055: Tesco’s Tamara Duschl talks brand, customer, and how the challenges are the same for a global retailer

Tamara Duschl is the Head of Brand at Tesco. Tesco is the fifth largest retailer in the world, turning over £63bn last year, and is the middle of a big turnaround process – so far shifting from a loss of £6.3bn to a profit of £162million. In this episode Tamara’s going to be telling us a bit more about how Tesco do what they do, and we’ll be exploring the lessons the smaller retailer can take from it all.

Click to Tweet: @eComMasterPlan #Podcast with Tamara Duschl Head of Brand at Tesco talking about getting into the customer mindset

About the business

• eCommerce Business Structure – Full Multi-channel
• Product Range Scale – broad
• The biggest grocer in the UK
• Based in the UK, sell in UK, Asia & Europe (2/3 of business in the UK)
• Have separate Brand and eCommerce teams

Listen to hear how Tamara got started in eCommerce

Most Awesome Thing Right Now

Tamara feels that the most awesome thing at Tesco right now are the challenges that they face.  Tesco used to be a true driver of innovation and the customer champion – one of the most admired brands in the UK and perhaps throughout the world. Following an announcement from Tesco in 2007 – popularity in the country started to dwindle – with the recession and the introduction of more budget supermarkets to the UK Tamara believes that Tesco slightly lost their way stop focusing on innovation and instead focused on profit. Tesco is now in the mid of a massive turnaround getting back to being the real customer champion and innovator in their industry.

Listen to hear more about how Tesco use their data

On the Radar for the Coming Months

At the top of Tamara’s to do list is bringing value back to the slogan ‘every little helps’ which has over the last few years narrowed from an overarching message of helping Tesco’s customers to a message relating only to pricing.

You can hear about all this on the podcast, for free – right now…

Brand Tips for any Business

• Tamara says initially you need to get real clarity around what your brand and business stand for. You need to have a true understanding of your customers and the choices they have – why should they pick you? Do you understand where the customers are going to be in the future.
• Keeping an eye on your competitors and the market as a whole is really important – but don’t try and deviate your strategy to a competitor leading strategy – stay true to your customer strategy. Think of additional ways to further differentiate your brand.
• Stay true to why your business initial existed, even if as you start to grow it might begin to become unclear, go back to that initial idea and what you do for customers. Finding different ways to serve that idea will ensure you stay true to both your business and your brand.

eCommerce Book Top Tip

Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek.  You can find the summary here

eCommerce Traffic Top Tip

Tamara goes back to being really clear what your purpose is and what you want to be a destination for. If you can invest that in customers minds and get them to search you organically you have won.

Tool Top Tip

Tamara admits her tool is not really work related but she loves it – the tool is called Splitwise and it helps you split expenses when out with friends.

Start Up Top Tip

Tamara’s top tip is to put yourself into your customer’s shoes. Whatever problem you are trying to solve for the customer put yourself into that situation and when you experience it first hand everything else becomes a lot easier.

If your business didn’t exist, which eCommerce Business Would you like to be Running?

Zara

Interview Links

• Tesco.com
• Twitter
• Instagram
• Facebook
• Tamara on LinkedIn