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Thomas Johnson, Senior Manager – Marketing Analytics and Brand Diagnostics, Molson Coors Beverage Company

Thomas Johnson, Senior Manager – Marketing Analytics and Brand Diagnostics, Molson Coors Beverage Company

What has been your career path to date?

In my current role I lead the marketing analytics function for Molson Coors UK, having joined the business two years ago to establish this new function and lead for brand diagnostics and the measurement and evaluation agenda. My objective being to improve the effectiveness of the marketing mix in the short and long term, driving profit ROI in tandem with sustainable brand growth.

Prior to this, I entered the world of work with a degree in Marketing from Loughborough University, having always been fascinated with the workings of consumer behaviour. And upon completion joined the retailer Boots as part of their commercial graduate scheme. Here I gained valuable experience in a variety of roles across category management, trading and sourcing. Learning key skills and behaviours that would go on to massively benefit my career in data, whilst most importantly getting to experience life as a stakeholder on the other side of data, understanding the perspective of my future audience.

Following this time, I moved to the commercial insights function within Boots UK, working across a variety of roles, eventually becoming senior analyst for some of the largest categories within the business, such as skincare and cosmetics, and for a time leading analytics for the ROI business unit.

Finally, within Boots moving on to manage a team of data analysts within the own brand focused consumer Insights team, using bespoke analytics to identify growth opportunities for our brands by leveraging the consumer data of the Boots loyalty card scheme.

What made you choose data as your career focus?

Working in the data industry hadn’t been my ambition during my days in academia, in truth I fell into the data industry. Thanks to the brilliant HR colleagues who I worked with early in my career, I was placed in a data-led role during my time on the Boots graduate scheme, with these colleagues having noticed that my natural strengths and preferences would fit well in the world of analytics.

However, it was only after my stint outside of data, working within sourcing that I found my way back. This role outside of data was one of my greatest learning experiences (and steepest learning curves). It taught me that what I truly enjoyed was being able to influence longer term thinking and strategy, problem solving business questions and using data to underpin recommendations. It was this realisation that led me back to finding a role within the data industry, from which I’ve not looked back since.

How aware were you of data as a career opportunity during your education or early work experience? Does this need to be heightened?

The importance of data in industry, and the acknowledgement of this, has only grown since my time in education. Whilst my degree was in Marketing, the importance of data had already started to seep through, with modules being run to teach important foundational principles and techniques across statistics and various software.

Where I see room for development is for education to give greater visibility of roles within data and insight, rather than data or analytics being used as a catch-all term. We are an industry with a great breadth of roles, requiring different skillsets, traits, and personalities to thrive in each. I think that more visibility of this spectrum, earlier in careers or during education would only help to increase the pipeline of future talent that we see coming into the industry.

What are your key areas of focus for data and analytics in 2022?

In 2022 I will be focusing on finding opportunities to streamline and link our existing data sources, building out better holistic insight. The overall ambition of the year is to understand the linkage between trends in our data and their impact on business performance, specifically validating the impact of marketing activity on short- and long-term brand effects. Taking what may be data tracking or individual data points and generating a clear “so what” for the business against these.

To this end, there will be further validation of methodologies and theories. Developing our data around creative quality, brand equity, test and learn and consumer research. Most importantly feeding these through to a new marketing mix modelling workstream that will tie these inputs together into an overarching output.

Tell us about any ambitions you have in terms of becoming a data leader.

When I joined Molson Coors in my current role, it was spurred by the prospect of coming into a newly created role, being able to build out a new function of marketing analytics and from this having the opportunity to truly add business value by providing data and insight that had never previously been used to inform business strategy and decision making.

These core motivations haven’t changed. In becoming a data leader, I want to be able to show the impact that data can have in driving business performance, influencing business stakeholders to help make better decisions underpinned by insight. Showcasing the importance of data beyond our industry, embedding data into the foundations of organisational processes and decision making.

What key skills or attributes do you consider will be essential your success in this role?

To simplify what success looks like for me, I would split this into two key areas: people and profit. A business cannot survive without these. For people, ensuring the wellbeing of my team but also empowering them in their day-to-day work and career development. Whilst also building strong stakeholder relationships, developing the trust required to influence decision making.

For profit, I believe that the analytics function constantly needs to showcase its worth to senior business stakeholders, showing the tangible benefits being delivered through our outputs and recommendations. Therefore, the most important skill that I see within my role, is the ability to translate data and insight into clear and actionable recommendations, which when implemented can be tracked to put a £ sign against their impact.

How did you develop – and continue to develop – your current skills or attributes?

The key thing to my own development has been to always maintain a sense of curiosity and to be open to feedback, then to act upon this through my own research or by reaching out to colleagues.

I’ve found it important to be self-aware of my motivations for learning. Personally, I hate to feel as though I lack knowledge in a subject when it is important to my work. This sense of pride is often my driver to go away and develop specific areas so that when the topic or skill arises again, I can be confident in my ability. This also helps me to be more efficient and directed in my learning, as we work in a reality where time for development is often pressured through other resource priorities.

How do you keep pace or stay in touch with your peer group? Do you see it as important to have an active professional network?

I have been lucky enough to have made friends in the industry who have gone on to have their own successful careers and become data leaders themselves. Keeping in touch with them from a personal and professional standpoint has helped me massively, providing a peer group with whom I can have open conversations about my career and ambitions, bounce ideas off when it comes to my work, and learn about what they are seeing in the industry and their own career paths. Without the guidance and support of these individuals, I would not be where I am today.

Thomas Johnson
has been included in:

Future Leaders 2022 (EMEA)

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