Tesco's Andrew Mann joins Sainsbury's in new insight role

by Noelle McElhatton, Marketing Direct 30-Jan-09, 08:00

LONDON - Andrew Mann, Tesco's leading data marketer, has left the company to join archrival Sainsbury's in the newly created role of director of customer insight and loyalty.

Mann was head of Clubcard for more than three years and in February last year moved to become marketing director responsible for planning. He was replaced as head of Clubcard by Tesco US executive, and former Olympic sprinter Janet Smith.

Before joining Tesco, Mann was head of brand and communications at British Gas?for three years and global brand director for Dr Pepper before that.

He worked closely with Tesco's data agency dunnhumby to create a single database of the Clubcard membership, with more than two billion records.

The Sainsbury's customer insight role has been created as part of the retailer's drive to retain existing customers.

Mann's appointment is part of a restructure initiated by Sainbury's chief executive Justin King. Last week Sainsbury's announced a re-structure of its five trading teams into three main divisions; grocery, fresh and non-food. The restructure involves the loss of 200 jobs at Sainsbury's head office, some of which may involve marketing.

Last week King gave an optimistic prognosis of Sainsbury's future to stockbroker Cazenove in which he outlined the opportunity "to do over the next ten years what Tesco has done over the past ten".

Sainsbury's is no stranger to data-driven marketing, being one of the founder members of the Nectar consortium. One of its most famous DM campaigns was a digitally-printed birthday card mailer sent to 400,000 customers on their birthday, personalized with the customer's name on a cake.