Phil Ward’s work at The Cumberland building society has seen him spearhead some highly innovative marketing campaigns this year.

Phil has been at The Cumberland for over 20 years and in the marketing team for 14.

He leads the brand marketing and PR activity for the business and supports the development of the team members by mentoring and coaching new talent to ensure his colleagues can achieve their goals effectively, compliantly and most importantly, enjoyably.

The world’s first shop where customers could buy things with kindness was one of the highlights of The Cumberland’s marketing strategy which has been developed by Phil over the last 12 months.

The Kinder Shop allowed people to pay for items by pledging their time to local good causes. The unique idea resulted in customers signing up to do over 1100 hours of volunteering with charities such as Eden Valley Hospice, the British Heart Foundation and Cumbria Deaf Association. For many people it was the first time they had been involved in volunteering.

The pop-up shop aimed to focus attention on The Cumberland’s new brand positioning of ‘kinder banking’ and its redefined purpose of being ‘kinder to people and planet’.

The Kinder Shop was the final element of The Cumberland’s strategy to launch its new brand purpose, which had been developed by Phil and his team.

Extensive research was carried out to refine its brand purpose and build a marketing strategy with a range of activities that included a refreshed brand look and feel, an internal engagement roadshow to launch the new brand purpose, an omni-channel marketing campaign and a series of launch activations and partnerships to begin delivering the brand messaging.

After receiving his award from Frank Stretton at 32 West, Phil said: “The Kinder Shop project was an amazing opportunity to collaborate with great charities around the region…it was a really humbling experience.”

Runners up:

Laura Ridley, Stagecoach

Chris Martin, FlexMR