As AO continues to make waves in the electronics sector, Retail Week speaks to director of brand Arafa Heneghan on the importance of consistency across the brand to grow and maintain customers.
Arafa Heneghan has been part of the AO team for seven years and took on the role of director of brand nearly two years ago.
Covering advertising, social, insights, brand strategy and sponsorship, she has seen the AO team grow significantly, along with its customer base, as the retailer gained 600,000 new customers in the last financial year.
With AO posting full-year results showing a huge growth in profit to £34.3m, the retailer is planning to drive and improve brand awareness in the long term, which is where Heneghan can shine.
Retail Week sat down with Heneghan to find out more about how AO is growing, how to keep branding consistent throughout the entire business, and what priorities are next for the brand.
How do you ensure that branding is in line with AO’s ethos while still being fresh?
“We have brand guidelines, playbooks, we have very strict rules. I talk to my team about making no apologies for being the brand police because we have to stay consistent. It’s really important that from a consumer point of view they see that it’s consistent. So making sure that we look the same, making sure that we sound the same, from the advert that you see on TV to the music we use.
“What happens if something goes wrong? How is that call centre person going to handle the problem that someone’s had? How do you make sure that the driver is acting in a way that feels aligned to your brand? And that’s the bit that we sweat over, but it’s the bit we absolutely have strength on.”
How do you balance returning customers while trying to gain new customers?
“They’re equally as important to us and we definitely don’t want to let down the people we have at the sacrifice of bringing in new customers. But at the same point, we’re a growing business, we still need to bring in new customers.
“I think one of the great things that make AO really special is that our existing customers can help to tell that story to new customers and Trustpilot is probably the biggest testament to that. The reviews show how our existing customers feel about AO, and this attracts new customers. This is not just some faceless corporation pretending that they’re really trusted, actually half a million customers said they really trust us and that they really like our service.”
How important is the use of social media in branding?
“Social will always be an important part of our marketing mix. We’ve got over two million followers across socials, which is brilliant for an organisation that’s an electrical retailer. The content that we create really speaks to our personality, giving us a bit of an opportunity, as well for consumers to see what we’re all about and the fun and things that we can have.
“We use the full marketing mix when it comes to advertising to get our message out there, we use everything from the existing linear channels all the way through more innovative channels that we’re looking at.
“The landscape continues to evolve, we continue to evolve with it, we’re definitely not a brand that kind of sits still and waits for years of case studies to be ready before we jump in and have a go. We’re definitely up for having a go and seeing how it works for us.”
With AO being an online only retailer, how important is it to get the brand message out there?
“There are plenty of case studies out there that say ecommerce brands have to work five times harder to reach the customer. At the same time, I think being an ecommerce brand doesn’t hold us back as much as the multi-channel retailers say it probably does.
“I think a lot of consumers now don’t have the same hesitation with shopping online that they did five years ago. We’re lucky because we have our ecommerce channels, which are cracking, and we use all of the advertising channels to support that. But we also have some real-life spaces as well.
“We’ve got the AO arena, which enables us to have some of those physical touch points with customers, and it gives us an opportunity to really sing about our personality, really talk about who we are and the fun that you can have. We’ve lots of lovely social coverage on it and lots of positive feedback.”
What is AO prioritising next?
“We’ve got an ever-growing need to talk about lots of things. We want to be more famous for all electrical categories, so that’s a big challenge when it comes to the marketing strategies that we need to do. Ever growing and evolving channels are also a big thing, and using AI to try and pull together all of your creative channels at different times for different things becomes interesting when you want to be really targeted.
“The absolute key for us is to be known as the most trusted electrical retailer in the UK and that we’re there for all the electricals that you need in your life, whether that’s the big stuff for your kitchen or your hairdryer in your bedroom.”
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