Inside Penneys: Behind The Scenes With Wendy Duggan

Tell us a bit about your role and how long you’ve worked for Primark.

It’s a milestone year for me this year at Primark as I hit the huge ten-year mark on March 18th! It’s been quite a journey. What started out as a one-year contract to cover a Fashion PR role resulted in a Marketing Director job today. I’m incredibly fortunate to have not just worked with some brilliant mentors along the way but I’ve also worn many career hats spanning fashion PR, new market entries, our influencer and collaboration strategies through to building out our marketing function as it sits today. Within the team, we cover everything from marketing operations (the engine that keeps us all on track and on time!) through to marketing communications covering our influencer and fashion press strategy alongside our social media channels. All things creative and every image you see on behalf of Primark also sits within our team alongside the visual merchandising strategy which keeps our stores looking on point.

What does a typical day look like for you?

It might be a cliche, but every day is different in the best way possible. Personally, I always prefer to be in the office and surrounded by people. Doing the customer facing job we do; we always do our best work being close to our fellow communications colleagues and most importantly, the buying and product teams so we can get the latest and most up to date information. My team currently spans 130 people across our 16 markets, so at least one day out of a week is spent travelling to see marketing teams and agencies in markets or as part of a new store opening visit.

What’s been your proudest career moment so far?

Alongside the Rita Ora launch being up there as a real career highlight, one of my proudest moments was launching the Primark brand into the US with our first store in Boston back in 2015. At the time, we were hugely well-known in Europe but were a new and relatively unknown concept to the American customer. With limited budget to go up against the big advertisers in the States, it forces you to think harder and smarter in how you want to spend that money to make a real point of difference and create customer conversation to stand out. We chose to put our funds into influencer marketing which was a relatively new concept that was really building Stateside alongside celebrity partnerships, in-store customer events and fashion PR. It was a real year of learning on the job for me, but I also got to bring back those learnings to Europe and build out our own influencer and celebrity strategies across markets, resulting in some of the long-term talent partnerships we still have today.

What was it like working on our biggest global collaboration to date with Rita Ora? Was it hard to keep it under wraps?

I was fortunate enough to meet Rita right at the beginning of this story back in London over two years ago to discuss what we could potentially build together. Fast forward two years later and we have launched the biggest global fashion partnership we have ever done. We always believed in it and the authenticity of the story, but I am still blown away by the reaction not just from our customers but from the media and fashion fans in general. It’s been incredible to watch unfold, and Rita is a dream to work with. In terms of secrecy, it was one of the hardest things to keep under wraps considering it was two years in the making. Secret meetings, closed shoot sets and trying to keep all our print partners and marketing suppliers in check was not easy! We were blessed to make it to that big reveal moment and for it to land as such a surprise. My favourite part was watching the guessing games unfold on our social channels the weekend before launch. Now the secrets out, it’s all about keeping each launch fresh and new with a different customer twist each time to surprise and delight. Watch this space!