Behind GREAT: The Campaign to Boost the UK’s Reputation around the World
In November 2023, the UK’s Government Communication Service appointed Kate Taylor Tett as the new director of the GREAT Britain & Northern Ireland campaign.
Previously deputy director, Kate is responsible for overseeing the development and implementation of the GREAT campaign, which promotes the UK as a world-leading destination for business, tourism and education in over 150 countries.
With 10 years experience working in account management at AMV BBDO before a stint as marketing director for department store House of Fraser, Kate’s background has equipped her for the unique role of marketing the concept of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
To find out more about this marketing-government hybrid project, LBB’s Alex Reeves met Kate in the depths of the civil service machine on Whitehall.
LBB> You’re very much outward-facing as an organisation. So what should those in the British marketing and advertising industries know about GREAT?
Kate> Lots of people in Britain actually don't know what it is. And that's quite an interesting challenge, both as deputy director and coming in as director, in that GREAT has quite a small domestic presence. The majority of what we do is international, although we have done domestic tourism in the past, and we also encourage exporters. But that means that the profile is quite low in the UK.
A big part of what we do with GREAT, sort of the lifeblood, is partnering with British brands and working hand-in-glove with them in promoting the very best of the UK. If there was sort of one thing to take away from this, it's an understanding of what GREAT is, and its willingness to get involved.
We're always adding new partners, and there's some partners we've been working with for a very long time. For example, British Airways, almost since the campaign started, have been a good - and quite obvious - partner through tourism. But we're always working hard to bring new partners into the mix. Cadbury, for example, who we never really had a relationship with, is celebrating its 200th birthday. There's lots of activity around that and the brand is very keen to promote its British roots. So, we're now working with them on various projects.
So, people might not know that we exist. And if they do know that we exist, they might not think that their brand is necessarily a good fit. But we'd always encourage a conversation, because there are loads of different opportunities. We work across so many different audiences, so many different markets, and so many different types of behaviour change campaigns to drive everything from trade outputs to tourism, that there are loads and loads of opportunities there, which is really exciting.
LBB> In that sense, can GREAT be an extension of any British brand’s marketing? Because, if British brands are doing well on the global scale, then surely that's the great campaign working.
Kate> How we capture that and make sense of it in a consumer's mind is one thing. And that's really what GREAT grew out of. Around the 2012 Olympics, there was a push in government - eyes were going to be on us, how would we capture that and really promote the UK? The story goes, everyone was called into number 10 to make their pitches, and the ministers were furious because it was 22 separate pitches: we're going to do this on tourism, we will do this separately on food and drink, etc. They said, ‘go away, and don't come back until you've got something which holds that all together and puts the consumer at the heart of it’. And that really is what holds GREAT together today.
We try to take a consumer-first point of view. Consumers don't really care that there's multiple government departments, they don't understand that tourism is handled by an arm's-length body, and nor do they care. And a consumer doesn't really make a distinction between a brand being a private sector brand or it being the UK, they just think of the UK. So, it's really important that we're all working together on that and have a clear and compelling message.
LBB> The campaign has been going for 13 years now, and you’ve been involved since 2020. What have been the big moments?
Kate> It's been a victim of its own ambition, almost, within government. After the Olympics, everyone said, ‘this is a great idea, we should carry on with this’. So, it grew quite organically then for a long time.
So, while covid-19 was unfortunate for many reasons, for the GREAT campaign, it gave us a moment to pause. I joined during that time. And in doing so, I really stepped back and looked at what we'd got. My view was that GREAT has built this extraordinary thing. After all, anything surviving 10 years then, 13 years now, in government, is pretty amazing, especially in an organisation which doesn't naturally understand and promote brands in that way.
But my observation also was that for all the good of GREAT, we'd really moved away from a clear focus and brand platform in the private sector. If you talked to people about what GREAT was, you'd get lots of different views from lots of different places. And of course, we had to have nuance because of the different markets, but ultimately, what did we stand for? That's why we did that big piece of brand proposition work - really understanding insights from markets and got to the 'See Things Differently' proposition, which is really a celebration of UK diversity, and therefore the innovation that leads to. That has been a real threshold moment in focusing everybody and making a better creative output.
Since opening, we've clearly changed prime ministers a few times, and there may or may not be a change of prime minister this year, but certainly there’ll be a general election that will be another threshold moment for GREAT, because a new government will be formed in some capacity. And much like in the private sector, when a new CEO starts, there are conversations about what's kept and what's not, so there's a job for us to do: to make sure that the value of GREAT as that brand we've been building over 13 years is really understood.
LBB> What's the range of what those private sector partnerships look like? And how do they work?
Kate> There is a huge range. We have a private sector council of C-suite-level people from British business, who act in an advisory capacity. It's chaired by Ewan Venters, the CEO at Hauser & Wirth, formerly at Fortnum & Mason. It also includes the Premier League, BBC, British Airways, HSBC, the British Fashion Council and adam&eveDDB. They advise on the marketing side, but also market strategy, and what sectors we're looking at. They connect us with the right people.
Then, there’s a pure partnership with business piece. That can be anything with sponsorship and value in kind from the private sector. Our budgets are pretty meagre, as you would expect, because we're spending taxpayers money, but actually, even versus our international competitors, they're small, so we're really sweating every pound.
The private sector might also partner with us on messaging. So, we have a joint campaign with British Airways, for example, which (no surprises) is about coming to the UK; it's in both of our interests. It also might be about really tiny businesses. We do a lot of work with SMEs, promoting them to be able to trade internationally and telling those stories. We're working with Fever Tree who is a really great partner for us. It’s got this amazing entrepreneurial story, and is now taking the US by storm which is amazing. The brand is a massive advocate for why growing the business in the UK is so fantastic, and why it wouldn't want to move it to the US, for example. So, there’s a whole range of different ways that we work with people.
LBB> GREAT works in over 150 countries. How do you prioritise where to focus the campaign and how it manifests in different parts of the world?
Kate> We work in lots of different markets, and the scale of those opportunities is really different. In a big market like the US, we have a lot of paid campaigns going out there. In a tiny market like Chile, we run a lot of owned and earned activity. But, all of those countries have an embassy team who will represent GREAT. If you went to the embassy in Santiago, you would see GREAT branding everywhere. When they run an event, they use it. But we're not running massive paid tourism campaigns there.
Most markets have tailoring of some description or another. In fact, that was one of the big things I made a change to when I came in. Before, we used to really only communicate in English in all markets. A lot of the insight that we gathered, unsurprisingly, talked about British arrogance, and I think if you're only there speaking in your own language... we made a change on that. Now, in the majority of markets, we communicate in that home language, as you'd expect.
There are some interesting nuances though, particularly in some of the Asian markets. In both China and Japan, English writing is a sign of premium. If you're just communicating in Cantonese, for example, you lose something. So they like to have the nuance of both. In other markets, however - India being a really good example - they like to have everything in the home language.
After all that, there's also nuance in the tone you take. Going back to India, it’s all about partnership - everything has to be through the eyes of how we're working with the country, never just talking about the UK. On the other hand, in the US, if you talk too much about partnership, or you try to be at all self deprecating, they just don't get it. They don't understand why you're not chest beating and saying everything about the UK is amazing. So, it's quite often tonal shifts that we’re having to make. But that's a fascinating part of the job -, getting to understand all of that. And we're really lucky because we work with the in-market teams based in the embassies, whose day-to-day life is understanding those nuances.
The way we prioritise those markets is really in a way that you would in any business. We're looking at the return on investment. Some markets inevitably just have a bigger opportunity. And, we're always working to prime markets as well. The foreign secretary's vision talks a lot about 'middle powers', the next set of markets that we think might be good partners for the UK - where we really see trade and tourism opportunities. But, we're also constantly horizon-scanning for where the opportunity is now… and using taxpayers’ money as efficiently as possible. So, ultimately, we're going into markets where we know that we're going to be able to return money and create jobs in the UK, while also priming for what might be coming years down the line.
LBB> You worked at AMV BBDO for 10 years. How has your experience working in account management there shaped the way that you approach a role like this?
Kate> In short, my time there was absolutely fantastic. Yet, I actually think of myself as quite sad, because I decided that I wanted to work in advertising when I was young. My mum always reminds me of my French GCSE (which I can still recite if anybody wants to hear), talking about wanting to work in an ad agency. I fear that I watched that film 'What Women Want', saw ad agencies and thought, ‘they look quite cool’, then saw that through.
So, after that, I tried desperately to get internships in ad agencies, which was very difficult. I did get a couple of weeks unpaid at M&C Saatchi. At the time, my brother was at university in London, and I made him sleep on the floor while I did that internship. Today, I think the industry's changed a lot, and that sort of unpaid internship thing has gone, which is good, but that enabled me to get onto the grad scheme AMV. And honestly it was the best thing that ever happened to me. It still is, and was at the time, an amazing agency and brilliant training ground. Cilla Snowball was the chairman, so it was very female-led.
All in all, it was an amazing opportunity to work on huge brands and understand the strategy from the best of the best. I started my career on Sainsbury's and I then worked on Heinz. I did international things with Mars and Foot Locker. I got to do the Metropolitan Police, which gave me a sense of the public sector, and PepsiCo, and then I finished up my career there on Currys PC World, which will always have a part of my heart because I got asked to work on the pitch and thought ’this sounds terribly dull’ - I didn't want to sell washing machines - but actually, it was a huge brand opportunity and we managed to turn that around.
Because of that time, to this day, for anybody that wants to work in marketing or advertising, I always recommend starting in agencies, because I think they work you really hard, but you get this amazing experience. I know marketing is sometimes quite snobby about people making that move across, but I have found that you're really well set up with the skill set that you learn there, really understanding that whole process, and particularly, for me, that strategic and creative insight has transferred super well to government, but also the roles I've done in between.
LBB> Previously, you mentioned the election year. Are there any other main major priorities right now for GREAT?
Kate> I think it's all about driving forward. The election is coming, but we can't let it be a distraction. Instead, there are three key things that we're working on in terms of moving GREAT forward. One is around evolving our network. We’ve talked about loads of brilliant partners, but there can always be more, and they can always be more diverse. So looking at different industries, but also the types of individuals that represent has been really exciting. We also have an ambassador's programme, which tends to be high-profile individuals either in the public eye or slightly behind the scenes representing us. And again, we've had some extraordinary relationships there - everything from David Beckham who repped us last year, to new and upcoming talent like Olivia Dean, who was nominated for a Mercury Prize this year. We also work very closely with Universal Music, and Lucian Grainge is a big fan of ours. He got Olivia to do some gigs for us around a tech campaign we were doing last year. All in all, really evolving that network is a priority for us.
There's also a priority around empowering the network. Because we are reliant on other companies helping to do our bidding, might be a partnership with BA, for example, will see it coming in on equal funding with us. So, it's all about working with individuals and empowering them to spread our message, without us having to hold their hand. I always talk about one of our ambassadors named Vineet Bhatia, who is a Michelin-starred chef from India, but came to the UK early in his career and set up a restaurant. He tells this amazing story of the UK being the catalyst for his success (he's now a multi-millionaire working in lots of Asian markets). But the reason I love Vineet is that he doesn't need much direction. He clearly gets what GREAT is trying to achieve. When we first started working with him, he just went out and got some chef's whites printed with the GREAT logo on. And he wears them to everything, even if it's nothing to do with GREAT, as an excuse to talk about it. He did something with Ed Sheeran recently, and there's a photo of him with Ed, with the brand. He's creating content all the time.
Finally, the third thing we're looking at is creative excellence. It’s probably no surprise because of my background, but I just think that creativity is so important. It's the thing that is going to propel us above our competitors who are outspending us. We've made some good steps forward, but we haven't won anything at Cannes, and I think we should. We've got an extraordinary brand, we've got these creative partnerships, and we're innovative within government. We should be recognised more for that creative, but we need to work hard for it.
LBB> The campaign has to work in different places in different ways. There's a lot of different messaging that you're trying to unite into one message of just generally selling Britain really. How do you do that?
Kate> We're always trying to cross reference the campaign. It's easy to talk about different audiences – a trade audience, a tourism audience - but when you dig into it, actually, there's loads of crossover and similarities. You can probably imagine the type of person who's making a big investment decision in the US also has enough disposable income to travel a lot, and probably is considering educating themselves or their kids internationally, so with that audience profile, there's a lot of crossover. As such, we have to really consider that they're not just seeing our trade advertising. All of that forms a picture for them. We've been doing a lot of interesting testing about retargeting and we see really great results when you retarget trade advertising off the back of tourism advertising, which might not seem a natural fit, but you're sort of priming and warming people up to a general view of the UK, which is positive.
LBB> You're obviously looking for all sorts of different partners. Do you have a wish list at the moment? Any particular kinds of businesses that you’d like to work with?
Kate> We're always really interested in partners in the creative industry space, just because music and film translate so well for the UK. And often, I don't think we get the credit we deserve for it… I mean, there's lots of stats about the fact that Americans don't know Harry Styles is British.
We're also doing lots of interesting work around film at the moment, and again, often, people don't attribute film to the UK. We were looking at some funny things about ‘Ted Lasso’ recently, where people didn’t realise that Richmond is a real place; they think it's a set. So we're not really getting the credit for those things. Partners in those spaces are particularly interesting, because they're strengths for us, but we need to do a better job of getting those partners to help make an attribution with the UK to their really positive products.
