Gavin Horner, Head of Brand Strategy & Partnerships, NatWest Group

What was your first marketing role?

I joined Vauxhall Motors Marketing as an analyst in 1996. My first role was focussed on using geo-demographic profiling (Mosaic) to identify potential customer hotspots for the nationwide dealer network.

What was your first marketing role in FS?

I joined RBS in 2006 as a marketing manager within the Global Banking and Markets Business (investment bank). As an account management role, it involved supporting a number of areas, including coverage and various areas of financing, developing marketing strategies and plans, and overseeing their delivery in partnership with marketing operations and events.

What do you like about your current role?

The power of Brand is often under-appreciated in a sector that is traditionally product-led, including, in the wholesale space, intangible, complex offerings with long sales cycles and hard-to-reach senior audiences. Given that finances are at the heart of people’s lives, and can be a real force for good (think of enabling people to buy a house or start a business) I feel brand has a huge role to play and, within FS, marketers should see this as a gift and lead with a strong brand strategy that seeks to grow awareness, consideration and drive preference.

Can you explain a particular project you are proud to have worked on - in particular the challenge that was being addressed and the target audience?

I enjoy a challenge and over the last 18 months we’ve been overhauling our brand strategy at NatWest to widen our appeal and take the bank into a space where the brand resonates in a more emotional way with customers and takes the brand beyond being just an above-the-line (ATL) campaign to being something customers feel throughout the journey. It’s a long and transformational journey, but an exciting one. Lots more work to do here!

What were the results/solution? Any lessons learned?

The key lesson here is partnership with the business – sales, product and propositions in particular. While brand and marketing are often seen as campaign wrappers and instruments, they are clearly so much more. Ensuring that brand becomes a pervasive, lived experience by customers requires close collaboration across the bank to ensure the promise comes to life in product journeys and the service experience. Brand should touch all areas.

What does the future hold for financial marketing? What excites you about it?

Financial services are going through a digital revolution. There is a lot of change happening as the experiences people see and feel in their personal life (fuelled by AI, the evolution of the internet, mobile and APIs, for example) permeates into the more wholesale areas too. Clearly there is a lot of hype around AI and while some of the froth may come off, I believe there is long-term potential for marketing in helping us get to creative concepts more quickly, speedy testing with customers and in areas like copy writing. It's not easy to see the full longer-term impact yet but, at the moment, it feels much more of an opportunity than threat and the possibilities it affords makes this an exciting area.