MARKETING MIX: PROFILE; Degrees of sophistication

Lindsay Firth-McGuckin * Marketing Director * Henderson Administration

Is marketing suffering from a crisis of sexual identity? Is marketing in

fact a woman dressed up as a man? All bluster and aggression, its

outward forms are undeniably masculine - going on macho.

But as Lindsay Firth-McGuckin points out, ‘Marketing is about listening

to people and finding what turns them on,’ and these are traditionally

feminine attributes. An hour in her company convinces you that the best

metaphor for marketing is not military - ‘campaigns, strategies and

offensives,’ - but maternal - ‘creation, emotion, empowerment and

enablement’.

Not that she says so outright. As befits her non-confrontational style,

these are inferences not statements. But there are few better qualified

in the UK today to raise such an argument.

One of the very few marketers to successfully straddle the worlds of

academic and real-life marketing, Firth-McGuckin is best known for her

award-winning, text-book transformation of the male-dominated Liverpool

Victoria Friendly Society from a fading proletarian savings giant into a

bouncing healthy modern financial brand.

Sales increased by 70%, prompted brand awareness rose from 6% to 48% and

the marketing department shot up from zero to 23 staff during the two

years of her stewardship. ‘It was the realisation and fulfillment of

everything I have done to date,’ enthuses Firth-McGuckin.

Those who have worked with her are unreserved in their praise. ‘She was

a model client, clear, fair, a great team builder and sensitive, in

stark contrast to many of the chest-beating men in marketing,’ says

Mickey Finn, chief executive of Liverpool Victoria’s ad agency Duckworth

Finn Grubb Waters.

Firth-McGuckin started off in sales at Royal Insurance, where she learnt

that success means ‘you have to be a chameleon, the person your prospect

wants you to be’. Nine years later, she discovered marketing (corporate

chameleonship) in an MBA at Bradford University. ‘It was like someone

turning the light on, I had been doing it and no one had told me what it

was,’ she laughs.

A spell working in a direct-marketing agency convinced her that she

‘didn’t like clients very much’, so she moved on to become a marketing

manager at Bradford and Bingley building society.

That was followed by five years lecturing in marketing at Kingston

University, setting up a post-graduate course and acting as a consultant

for Abbey National, Coopers and Lybrand, Preferred Assurance and

Alliance and Leicester.

And now she is at it again, creating a new brand from absolutely

nothing. Last week, she initiated a far-reaching review of male-

dominated fund management group Henderson Administration, to transform

it from an irrelevant aristocratic investment giant into a modern retail

investment brand.

Henderson has pounds 13bn under management for pension funds,

institutions and high net worth individuals. She says the fact that it

is operating at the other end of the social spectrum form the Liverpool

Victoria is irrelevant. ‘Whatever the product or country, marketing is

the same discipline.’

It is a discipline that has been lacking in the financial services

sector to date, she argues, which is why there are so few strong

financial brands. ‘They tend to be weak because they don’t follow the

elementary academic steps. The important thing is to ask the basic

questions like, who do you want to talk to, who is your competition and

so on,’ she says.

Many financial marketers are not marketers at all but financiers, argues

Firth-McGuckin. ‘Many don’t even understand the basic rule of branding -

that everything you do must match the brand.’

She’s vehement that everybody in marketing should have a qualification.

‘Marketers should know academic marketing backwards. It would turn

marketing into a profession. How else can we compete with accountants

and lawyers on the board,’ she says.

While she has no clear idea of the nature of the Henderson brand yet,

she feels it is more likely to be about emotional rather than rational

benefits. ‘After all, I’m not interested in looking at the motor when I

buy a new car or a washing machine,’ she reasons. Just like a woman.

BIOGRAPHY

1985-86 Full-time MBA Bradford University

1986-87 Senior account director JDA Group

1987-1988 Marketing manager Bradford & Bingley

1988-1993 Lecturer, Kingston University

1993-Sept 95 Head of marketing, Liverpool Victoria Friendly Society

From Sept 95 Marketing director, Henderson

This article was first published on Marketing