Claire Hoey

Head of Brand & Integrated Marketing
Barclays (Retail Banking, Business Banking and Barclaycard)

• Accountable for brand strategy, advertising, content, social, media planning, sponsorship activation and branch network marketing across retail banking, business banking and Barclaycard.
• Lead a team of ~35 senior managers and specialists, managing strategic agency relationships and collaborating with senior cross-functional stakeholders.
• Manage a ~£45m brand marketing budget and oversee integrated media and communications planning, working closely with performance teams to optimise media mix based on insight, analytics and commercial priorities.
• Delivered significant improvement in brand health through the strategic development and execution of the Make Money Work for You platform, strengthening customer-centricity across the organisation.
• Drove major improvements in marketing effectiveness by enhancing data, measurement and media planning discipline; more than doubled ROI and secured increased brand investment with ExCo sponsorship. Recognised externally with an IPA Effectiveness Award.
• Developed a strategic multi-brand framework post-Tesco Bank acquisition to enable profitable growth across the combined portfolio while mitigating internal cannibalisation, influencing pricing and risk policy to embed approach.
• Expanded remit to include branch network and customer care marketing and design, reframing these touchpoints as core brand experience assets and elevating their role in driving preference and commercial performance.
• Took ownership of search (traditional and generative-engine), developing the 2025+ search strategy and achieving #1 visibility for key Barclaycard search terms across major LLM environments.
• Led the development and launch of Barclays Experiences for Premier customers, transforming sponsorship assets into a differentiated loyalty proposition. Personally secured CEO approval, aligned cross-functional delivery teams and built robust commercial and tech cases, resulting in high incremental revenue and increased customer engagement.
• Built a culture of creativity and innovation, delivering award-winning campaigns including Moneyverse (Marketing Week – Best Financial Services Campaign) and pioneering new activation formats such as TikTok Live streams for major sponsorships. Launched and scaled the Barclays Creators programme, leveraging influencers and colleague advocates to expand brand reach and relevance.

Head of Advertising & Social, Barclaycard

• Accountable for advertising and social media strategy and execution to drive brand, customer and commercial performance.
• Led a team of advertising and social specialists and multiple virtual teams; managed an £18.6m budget, optimising investment to maximise effectiveness and ROI.
• Oversaw and re-set key agency relationships, introducing improved operating models and performance frameworks.
• Planned and delivered major brand campaigns, including ‘Pay Less in Interest’ featuring Simon Cowell, achieving the highest brand recognition levels recorded for Barclaycard.
• Developed and embedded a customer-centric brand strategy centred on trust, delivering strong improvements across core brand metrics. This programme helped shift organisational mindset toward customer-led approaches, demonstrating clear commercial returns from customer-centric investment.
• Built strong cross-business partnerships to integrate the brand strategy across the customer experience, including co-development of the Repayment Calculator, Fraud Fighter and Credit Builder tools to reinforce brand trust and support customer outcomes.
• Fostered an innovative culture across internal teams and agency partners, leading to differentiated media partnerships (e.g., EasyJet) and successful adoption of emerging channels.

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  Responsible for social media strategy and execution, leading a team of five specialists and building strong cross-functional partnerships across the organisation.
  Transformed social media from a low-investment channel into a core strategic lever for audience engagement and brand growth.
  Established a culture of innovation and test-and-learn, pioneering new channel use including the first Snapchat activation in the UK financial services sector.
  Designed and implemented a social media measurement framework, shifting evaluation to brand-based metrics and integrating social performance into the broader media mix.
  Delivered high-impact social activations that built emotional connection and brand consideration, integrating influencers, PR, targeted media and agile content — including The Waiting Room and the Barclaycard 31-Day Challenge — demonstrating the value of strategic, multi-channel social storytelling

• Responsibility for developing and leading a new food content strategy across the business, bringing together teams to deliver and execute an integrated approach to support the food quality agenda efficiently & effectively, I later also took on broader responsibility for seasonal content planning and social media campaigns.
• Led a team of 5 to create and manage the lifecycle of food content creating 100s of new assets each month (recipes, videos, photography, GIFs, competitions etc), where these had previously been created in silos. This included the content for use across Tesco Magazine (the most read publication in the UK), Tesco Real Food website (c.1m visits per month), Clubcard statements, in-store content, and management of social media.
• Achieved strong uplifts of quality perceptions across all fresh food categories, with improvements each quarter.
• Responsible for the ‘Orchard at Tesco’ advocacy platform, encouraging advocates to share positive brand experiences. This delivered shifts in emotional loyalty, a strong ROI, and strong brand insights.
• Built the new long-term social media vision and strategy including re-shaping the social media footprint, defining the editorial and measurement approaches, as well processes to enable this (e.g. consolidation of agency partners).

• Led brand campaigns focused on price perception and value positioning, launching major programmes including Everyday Value, Tesco Price Promise and Clubcard Fuel Save.
• Directed execution across paid media (TV, OOH, print, radio, digital and sponsorships) and orchestrated integrated delivery across in-store, CRM, PR and colleague engagement channels to ensure a consistent customer experience.
• Managed launch budgets of £5m+ and an ongoing price media budget of ~£15m, optimising investment in partnership with media and measurement agencies to maximise efficiency and return.
• Consistently delivered strong results, achieving significant uplifts in brand favourability and measurable improvements in price perception among target customer groups.
• Challenged and enhanced campaign development and media strategy, securing investment in a diversified media mix, long-term partnerships (IPC, Netmums) and branding opportunities across the delivery fleet to extend reach and reinforce value messaging.

• Developed & delivered a clear strategy for the re-launch of Tesco Magazine website, working with internal/external stakeholders to launch a new CMS, content framework and marketing plan (Across paid and organic channels). Resulted in an increase in traffic of over 200% and strong brand engagement uplifts.
• Oversaw continuous management of site content and traffic generation, optimising budgets and agency performance.
• Implemented digital-first publishing strategy across the broader team, fostering deeper brand engagement and reducing costs (e.g. new digital gift guides).

• Planned and delivered over 30 highly targeted local marketing campaigns using a range of tactics and building my understanding of different channels including direct mail, local PR, experiential marketing, couponing and ATL media. All campaigns exceeded KPIs, inc. high profile large store launches (local awareness, footfall & sales).
• Planned & managed the production and distribution of promotional leaflets to 9-12m households every fortnight, working with commercial & trade planning teams and championing customers based on insight.
• Proactively coordinated internal and external parties (design agencies, paper suppliers, printers and distributors) in a full review that led to reduced lead times and c £3m pa. cost efficiencies.