability of that function I want to make sure we're driving growth I want to be the voice of the customer I want to leverage all the private experiences I have to bring that outside unique perspective as well to the to the exec and the the boardroom so to say um but I'm excited like I feel very excited around the change and you know last year everyone was so worried around LLMs and the role that's going to do now that's a new capability like there's teams around that I think we need to just lean into that and so in my team I really encourage a culture of innovation and bravery and create psychological safety to be able to do that as well so that's something which is really important to me but in terms of day-to-day leadership and marketing for me it's really just making sure that one we are the voice of the customer but two we connect every single piece of work that we do to driving business growth and the outcomes and have fun yeah it's a fun it's a fun industry we need to have a bit of fun as well exactly that's what it's all about that's a really uplifting note to end on thank you so much for coming on to the podcast Naomi thank you for having me