Q&A: Neill Garfield, Boylesports CMO

eGR Digital Marketing caught up with the BoyleSports CMO to discuss the importance of the company’s new Gibraltar operation and his plans to ramp up its digital marketing capabilities

Neill Garfield is only one year into his role as BoyleSports’ chief marketing officer (CMO) and the operator’s marketing operation has undergone significant changes. Following Garfield’s appointment in January 2015, the Irish company shifted its marketing functions from its Dundalk base to a new hub in Gibraltar, and aſter a breakneck early start has since created a settled team charged with fulfilling his ambitious plans in digital marketing and beyond.

The first thing the switch has done is give BoyleSports access to experienced gambling personnel previously unavailable from its headquarters in the north-east of Ireland. “Dundalk is a great place but if you’re Irish and in the betting industry, the chances are you’ve gravitated towards Dublin – Dundalk is around a 75 minute commute, which nobody really wants to do,” Garfield explains. “Gibraltar has that access and with increasing taxation demands, we must look at how to offset the increase in taxation by being as efficient as possible, which Gibraltar allows us to do, in part, by offsetting VAT on marketing.”

Garfield brings to the role vast experience in blue chip organisations, particularly on the acquisition side, from companies such as Sky, Apple and O2, as well as senior marketing positions at Paddy Power and Tom Waterhouse in Australia. But despite having a new team in place, he’s under no pretence as to the challenges ahead for BoyleSports as the firm looks to operate under a new regulatory environment in the UK and Ireland. It also aims to compete with companies with already bigger marketing budgets, which have since upped their game in response to new legislation.

But one of the main attractions of BoyleSports to Garfield was in fact that it is small and nimble enough that, unlike his former blue chip employers, it has yet to have fragmented, with acquisition, CRM and product and technology all separate strains within the business. “Our ultimate ambition is to create horizontal thinking that allows us to really understand the customer,” Garfield says. eGR Digital Marketing spoke to the CMO to find out more and why he believes digital holds the key to standing out in a fiercely competitive marketplace.

eGR Digital Marketing (eGR DM): Why did you decide to join BoyleSports as CMO?
Neill Garfield (NG): Marketing means different things in every organisation. One of the reasons I joined BoyleSports is because it provided me with what I think modern marketing is all about and that is the pivot between sales, product and technology. Under the remit here in Gibraltar is the P&L managers, the marketing functions, affiliate and CRM functions and the content experience. There are still plans to grow the team – anything is possible but we have to do it responsibly. One of the biggest opportunities when you’re building out a new team is to ensure you make the most of technology. Where there are repetitive manual functions it is about providing the right tool for the right people rather than getting more people to behave like tools.

eGR DM: How has the new UK and Ireland regulatory regime impacted the business?
NG: I think the upside of taxation for the wider industry is to move away from expansion to efficiency. What that means is that every euro needs to be fought for and it really elevates things that were previously being ignored: for example how your site loads, navigation, ability to convert and retain. When I started in the gambling industry, these things just didn’t really exist – it was very crude, acquisition-focused and didn’t really need to value analysis. But now the regulation has come in – and this is symptomatic of everyone who operates in regulated markets – operators really need to look at how to offset that. Some are bought or become more efficient – we’re doing the latter.

eGR DM: Has the competitiveness of the markets changed at all since the regulation came into force?
NG: I’d say it has become more competitive. Sport as an enterprise is competitive. Sport as an enterprise is becoming more and more in demand and so there are two key changes happening. On the one hand, the price of sport is growing exponentially because BT and Sky are now going toe-to-toe and paying much bigger premiums for content. So the media market in relation to gambling has certainly changed, but I’d also say that the tactics people are using to acquire customers has also changed significantly, away from bonuses to a focus on more enhanced prices. Today, it’s even more crucial for businesses to think about how they differentiate.

eGR DM: How can BoyleSports compete with those operators that have a far greater marketing budget?
NG: The Irish market is mature and for us it’s really about leveraging our whole estate. So we have a multi-channel approach to that market with our high street presence, while in the UK there are lots of established brands that we are behind in terms of investment. It also allows us to examine what exists in the market so we can figure out what the brand needs to be, how the product should behave and how we can relate to the customer on a consistent basis. The opportunity is really how you manage your customers, not how you acquire your customers.

eGR DM: What is your view on the current omni-channel phenomenon?
NG: No-one has really cracked it yet in my opinion. We’re experimenting but we already have a product in Ireland where people can deposit and withdraw in-store and they join a multi-channel loyalty programme. My belief is that customers should have a consistent experience and they are rewarded regardless of what channel they choose to use – what that means is completely different for each industry. Omni-channel is a buzzword in gaming but it’s been around for a decade in retail. So the gambling industry is slightly behind but it’s also in the early stages of figuring out how it really empowers the customer to have a better experience and what it means on a frequent transactional basis.

Aurora Bell ridden by Martin Burke during BoyleSports Irish Grand National Day

eGR DM: BoyleSports kicked off a company rebrand in the UK market in December 2014. What has been the impact of that so far and are you pleased with the results?
NG: It’s definitely a little bit fresher but there’s so much more work to deliver on and our opportunities in 2016 are to master the fundamentals and create a vastly superior experience. A logo and font are great but what really matters is how customers feel about using the presentation of the product and whether it’s easy to use, easy to find, readable and has all the features they want. With that in mind we haven’t really invested any brand budget. In the UK we need to make sure we’ve got the right components and ingredients on which we can then start promising things for the customer that makes them feel good about being with BoyleSports.

eGR DM: What does the BoyleSports brand represent from your point of view?
NG: We’re scoping that at the moment. If you break down the brand recognition within the industry every company wants to become known for certain things – BetVictor is the home of cheap prices, William Hill the ‘Home of Betting’ and bet365 is about in-play. However, the only two companies with proper brands are Betfair and Paddy Power, which behave in the way they talk and are happy to talk about the experiences of customers and not necessarily about the products they offer. So if everyone has revealed their hand in the UK market, the question is where are the gaps and opportunities that stay true to BoyleSports which, at its heart, is a sincere brand that cares about its customers getting great value. I can’t deviate too far away from what the company is but I need to go and find where the opportunities exist for that kind of culture.

eGR DM: What is digital’s role within your marketing strategy and what channels are you focused on?
NG: The Irish market is very different from the UK market. In Ireland, because the BoyleSports brand has matured and is well-established, that’s really about focusing the brand around vehicles of stature and matching the brand aspect to the vehicle. So we are the betting partner of RTE Racing, we have a very high profile at Punchestown and Irish Grand National events, while John [Boyle] himself is very passionate about greyhounds and is fully supportive of the Irish greyhound profession. The opportunities around digital are important in Ireland but they are essentially limited because of the population and not having fully dedicated online media that provides a certain level of reach.

eGR DM: How does your digital strategy in the UK differ?

NG: If you think about big brands that do sealed auction bids on Sky Sports, for example, that exhausts a substantial part of the budget, but they also can’t afford to be out of it either. What tends to happen is the balance between offline and online in the gambling landscape still not being in line with consumers. If they’re spending half their time on digital, that’s not reflected in the budget and there’s a big discrepancy between where the customers are and how you reach them. This exists because many brands started on TV and they’re now in a situation they can’t really afford to get out of.

eGR DM: How are you trying to find the right balance?
NG: For me there is only one balance and it is moving BoyleSports into being a very sophisticated digital marketer. That is my background and we’re on that path but we needed to get a lot of infrastructure right in order to provide that and we’re not going to be fully matured in that model until later on in the year. But I’m a hugely passionate advocate of digital media – it’s what I understand and there’s a level of sophistication within digital that I can implement to differentiate how you appeal to customers.

eGR DM: Given BoyleSports’ UK and Ireland focus, do the differences in digital maturity make your life more difficult?
NG: The penetration of the internet is the same in Ireland, but in terms of getting the right volume there’s not a massive amount of reach relative to the UK. But it all depends on how you want to enter the UK market. If you want to be associated with big properties to make yourself feel big then that’s fine and it’s a strategy that I’m sure works – Betway is a good example of that. However, unless you’ve got a massive cash pile that you don’t mind risking, in this modern age it’s just not prudent or responsible to look to big vehicles to enter a market. It’s not really appropriate to start with analogue in mind anymore. To me analogue drives people into the digital space and it’s not about how digital complements it.

eGR DM: What is BoyleSports doing from a search marketing perspective?
NG: That is my all-time favourite medium. I completely geeked out on that in the past; at O2 and Sky I was spending a million a month on pay-per-click (PPC). One thing I’d say about BoyleSports is that 2015 has been about tactical opportunities, so we’ve grown the business substantially in all of the customer KPIs and we’re very happy with that. The next thing to figure out is how we build the foundations so that we can get to a mature paid-search strategy as soon as possible. We’ve been discussing with the market about getting a supplier that can collaborate with us to get us there far quicker so that we can deploy ideas on how to reach the right kind of customers at the right time. So search will be a key medium for us in 2016.

eGR DM: What trends are you seeing within the affiliate marketing space?
NG: All I can do is tip my cap to our affiliate partners because they’ve been a great success story for us. I can understand why some established brands who have got mature relationships with those affiliates might think a little bit differently, but for us they’ve been a crucial and extremely successful part of our business this year. We’ve seen growth pretty much from every affiliate. It’s been a fairly collaborative discussion in that we’ve given them the tools to succeed and they know we’re selling what customers want so they have the confidence to push it out. I’d say we’ve become more competitive in the affiliate space and I think we can be even better in 2016.

eGR DM: Have affiliates felt the pinch in the current regulatory environment?
NG: They have, but every company that’s linked to Point of Consumption is trying to figure out how to improve their business given those headwinds. For me you can see taxation either as a complaint and moan forever about the good old days, or we can look forward to how we can add value and become more efficient as a business, plus how can we create and inspire feeling good about betting or interacting with an affiliate website. What will really matter in this world of being efficient is who meets customers’ needs better, faster, slicker and more relevantly than anyone else. Back to the previous point about how a small brand takes on a big brand, it’s the ability to respond to the customer faster than the others that wins. It’s not about who has the biggest cash pile or retail estate, it’s about who meets the needs of the customer on a consistent basis as relevantly as possible.

eGR DM: What should we be keeping an eye out for from BoyleSports in 2016?
NG: We’ve put a much harder focus on what’s important for the customer in 2016 and that presents opportunities we’d want to celebrate. I don’t want to reveal too much but it’s really about customer experience improvements but the sporting calendar is a determined mistress so we will be competing as best we can around events that drive the gambling businesses.