With a marketing career that spans gaming, digital media and consumer goods, automotive was not top of the list for Louise French when she began looking for a new role. But when the opportunity came up to lead marketing in Europe for Volvo Cars, it was an opportunity she couldn’t pass up.

“If you had told me 18 months ago that I was going to work in automotive, I possibly wouldn’t have believed you,” she tells Marketing Week. “But I think what this journey has taught me is that it’s the skill set, the toolbox that you create, that enables you to adapt and flourish whatever the situation, whatever the industry.”

French says it was the creativity and innovation that comes with marketing that first attracted her to the industry. She did her degree in business and international management, and while doing the marketing-related modules, she realised it played to her strengths as someone who is “super curious with a growth mindset and always eager to learn about the latest”.

She says her experience in different sectors, across brands such as Lego, Electronic Arts and Yahoo, has given her access to “great” leaders who have shaped her perspective and thinking. She says one of the most impactful things she’s learned in this time is the ability to balance creating great marketing with leading high-performing teams and being a good manager.

I get a lot of satisfaction and desire out of creating great operating models that can drive efficiency and optimise operations.

Louise French, Volvo

“There was also a lot of focus when I was at the Lego Group around dealing with change and building resilience,” she adds.

Another thing French enjoys about working in marketing, is having the opportunity to have a sizeable impact on people, and her guiding star is always investing in people and bringing them on the journey.

More than 25 years into her career, French says she’s learned never to rule things out, just because you’ve not tried it before.

“Never put hurdles in your way just because you haven’t had that previous experience,” she says.

“If you’re a solid, grounded marketer with a very good understanding of the key criteria, the key skills from strategy through to excellence and execution, that really can take you anywhere you want it to.”

The Story of My CV

A nostalgic start

RM Education, product manager (2000 – 2004)

“[RM] was a leading provider of innovative software solutions, services and infrastructure to schools, colleges, universities, and exam boards in the UK.

“Fresh from university, I stepped into the world of work as a product manager. It was fantastic to have had the opportunity to witness my mother, who was a teacher, experience the software and tools she had in the classroom to teach primary school children. I had the opportunity [at RM] to work on software and interactive whiteboards, where on visits into classrooms, I could see firsthand the impact the software had on children’s learning… which I found deeply rewarding.

“It was something I felt I could relate to straight away, having been a child, having seen my mother as a teacher, and recognising that actually learning could be made fun by really fantastic software. I had the affinity quite early on for the brand that I was marketing. I think that’s where that probably played out throughout my career as to the emphasis I put on the brands that I’ve chosen to work with.”

Digital development

ThompsonLocal.com, internet product manager (2004 – 2005)

“After three years or so, I decided to move on to a new challenge, and I had the opportunity to join Thompson Directories as an internet product manager, so working on Thompsonlocal.com. It was a business directory company, and it launched Thompsonlocal.com in 2003. I was in from the beginning, which was fantastic and exciting.

“It was really looking for that digital marketing skill set, which was fairly infrequent at that point. Now it’s a fully digital business directory marketing service. For me, it was a real opportunity to develop my digital marketing and data management skills and become a specialist on organic and paid search. I soon came to realise how much I enjoyed that, and that’s where, after a short stint at Thompson Local, I got enticed to join Yahoo to roll out Yahoo Local Search.”

Going head-to-head

Yahoo! Europe, European product manager (2005 – 2006)

“This was a very similar product offering [to Thompson Local], but it was an opportunity to have a regional role and launch the new website across the UK, Germany and France. The beta launch was in 2004, and I joined in 2005 with the product proposition being to provide users with more exact and comprehensive local search results.

“It was new, and it was to go head-to-head with the local search service that Google had launched. It was when internet advertising was starting to really gain traction. We were competing for a substantial local advertising market, and for me, it was a role that was focused on growing the audience and the engagement by being able to really continue to improve the user experience and launch new features.

“The number of conversations we had about launching ratings and reviews and what people think about the opportunity to have people rate their business and for that to be public, online, and would that be trusted as a source was really interesting back then.

“[My] first regional role was a great one. I think I loved the understanding of the importance of cultural differences of languages. I had the opportunity to learn that as part of my degree, given it had that kind of international flavour and something I was keen to continue with in my career to date.”

Level up

Electronic Arts, various roles (2006 – 2013)

“With all that newfound digital marketing skill, I then had the conversation with EA Games to join their team as a senior European product manager, working on the brand-new product launch of EA Store.

“As a global leader in digital entertainment systems, it wanted to invest to launch its first direct-to-consumer offering. So instead of fans queuing overnight at the high street game store for the latest launch of the newest title, they could now, from the comfort of their sofa, literally download the game ahead of launch and wait for the code to unlock to play their game within seconds of launch.

“It was a really strong proposition, and being able to work on digital experiences that then grew the online communities around EA’s key franchises. Working on titles like The Sims, we had the Harry Potter license at the time, Battlefield, and Need for Speed, some of its really strong, critically acclaimed titles, and having the opportunity to create and implement online marketing campaigns to drive people to EA Store, to drive that new revenue stream that was ecommerce DTC via digital download, was great.

“I had the opportunity to manage and get an understanding of affiliate marketing as well as leveraging the SEO pay-per-click skills to achieve our revenue targets among other marketing channels. The EA Store has since developed into EA Play, and has a slightly different model subscription so you can access the unlimited collection of their titles.”

Brick by brick

The Lego Group, senior digital marketing manager, UK (2014 – 2016)

“The Lego Group at that point had quite a low level of maturity of digital marketing and ecommerce skills in the local markets. It wanted someone that could co-create not only a strong brand presence and best in class shopper experience online with their key omnichannel retail partners, like Argos or John Lewis, but it also needed somebody to work to foster the capabilities among the existing strong marketing brand team so that they could best execute a 360-degree campaign across new digital channels such as search and social display.

“I very much came in as almost a consultant, working with the marketing team on digital marketing and then working with the sales team on building a strong brand presence and omnichannel experience… I think within about 18 months or so, the demand for the digital experience was rapidly growing, and it was no longer just viable for one person.”

Senior digital and marketing effectiveness manager, UK (2016 – 2017)

“After a pitch, I got the go-ahead to build out a new team to deliver the marketing plans more at scale and the ecommerce area of responsibility as well. A lot of that was at a time when we were growing focus on performance and marketing effectiveness as well. So making sure we were setting, measuring and optimising really clear KPIs and objectives for each campaign and then guiding our activations on that data and insights.

“Through those 10 years, there was a lot of change the company went through, and it was a big transformation. One of those was in the area of marketing, where we looked at the operating model, and from previously working very much on global through to local, we established a regional model setup. So for Europe, there was the opportunity for me to take on the role of digital marketing director for Western Europe.”

Digital marketing director, Western Europe (2018 – 2021)

“[This role was doing] what I was doing for the UK, but suddenly scale that across our six business units. So we had a cluster approach to benefit all of the countries across Western Europe, and that was back in January 2018.

“That was an opportunity to create a brand new team again. To establish the regional marketing organisation, working with a strong leadership team, we then built it out. So we just had a set of leaders to start with and built out the teams underneath us so that we could really have diverse skill sets, tap into new talent sources, and prioritise collaboration.

“That was a much more efficient way of working and structuring ourselves and to really elevate the skills required, particularly around digital marketing…

“I get a lot of satisfaction and desire out of creating great operating models that can drive efficiency and optimise operations. Instead of going from a model where we just all were generalists in the markets, we had the opportunity to have central specialists and regional specialists to deliver the best marketing activations that we could.”

Senior digital director, Western Europe (2021 – 2024)

“I had the opportunity to lead our digital transformation roadmap for Western Europe, which was fantastic because that was enabling a journey of thinking about how marketing works alongside operations and sales, facilitating that journey with the adoption of new technology and platforms and tools, and working quite closely with the management team.

“[Lego] invested a lot in me, and I invested a lot in them as a brand, as a place to work every day, and I really loved working there every day.”

Shifting gear

Volvo Cars, head of marketing operations, Europe (2024 – present)

“The Lego Group had presented me with a fantastic career opportunity, but after 10 years it felt like the right time to start looking at what the next challenge might be. I needed to step out of my comfort zone. I think with my growth mindset, I am super curious, and the opportunity to learn a new industry and to bring that cross-industry experience was highly relevant [for me]. I wanted to add value to another organisation.

“In terms of why Volvo, for me, [it has] a very authentic brand image, and it really does care about people and the world around us. That was very attractive.

“Coming from a large multinational organisation with a complex matrix structure was super important for me, and that is obviously what I’m navigating today. I could see where my experience and skills, after a very rigorous process, could really add value and this is a pivotal role to be able to drive forward the success of Volvo’s marketing and digital transformation.

How marketers are working through a ‘challenging time’ in the UK car market

“I have the opportunity to report to Gretchen [Saegh-Fleming], our head of global marketing, to drive the strategy across the marketing organisations and I also report to our international president, Arek [Nowinski]. Therefore, I stay very close to the reality of the day-to-day business.

“I love the fact that we’re constantly balancing longer-term vision, building the brand, creating market, and creating demand in what is predominantly a decreasing market environment, but with the pace of the commercial reality, that is the day-to-day to ensure that we hit our targets. I love that dynamic and how that plays out.

“Staying close to the business and seeing sales on a weekly, monthly, and daily basis is fantastic.”