With a career spanning consultancy, loyalty programs, and now retail marketing, Alex Piercy brings a unique blend of strategic expertise and hands-on experience to the evolving world of brand and content marketing. As the senior marketing manager for Coles Brand & Content, Piercy leads a dynamic team of marketers to craft and execute innovative strategies across both digital and traditional platforms.
CMOs to Watch, presented by Zenith, spotlights the visionaries leading the charge. This series delves into the strategies and perspectives of CMOs who are setting new standards, pushing boundaries, and driving impact in ways that redefine what it means to be a leader in marketing today.
As the Mum of four-year-old twins, it’s next to impossible for Piercy to find any time for herself, so we are incredibly thankful she chose to use a few of those rare moments chatting to B&T.
B&T: What three things would you take to a desert island?
Piercy:
- Assuming this desert island has solar-powered electricity 😉 … I’d take my Coffee machine with a tonne of roasted beans
- A good book – I love nothing more than lying in the sun, getting stuck into a good book
- For item #3, I’m toying between either bringing a family photo of my twin girls and awesome hubby … or a bottle of good red wine!
B&T: Favourite album, movie and book?
Piercy:
- Album – RUFUS DU SOL’s “Bloom”
- Movie – Man on Fire (with Denzel Washington and a young Dakota Fanning)
- Book – Things I don’t want to know, by Deborah Levy
B&T: What is your passion outside of work? (Think hobbies, sports, etc).
Piercy: Outside of work, I’m juggling being mum to four-year-old twins. It can be hard to find a moment for myself, but when I do, I love going for a run along the beach or getting a hit of tennis.
As a family we have great fun doing the ‘1000 steps’ hike in Mt Dandenong or other short bushwalks. I also like catching up with friends – basically anything that involves good food, good wine and surrounding myself with good humans!
B&T: If you weren’t a CMO, what would you be doing?
Piercy: I’d probably be in consulting (prior to Coles I worked at Accenture) – but would want to be in a space working on brands, products or with digital innovation.
B&T: What was your favourite campaign of all time?
Piercy: Dove’s 2004 “Real Beauty” campaign. I can’t believe this campaign is 20 years old – it’s still very relevant today!
B&T: … Now let’s talk shop. What is your brand’s top priority for the next 12 months?
Piercy: Coles’ purpose is Helping Australians eat and live better every day.
We aim to deliver on this by focusing on three strategic pillars:
- Being known as a destination for food and drink. In the loyalty space this means we need to ensure our communications around product range, quality and value are personalised to address our customers’ needs.
- Accelerated by digital is how we intend to meet our customers’ increasing digital usage by creating an easier, faster and more enjoyable omnichannel shopping experience.
- Deliver consistently for the future is our focus on delighting our customers with our food and drink offering each and every day, and into the future.
B&T: What channel is exciting you the most and how do you split your marketing budgets between long/short and channels mix?
Piercy: In my role looking after Loyalty at Coles, I am most excited about how we look at loyalty as part of our investment discussions. It not just about splitting budgets across channels and ‘eyeballs’ but one that looks at investing ‘in’ our customers and rewarding individuals for their loyalty.
B&T: What is the biggest challenge you currently face in the marketplace?
Piercy: I represent Coles within the Unstereotype Alliance Australia – a coalition of brands and agencies with the objective to use the advertising and media industry as a force for good by encouraging brands to remove stereotypes in their ads and instead adopt an intersectional approach that addresses the diverse representation of gender, race, ethnicity, disability and age in media and advertising.
The biggest challenge that brands face is the fear of getting ‘D,E&I’ wrong. Most understand inclusive advertising is the right thing to do morally, but more and more brands are experiencing that greater inclusion equals better business results. However – there’s a real fear of getting it wrong – unfortunately, it’s this fear that can paralyse brands from moving forward. It’s so important to be authentic as consumers can see right through it when brands are not. We leverage tools such as Unstereotype Alliance’s ‘3Ps’ (exploring Presence, Perspective and Personality) to shift away from common stereotypes and inform progressive content creation and their newly launched Inclusive Media Playbook which is aimed at helping marketers achieve a 360-degree approach.
B&T: What campaign are you most proud of?
Piercy: It’s not one that I worked on personally, but I’m certainly proud of New York agency SMALL who created it. The “Assume that I can” campaign for World Down Syndrome Day smashes through stereotypes of people with disability and is a brilliant example of a highly creative ad which gets people to think differently whilst executing it in an entertaining and authentic way.
B&T: Where do you see yourself in five years time?
Piercy: Working for a national brand who enables me to work flexibly yet still stretches and challenges me.
I see myself leading a team with kindness and empathy – in a world of metrics and ROI, knowing that some returns can’t be measured in numbers – They’re measured in smiles and in moments of connection. I want to be managing the juggle between kids, family and work – able to lean in to the differing pressures and responsibilities as needed.
B&T: Zenith is the presenting partner of B&T’s CMOs to Watch list. The agency takes a predictive view when it comes to industry perspectives. They’d like to know your prediction for marketing in the next 12 months.
Piercy: Over the next 12 months I think we’ll see a huge step forward in personalisation as brands leverage AI and data-driven marketing to meet individual consumer needs and preferences.
Check out the other instalments in the CMOs To Watch series here:
- CMOs To Watch, Presented By Zenith: Telstra’s Alita McMenamin On Brand, Balance & The Power Of Family
- CMOs To Watch, Presented By Zenith: 28 Group’s Tim White On Storytelling, Social Media & Sport
- CMOs To Watch, Presented By Zenith: Meet Zach Kitschke, Full Time Canva CMO, Part Time Snowboarding Superstar
- CMOs To Watch, Presented By Zenith: Meet Peita Golden, Telco Marketing Boss, Footy Fanatic & Future Pub Owner
- CMOs To Watch, Presented By Zenith: Peter Chapman On Driving Reflections Holidays’ Brand Transformation & Reimagining Camping
- CMOs To Watch, Presented By Zenith: Gardening & Dinner Parties, How Vinyl Group’s Alli Galloway Finds Peace Outside Of The Roaring Live Music Scene
- CMO’s To Watch, Presented By Zenith: The Little Joys Behind Michelle Rowling’s Thrilling Life At Luna Park
- CMOs To Watch, Presented By Zenith: Hawthorn FC’s Dan Hamer’s Next Big Partnership
- CMOs To Watch, Presented By Zenith: DrinkWise’s Part Time Builder, Part Time Marketer, Nathan Kent
- CMOs To Watch, Presented By Zenith: Mountain Culture’s Out Of This World Bradley Firth
