The Marketing Week Podcast: Hugo Boss’s James Foster on marketing’s role in its transformation
In the latest episode, Hugo Boss’s global marketing lead, James Foster, shares his vision for the fashion brand and the crucial role marketing is playing in its turnaround.
Hugo Boss has been on a journey over the past five years, as the business looks to build relevance and top-line growth. Marketing is playing a critical role in this transformation, with CEO Daniel Grieder singling it out as a key growth driver as part of his Claim 5 strategy, which launched in 2021 and is concluding this year.
Critical to helping deliver that vision is James Foster, who joined Hugo Boss at the start of the year to head up global marketing and communications.
In the latest episode of The Marketing Week Podcast, he joins managing editor Lucy Tesseras to discuss his first eight months in the role, how to strike the right balance when joining a brand midway through a turnaround, and why the ‘why’ is so important when rallying teams to drive change.
With more than a decade at Adidas and senior marketing roles at Ikea and Netflix under his belt, Foster brings a unique perspective to the luxury fashion brand, all the more important given the sector as a whole is experiencing its worst slowdown since 2009, bar the pandemic.
“I definitely feel that exposure to different industries and really looking at different opportunities to engage the consumer and what it means to be relevant – that’s all been strengthened by the experiences I’ve had,” he says.
As well as marketing roles, Foster has held general management positions, as well as product creation and merchandising roles, which he says has given him a “broad and robust overview” that enables him to frame marketing in a way the wider business understands and appreciates.
“Marketing is not just an island, it’s part of many different things, and that understanding has helped coming in here to make sure marketing really is the bridge between the business needs and the consumer,” he says.
“Being able to translate that in commercial terms and into strategic language, so that all parts of the business can not just see marketing as…a cost centre, but more as an investment opportunity and brand builder [is crucial], because strong brands are ultimately the ones that deliver the best results as well.”
Ahead of the next episode in Marketing Week’s regular series, find The Marketing Week Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Acast.
