Meet our 2021 Awards judge, Rebecca Dibb-Simkin

Rebecca is Chief Marketing Officer at Octopus Energy, a multi-award-winning energy tech supplier with over 3/4 million customers across the UK.

She's also judging this year's The Marketing Society Awards. We caught up with Rebecca to find out what marketing means to her.

Why is recognizing marketing excellence through the Society’s awards so important for the industry?

My favourite quote (Peter Drucker) is that ‘the aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous’ i.e. not taking a product and flogging it to a sceptical public, but creating something that is so awesome of value and desire, that people find a space in the lives for it with joy. Marketing grows business, but too often it can be siloed as just the ‘comms function'. The Awards wave a big proud flag for marketing, as the spearhead for driving growth and value across businesses.

What advice would you offer brands entering our awards to make their entry stand out?

I’ll be looking for how the marketing resonates with actual humans. If people ‘get it’, it will drive value. 

What is your most hated business expression?

Any marketing jargon. We don’t have a brand pyramid, message tracks or a product roadmap. I have never really understood what they mean. We just do awesome stuff to drive growth and make customers happier, and we’ve hit double unicorn (valued at £2 billion) this year after only 5 years in business, so I am stubbornly obsessive about the fact that I’m onto a good thing with this theory!

What’s the biggest risk you’ve taken in your career?

As the breadwinner in my family, it was moving from a fairly secure middle management job at a household-name FTSE 100 to join a small bunch of tech entrepreneurs in Soho. I did this because I believed they had the vision and the brains to change the world. 

Which leader do you admire most and why?

My boss Greg for single-minded obsessiveness about customers and growth, and his constant effervescent enthusiasm (but I have never told him that).

2021 entries are now open. Find out more about how you can enter The Marketing Society Awards here.