Marketing Director

About Ocado Retail

Ocado Retail is one of the UK’s most dynamic and fastest-growing retail businesses. As the exclusive online grocery partner of Marks & Spencer, the company sits at the intersection of technology, retail, and customer experience, combining the scale of a market leader with the pace, ambition, and culture of a high-growth business.

Over recent years, the business has delivered exceptional growth, increasing by approximately 50% since the peak of COVID, with ambitious plans to double in size again over the next five years. Despite its scale and market leadership position, Ocado Retail remains remarkably agile, employing around 700 people and operating within a highly collaborative, low-hierarchy environment where ideas and impact matter more than hierarchy.

Historically, growth has been driven predominantly through performance marketing and customer acquisition. Now, as the business enters its next chapter, marketing is expected to play a far more strategic role in shaping customer perception, strengthening brand awareness, accelerating growth, and unlocking the full potential of the Ocado proposition.

A significant opportunity exists to reshape how customers understand the brand, challenge longstanding misconceptions around pricing, and elevate awareness of the unique value created through the partnership between Ocado and Marks & Spencer.

The business is led by CEO Hannah Gibson and a highly respected leadership team that has built a culture centred on curiosity, commercial ambition, continuous improvement, and intellectual rigour. Ocado Retail actively seeks leaders who bring fresh thinking and new perspectives while embracing its core values:

  • Always Be Curious
  • Bring Our Best Selves
  • Challenge What’s Possible

These principles are embedded throughout the organisation and guide decision-making at every level.

This opportunity sits within the Customer Function, led by Chief Customer Officer Dan Elton. The function brings together all customer-facing disciplines and is responsible for driving growth, customer engagement, and brand performance across the business.

The team includes specialists across:

  • Lifecycle & Growth
  • eCommerce
  • Marketing
  • Retail Media
  • Convenience Propositions
  • Customer Experience

The environment is highly collaborative and influence-led, but with a relatively lean team, Ocado prioritises moving at pace. Success comes from building alignment across stakeholders, balancing strategic thinking with hands-on execution, and working collectively to drive outcomes. Significant investment is expected across marketing capabilities over the coming years, creating a rare opportunity to build new capabilities, elevate brand marketing, and redefine how the business engages with customers.

Why Join Ocado Retail?

Few opportunities offer the combination of scale, growth, investment, and influence available here.

You will join a business that is:

  • Experiencing significant and sustained growth.
  • Increasing investment across brand, creative, and customer communications.
  • Building modern marketing capabilities for the future.
  • Led by an exceptional leadership team.
  • Partnered with one of the UK’s most respected retail brands in Marks & Spencer.
  • Working with leading creative agency partners.
  • Empowering leaders with genuine autonomy and scope to drive change.
  • Combining entrepreneurial energy with the resources and stability of an established market leader.

Rare Opportunity to Build the Future of the Ocado Brand

This is an opportunity to define and shape the future of one of the UK’s most recognisable consumer brands.

As Marketing Director, you will be responsible for establishing the long-term brand platform, creating the communications framework, and building the playbook that will guide how Ocado Retail engages customers over the coming years. You will play a central role in evolving the organisation from a predominantly performance-led business into one that combines world-class brand building with commercial effectiveness.

Working across the organisation and partnering closely with senior leaders, you will shape how customers experience and understand the brand while laying the foundations for significant future marketing investment and capability growth.

This is a highly visible leadership role with the opportunity to influence strategy, culture, customer growth, and organisational transformation at a pivotal moment in the company’s evolution.

Key Responsibilities 

  • Define and evolve Ocado Retail’s brand strategy and positioning.
  • Refine and develop the long-term creative and communications platform for the business.
  • Translate brand strategy into an integrated annual communications and trading calendar.
  • Lead brand planning and campaign development across all customer touchpoints.
  • Oversee integrated campaigns across brand, social, influencer, and communications channels.
  • Build a scalable marketing playbook to support future growth.
  • Lead relationships with key agency partners.
  • Partner closely with commercial, merchandising, and customer teams to align communications with business priorities.
  • Evolve customer and trading communications to ensure the right message reaches the right audience at the right time.
  • Influence acquisition strategy and broader customer growth initiatives.
  • Establish measurement frameworks to evaluate marketing effectiveness and brand performance.
  • Champion innovation and the adoption of emerging technologies across the marketing function.
  • Drive transformation of marketing operating models, processes, and ways of working.
  • Lead the continued evolution of marketing capability as the function scales.

What Success Looks Like

The successful Marketing Director will help solve several of the business’s most important growth challenges.

You will be empowered to strengthen customer understanding of what Ocado Retail stands for, reshape perceptions around value and pricing, increase awareness of the Marks & Spencer proposition available through Ocado, and help modernise the marketing operating model for the future. You will also play a key role in advancing the organisation’s AI and technology agenda.

Success will require balancing long-term brand building with short-term commercial delivery in a fast-moving, highly accountable environment.

Let’s Talk About You

You are an accomplished marketing leader with a track record of building brands, leading teams, and delivering commercial impact within sophisticated consumer environments.

You combine strategic vision with operational excellence and are equally comfortable defining long-term direction as you are driving execution. You understand how to balance brand building and performance marketing, and you know how to create marketing organisations that scale effectively as businesses grow.

You are a natural collaborator who thrives in low-hierarchy environments, builds trust quickly, and is comfortable influencing across complex stakeholder groups. Most importantly, you are energised by the opportunity to shape a business at a pivotal moment in its journey.

In addition, you will be/have:

Significant senior client-side brand marketing leadership experience

A proven track record of developing and scaling consumer brands

Experience working with both large and smaller marketing budgets

Strong agency management experience

Demonstrated success building and leading high-performing marketing teams

Strong commercial acumen and understanding of marketing effectiveness

Experience building processes, capabilities, and operating models within growing organisations

A track record of balancing brand-building ambitions with commercial outcomes

Leadership Style

The successful candidate will embody the behaviours that define leadership at Ocado Retail:

Always Be Curious

You are naturally inquisitive and intellectually rigorous. You seek diverse viewpoints, ask thoughtful questions and use insight to challenge assumptions and uncover better solutions. You are energised by learning and encourage curiosity in those around you.

Bring Our Best Selves

You create an environment where people can thrive. You lead with authenticity, foster inclusion and collaboration, and build high-performing teams united around a common purpose. You take ownership, deliver with pride and help others focus on what matters most.

Challenge What’s Possible

You embrace ambition and inspire others to think differently. You are comfortable navigating change, experimenting with new approaches and leveraging technology to unlock new possibilities. You encourage innovation, empower your team to move quickly and continuously look for ways to improve.

You are likely to be:

  • An emotionally intelligent and highly self-aware leader.
  • An exceptional influencer and stakeholder manager.
  • Comfortable operating within collaborative, low-hierarchy environments.
  • Resilient and constructive when navigating challenge and ambiguity.
  • Action-oriented with a growth mindset.
  • Curious, collaborative, and intellectually rigorous.
  • Able to challenge thinking while bringing others with you.
  • Comfortable working at pace and driving change.

Location

  • The role is based in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, with leaders typically spending three days per week on site.

Further Reading

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