In his keynote at The Guardian Changing Media Summit 2014, Tesco CEO Philip Clarke defined his vision of digital marketing as the heart of the modern retailer.
Philip Clarke took over as Tesco Group CEO in March 2011. Before this, he was their Asia, Europe & IT Director. Clarke joined the business in 1974 and has held a number of roles in store operations, commercial and marketing.
He runs a team of over 530,000 people in 12 markets dedicated to bringing the best value, choice and service to customers making 75 million shopping trips every week.
In 2009, Tesco opened 100 phone shops in UK and in 2010 their first imternational phone store opened in Slovakia. Today they run well over 200+ phone stores in their Tesco Extra stores and 50+ pop-up phone stores in the UK. These outlets offer mobile phones and devices, broadband and the latest mobile accessories.
Most recently, Tesco has launched its own tablet, the 7-inch Hudl tablet. The Hudl was, according to Tesco, designed and built from scratch, tailored to customer needs and ease of use.
"You might think this is an unusual platform for the CEO of a supermarket chain," said the CEO in addressing The Guardian conference. "After all, we're retailers, not a media company. In fact Tesco is the largest retailer in the UK and the second largest in the world."
He continues..."But I'm going to use the next 20 minutes or so to tell you why our industries are facing pretty similar challenges, and why digital media is absolutely at the heart of my strategy to create the leading multichannel retailer for the future...."
