John: I’m here this afternoon with Keith Stanley. Keith is one of Australia’s preeminent and most charismatic marketers. He trained at Harrods in London, was IKEA’s first national marketing manager in Australia, ran global marketing for Flight Centre, and has also had stints as CEO of the global travel business Stella Travel (now part of Helloworld) and ran NRMA Travel. I’m also proud to say Keith is my partner in Komosion. Keith has led customer-centric thinking in pretty much every marketing role he’s ever had. Today, as well as learning a bit about Keith, his remarkable life, and some very interesting hobbies, we’ll explore with him the past, present, and future of marketing as he sees it. Keith, welcome to Customers Matter.
Keith: Thank you, John.
John: Tell us a little bit about yourself, Keith. Where did you grow up and where were you educated?
Keith: I was born in Jamaica in the West Indies and educated both in Jamaica and in the UK. I enjoyed that time and the particular flavour that the Caribbean has in its view on life, particularly regarding people.
John: Tell me about your first job at Harrods. You grew up in Jamaica; how did you come to be in London, what did you do at Harrods, and what took you there?
Keith: I was studying electronic engineering and had completed my first year when I got a summer holiday job at Harrods. I suddenly realised how boring engineering was and how wonderful being connected to customers was. When it came time to go back to university, I had rather a long discussion with my father, of which I’m not sure I came off the better, but I stuck to my course and continued on at Harrods. I joined their executive training scheme, which was an intense programme over two years involving both tertiary study and performing different jobs in different departments. I ran accounts for sunglasses and gloves, and worked in the pet department, the food departments, the receiving banks, and so forth.
John: You mentioned you particularly liked the people part of Jamaican culture. Is that something that you got to play with when you started to work in retail? Was the people stuff important?
Keith: Doing calculations on engineering factors compared with actually selling to people—let’s just say the people part was a lot more appealing. At Harrods, I kept winning the top salesman of the day and top salesman of the week. I just love dealing with people. We met a lot of celebrities there; the shop was closed down sometimes to cater to people, but it was just the sheer variety and the pleasure of seeing someone getting what they want. That customer-centricity was in my blood even in those early days.
John: From Jamaica, you found yourself in London, and not long after, you found yourself in Australia. How did that come about? More specifically, how did you find yourself at IKEA in Australia?
Keith: I was fortunate enough to meet my current wife, who was studying flute with one of the great flautists in the UK. We got married and spent a couple of months in Jamaica to see if we could live there, but we realised that, in those days, Jamaica was not much of a place for a classical flautist. So, we decided to come to Australia at my father’s bidding and landed in Melbourne in 1980. Within two weeks, I had my second interview at IKEA and got the job. I had applied for one job and they said I was overqualified, so I forced them to take me on anyway and started there just before Christmas in 1980.
John: IKEA is a remarkable retail success story globally. I know you recently led a product team from Flight Centre on a tour of one of its stores. What makes that business so successful, and what did you point out to the product marketers when you took them to IKEA?
Keith: I think IKEA was years ahead of its time and still is in retailing—true, proper retailing—and really understanding the customer journey as they go through the shop. I remember when a bookcase was made an inch shorter so that it would sustain less damage on the pallet as it was shipped around the world. There is an enormous attention to detail, which I believe is extremely important in serving customers. Also, the use of room settings and the real-life situations they created assisted the imagination of customers and really got across the point of who the room was for. Before a room was designed at IKEA, a full profile of the person that lived in that room was created. That profile was then pinned up at the front of the room, and every item we brought into the room had to fit that profile. That level of detail is quite rare in retailing, and that’s why it was a great education.
John: When you took the Flight Centre crew recently to a modern IKEA, what did you point out and what did you observe? What had changed and what struck you?
Keith: The range in Australia has increased greatly, but they have also targeted owning the kitchen area and bathroom, which they couldn’t do when I was there. It is the attention to detail that matters. We went to A-Mart before that just for contrast. At A-Mart, there was a table that the staff were interested in, but there were no measurements on it and no description of what the product was made of. That kind of attention to detail is what makes IKEA a great business. The way lead-in prices are treated, the posters, the signage, and the way the rooms are designed and positioned are key. In every corner, there’s what we used to call a “banana room” which draws your attention to it. The rhythm in IKEA was: “Here are some inspirational ideas, here are the options these ideas can be made up of, and then here is your planning area,” which is about the detail of all the different pieces and how you pull it together. Every single area in IKEA has that rhythm, and that is what I was pointing out to them. It’s unfortunate that often when you go into retailing, unless you’re passionate about retail, you just absorb what is being planned for you. In IKEA, I learned—and have held throughout my career—the idea of really understanding what’s behind it: why is that there, why is that height used, and why this specific placement? By entering with that enquiring mind, you’ll find that most retailers are not very good at what they do.
John: What was your journey after IKEA, and how did you end up a seventeen-year veteran at Flight Centre? How did you and the company evolve over that time?
Keith: After I left IKEA, I set up my own business with a really cool name: Retail Detail. I contracted a lot to Westfield Shopping Centres, and they would ask me to meet with potential clients. I would help them design their retail business, often working with inexperienced people. With the discipline I had learned through Harrods and IKEA, I had the knowledge to share with them. One of the clients was a Mr. “Skroo” Turner. He was late for the meeting, I will say, but we got on like a house on fire right from day one. Even in those early days in ’91, he was planning multiple brands. He only had 120 shops at the time and asked me to design the next brands for him, which I did. At the end of that year, he asked if I could take over all of their shop design and fit-outs, and then about six months later, I took over the marketing fraternity. A couple of years later, he bought my company and said, “Okay, you’re now global marketing manager. I want you to do this, this, and this.” That was the start of one of the best educational journeys, working for one of the most inspirational leaders in retailing I’ve ever come across.
John: How has Flight Centre evolved from those early days, and during your time there, what did it become?
Keith: When I first started, it only sold international airfares. That was it. If you wanted something else, you were sent to Harvey World Travel or somewhere else. The evolution was driven by every shock that hit the world, be it SARS or the Gulf Wars. Skroo had this incredible ability to morph and evolve, and I was lucky to be part of the team that took the challenges he set and made them reality. We first took on domestic air and did a deal with an ancient company called Ansett, which saved them at that time from sure failure. We grew that business, and the next shock was another war, from which we took on land products so we didn’t just do air. We evolved each year with a new brand, creating Student Flights, Travel Associates, and some of the corporate brands that we eventually developed. All of that was evolution. The company moved from being simply retail to buying wholesale businesses to create an end-to-end arrangement. My job was to make sure each brand was targeted at different customer targets. On a global basis, I made sure the brand elements crucial to identification in the UK, Canada, the US, and South Africa were the same, while adapting to local markets. It’s an interesting way to run a global enterprise where you have to be very clear about what’s important and what needs to be local. We had a lot of robust discussions on where that line was, and it built the business into the fantastic enterprise it is today.
John: In your time, the company went from one business with a couple hundred stores in one country to being a business with operations in how many countries and how many stores?
Keith: If you include the licensees, there are something like 54 countries and somewhere around 2,000 stores and offices, plus the whole back end. There is a whole air division and a whole land division that buys, and most recently, they have been buying the ground operators in the country. It’s a lot bigger now, with Top Deck part of it. In ’95, when Flight Centre floated, people bought into the idea of this expansion opportunity, which made it very interesting from an investment point of view. The first shares went out at 95 cents; they’re trading well over 30 dollars today.
John: Before I ask you about your more recent roles, Keith, tell me about your passion for Bonsai. How did you get into it, how big is your collection, and what do you draw from it?
Keith: I am not a patient man, but in about 1981, I went up to the Dandenongs in Victoria and saw a Bonsai place. I just fell in love with them. I thought it was a mixture of art and horticulture, creating something really special and beautiful. That started a lifelong passion. I have about 120 trees. I’ve visited exhibitions and nurseries in Dubai, throughout America, Japan, and Vietnam. It is a passion that I embrace.
John: And what do you get from it?
Keith: Again, the beauty, the art, and the horticulture—working with nature. When I’m focused on a tree and working with it to explore what expression it’s trying to make to the world, the rest of the world disappears, and I’m just in that moment. That is very important, particularly in some of the higher-stress jobs that I’ve had over the years.
John: When we met about a decade ago, I was running Tourism New South Wales and, via a mutual acquaintance, invited you as the Stella Travel CEO to join a delegation led by the then-Premier to China and India. What I remember being struck by on that trip was your determination not to hobnob with the dignitaries, but to try and understand what the Chinese and Indian visitors to Australia might want from a hotel. It really struck me as a passion and a focus. I wonder if you could tell me about Stella, your time there, and why you were so focused on not only the customer of today but the customer of tomorrow?
Keith: I found it amazing that for a lot of the other delegates, it was about them and what they wanted to achieve; a lot of it was social or trying to politicise the trip. I found that our customers were the Chinese travel agents in India and China who were trying to work out how to access the Australian market. They were looking for insights. Once you open up to them and start to give them some information, they tell you an enormous amount about what their customers need. Insights like the fact that in India they have no interest in the beaches and generally don’t like swimming was something perhaps some of our tourism boards had not recognised. You only find these things out by listening to customers. In the old days at Flight Centre, I was always the one who, every Thursday afternoon, would go into the shops and speak to customers. When it came to the management meeting each Monday, I was the only one who had a clue what was going on out there, and I think that is the role of marketing. In Stella, we translated this to a new level. Because I was calling the shots, we really focused on where all the brands sat and what target markets they had. We did a massive rebranding in New Zealand to help one of the businesses over there. We moved away from the commoditisation of air and accommodation to really start designing experiences and things that customers actually go there to do. If you sell the commodity of air and land, there is no money in it. If, however, you’re selling the experience, then a customer is willing to pay for your expert knowledge.
John: Could you just describe exactly what your job was at Stella, what Stella was—because of course, it is no more—and how that job came about?
Keith: I had left Flight Centre because I wanted a new challenge. I had been there for sixteen years running the marketing and building the brand. I had worked for two of the world’s great brands in Harrods and IKEA, and I got to create a third one with Flight Centre. However, there was nothing new for me there, so I decided to go into the hotel side of the business and was recommended to Stella. It was owned by MFS, and they were acquiring hotel businesses like Mantra and BreakFree. I had been there a month when the managing director sat me down and said, “I’ve got a job for you. We’re thinking of acquiring S8,” which included Harvey World Travel, Travelscene, and a plethora of other brands. I said that would be an interesting thing to work on, but I would need to talk to Skroo to make sure he was comfortable with me working there. He said, “No, I don’t want you to do the marketing; I actually want you to run it.” I said, “Holy moly, hang on there, I don’t know if I’m ready for that.” It involved over 3,000 staff and 3,500 franchisees, so it was a pretty amazing organisation. He convinced me, and Skroo was more than happy to see a stronger competitor there because he’s a strong believer in that. I went on to be CEO of that company. It grew 42 percent in the year I had it before the GFC hit. A lot of that was rationalisation; I put in finance systems and things that made a massive difference. We had a great team there, but we were owned by private equity, which turned out to be quite painful towards the end of the experience during the GFC when they were trying to extract as much as they could out of the business—probably more than it could afford.
John: Since we first met, we’ve become partners in Komosion. During that time, you’ve held a range of interesting roles. Post-Stella, you ran NRMA’s travel business and, via Komosion, you’ve had various incarnations back within Flight Centre, not to mention working on strategy projects for clients like Liquor Marketing Group, Tabcorp, La Trobe University, and David Jones. What has this phase of your career been about?
Keith: I have learned a lot over the years and I have a few grey hairs left to remind me of that. I like to help people and I love complex problems. I love companies that have no clear way forward; I like to delve deep into data. I am unusual in that I have both a creative side and a data side, and I love the data to inform me as to what is really going on. That has stood me in good stead to help our customers at Komosion drive better outcomes. We’ve discovered some surprising things using customer journey work to uncover insights; often, within the data, there are massive insights. That has really been the most enjoyable part—to see a client who has an intractable problem, assist them, see them “get it” and implement the solution, and then see the benefits on the other side. That is the big joy of this period of my life.
John: You were invited to speak not once, but twice in the marketing stream of the technology show CeBIT. There is a clue in that regarding your answer to my next question. I’d like to ask you to reflect on the past, present, and future of marketing, and I’m guessing the customer might have something to do with it.
Keith: Good guess, John. I think marketing has gone through a massive stage of interruption. What I am very excited about is to see that evolve through digital. Digital has made marketers have a lot more accountability. In the past, when I was deputy chair at the Australian Marketing Institute, I and one of my colleagues pushed hard to get accountability in marketing. Our view was that there needed to be more accountability on the board. When I look now, I can see that digital has forced accountability into the market. Not all marketers have embraced it, and there is a large portion who are still trapped in the interruption or advertising part. Marketing to me is about really understanding the customer and understanding them well. New technologies are giving us insight at a rate that we’ve never experienced before, but not all marketers are looking at them. In the past, we went through the same process that manufacturing went through: mass production at the beginning, segmentation in the middle, and now we are very much in a personalised space. If you look at the companies that are succeeding today, they are at the high end of quality and focus on personalisation. Not everyone wants to be the same, and technology today with 3D printers and similar tools allows you to literally customise everything to exactly what a customer wants. Going forward, my expectation is that marketers will need to understand what Keith Stanley wants in immense detail. Don’t dare interrupt me with anything other than what I want or what you think I will be pleased with; don’t give me the trash that I’m not interested in. I think only through that can you build relationships between brands and individuals and therefore continue to see success for your business.
John: Finally, Keith, aside from Bonsai and your family—you’ve mentioned your wife and your lovely daughters—you have two other great passions in life. I’m hoping you might share your secrets with the audience. I know this may relate to some preferred reds and maybe some Jamaican rum. What can you tell us?
Keith: I have two things. Not Jamaican rums, funnily enough, but I enjoy a Guatemalan rum which is very fine. In terms of red wine, I enjoy all wines, but my absolute favourite is a Barossa red—a good, meaty, heavy red—and I partake of it as often as one should, or maybe shouldn’t. The other passion I have is chillies. I had a business that I created on the side called Chilli Mania many years ago, but I didn’t have the time to maintain it. Before the internet, we had a paper catalogue, believe it or not. Now, I restrict myself to only twenty varieties, and each of them has a peculiar flavour. I can walk you through those if you’re really interested. But they are my two other passions.
John: Sounds like a challenge for another day: the red-hot chilli pepper challenge.
Keith: The hottest at the moment is one called the Carolina Reaper, and it is appropriately named, let me tell you.
John: Sounds very Jamaican. Thanks very much, Keith.
Keith: Thanks, John.