Tara Brennan
Head of Marketing & Development, Chadwicks Group
Tara Brennan stepped into a predominantly male world when she moved jobs. “It’s a very different world from grocery, which is very evenly split male/female. When I joined Chadwicks Group, there was a new CEO stepping in, and he had a marketing background, which was actually really beneficial because he was happy to invest in marketing and let us try a few new things. Prior to that, marketing was literally a promotions office, with just one or two people in there.”
Charged with delivering a new Chadwicks brand, which included colleague involvement, co-operation across all departments, and rolling out a bespoke customer training programme, she has helped to increase sales while reducing marketing costs.
Faced with 16 brands initially, through a series of mergers and acquisitions over the course of the boom, she has helped reduce that down to eight. “When the recession hit, there wasn’t the money to invest, so we’re just doing that now.” Enjoying the challenge of construction, she put herself in the customers’ shoes, something the company had never done before. “Chadwicks needed to break things down and talk directly to their customers before implementing any changes. We needed to ask, ‘Which is the strongest brand; and if we change one, what does that mean for the rest?’ So we did one brand then two, and we’ve 13 done now, with the group very happy to roll it out across the state.”
Happy to be achieving growing sales, Tara is pleased to know their loyal customers are happy too.