NatWest’s Margaret Jobling crowned Marketer of the Year

Margaret Jobling, CMO at NatWest Group, has been named Marketer of the Year at the 2022 Marketing Week Awards.

Jobling was selected from a competitive shortlist of the highest rated marketers in the Marketing Week Top 100, sponsored by Tag.

Since joining the bank as its top marketer in 2020, Jobling has been on a mission to give NatWest’s marketing real purpose, dedicating her leadership to a focus on financial wellbeing and the environment.

This, combined with her success in driving marketing effectiveness, made her the unanimous choice for our jury of some of the UK’s most prominent marketers.

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On starting at NatWest, Jobling kicked off a major brand review analysing the brand’s performance over the previous five years, how it was positioned in the marketplace and how it was driving brand consideration. The result was the ‘Tomorrow Begins Today’ creative platform, designed not only to drive a reappraisal of NatWest among customers, but also among its employees.

“It’s a call to action. And it’s a rallying cry for our people, because it’s all about what you can do today to help your customers across all touchpoints,” Jobling told Marketing Week at the time.

She and her team followed the launch of the Tomorrow Begins Today brand platform with a campaign highlighting how the bank is working to help the next generation manage their finances.

A marketer with an enviable track record of breathing life into brands in the most challenging of sectors, of leading them through change and delivering business outcomes.

Russell Parsons, Marketing Week

This focus on reaching younger consumers is already bearing fruit. Awareness of NatWest’s advertising among 18- to 49-year-olds has risen after each execution, according to YouGov BrandIndex. To further this push, in February the bank convened a panel of 12 influencers to help better reach parents and young people.

NatWest has also introduced tools such as carbon trackers for retail customers and sustainability toolkits for business customers, while increasing emphasis on green mortgages with preferential interest rates.

From a financial perspective, the work is paying off. The group generated £187m in profit during the third quarter, with the bank claiming to have delivered a “strong financial performance” amid a challenging market.

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Jobling, who became ISBA president in July, believes advertisers have a “massive responsibility” to drive behaviour change when it comes to tackling the climate crisis.

Described as the natural “first choice” for the presidency, Marketing Week’s Marketer of the Year acknowledged her appointment comes at an important time for ISBA, as the industry faces “a huge wave of regulation, brands are being challenged by the cost of living crisis and the impact of Brexit is still being understood”.

Jobling also offers her time as a mentor for the School of Marketing, an organisation dedicated to upskilling new and existing marketers around the world.

Russell Parsons, editor-in-chief at Marketing Week, says: “Margaret was the unanimous choice of our judges. A marketer with an enviable track record of breathing life into brands in the most challenging of sectors, of leading them through change and delivering business outcomes, and a staunch advocate for marketing and marketers. An excellent choice, therefore, for Marketer of the Year.”