Finisterre CMO Bronwen Foster-Butler says marketing and growth cannot be separated

Bronwen Foster-Butler, chief marketing officer of Cornish outdoor clothing brand Finisterre, says the idea that ‘growth’ is a separate discipline from marketing is the myth she would most like to end.

“Marketing is growth. If it’s not, then it’s simply not doing its job,” she said. Anyone who asks her whether they need a separate growth team, she added, “is demonstrating to me that they don’t actually understand marketing at all.”

Foster-Butler said she noticed the shift when she returned from maternity leave six years ago to find that many marketers she knew had become a “growth engineer”, and that people with no marketing experience were telling businesses they needed growth rather than marketing. Marketing is more than growth, she said, encompassing a deep understanding of customers and trends and an obsession with product and human behaviour.

From JWT to Lululemon

Foster-Butler, who is Canadian, has worked as a snowboard coach and with a modelling agency. She studied European Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London, and credits a chance meeting with a careers adviser, and a careers event featuring speakers from leading ad agencies, for setting her on her path.

She joined the graduate programme at JWT, known as the “university of advertising”, which she said showed her the part creativity plays in driving business results.

She then worked under Marta Brnicevic at Burberry, whom she described as an incredible leader who pushed the team never to settle for less than excellence. Over two years she led marketing across 26 emerging markets stretching from Azerbaijan to the Middle East, during the era of Christopher Bailey and Angela Ahrendts.

She said the people at Burberry at that time remain some of the most exciting in the industry, and that she feels lucky to have worked in their orbit for a while.

Brnicevic was looking for people with agency experience, Foster-Butler joked, “potentially for our unhealthy work ethic!”

As a Lululemon customer keen to see the brand come to Europe, she was introduced through a friend at its head office to the company's VP of international marketing. For more than six months, while still at Burberry, she acted as its informal ‘person on the ground’ in London, taking the team to yoga and fitness classes and discussing the industry.

Lululemon eventually offered her a job, apparently without a job description. During her six years there, the business grew from £5m to £100m and from one store to 35, expanding across Europe and starting work on a Middle East launch. She began as a team of one and left with 13 people in the brand and creative team.

She did not want to leave Burberry, she said, but felt she could not let the opportunity pass.

It was there she knew marketing was her career. Launching a store by hosting yoga for 300 people at the Royal Opera House, she thought: “If this is marketing, then I’ve found my home.” Marketing, she said, is about connecting with people, and shared experiences are the best way to do that.

Pangaia, Voylok and Finisterre

She then joined Pangaia, a materials science brand that took off in 2020 as Covid drove demand for loungewear. It grew from £10m to £75m in nine months, at times selling £2.5m of clothing in 24 hours on pre-orders that customers waited six to eight weeks to receive. After 18 months, she said, she was “pretty burnt out”.

Her next role was at Voylok, a start-up making felted wool boots handmade by women in northern Russia, which she described as the most sustainable footwear in the world. It launched eight days before Russia invaded Ukraine and, despite the team's efforts, could not succeed given the political situation.

As that role ended, Finisterre was looking for its first CMO. She joined three years ago.

Profitable growth and circularity

Based in Cornwall and certified as a B Corp, Finisterre makes technical raincoats, knitwear, neoprene-free wetsuits, swimwear and other clothing for coastal life.

Foster-Butler joked that the company is doing its best to cope with decisions made by the Trump administration, but said its focus is on profitable growth, which she called a credit to the team in a difficult apparel market. It is expanding in the US, Canada and the EU while continuing to grow in the UK.

Finisterre recently recertified as a B Corp for the third time, with its highest score yet. Circularity is a major focus. Last summer it launched what it describes as the world's first natural rubber wetsuit rental scheme, letting people try its Yulex Natural Rubber wetsuits; the company says neoprene, a toxic petrochemical, accounts for 99% of wetsuits.

Its repairs team, Lived & Loved, extends the life of products, and the service is about to launch in the US. A few years ago the brand collected more than 1,000 old neoprene wetsuits to explore recycling, and this year it turned the recycled material into a changing mat.

Retail remains important. Finisterre has opened three UK shops this year, in Cardiff, Poole and Cambridge, and recently launched in Selfridges alongside other wholesale partners. Foster-Butler said retail matters more than ever because shoppers want authentic experiences that build a connection with brands.

Team structure and leadership

Finisterre has an in-house creative agency led by its content director, covering photography, art direction, graphic design, copy and content production. It responds to briefs from across the business, mostly from marketing.

The marketing team includes a global head of community, a head of CRM and a head of paid digital. A brand management team sits between creative and marketing, writing briefs, particularly on product storytelling and impact, and supplying assets to other channels.

Her biggest lesson as a leader, she said, has been to let others contribute to her success. Early in her career she wanted all the credit, and it took “a lot of humbling scenarios and occasional complete failures” to learn otherwise. She now encourages junior colleagues to open up to others' input.

She still sees the same behaviour in junior team members and empathises, because it is hard to make an impact early in a career. Her role, she said, is to help them see that their success depends on bringing others with them.

“My job as a leader is to create the conditions for my team to thrive,” she said, including conditions for creativity, innovation and respectful debate.

“I’ve found time and time again that if I can get this right, then the team will collaboratively engineer success for the business,” she said.

Caution on martech

Foster-Butler said the industry is hunting for shortcuts to make marketing easy while forgetting that it is “still an art, not a science”. The more marketing is treated as a science, she said, the more people forget that humans are at its heart.

She is curious about tools that help the team make better-informed decisions, but does not believe any tool will make marketing easier. She warned that it is easy to build a tech stack that is unwieldy, expensive and underused, a risk that can be overlooked in the rush to adopt AI.

“Of course, you need to be across the tools that will most benefit the team right now,” she said, adding that new tools often call for a ‘wait and see’ or ‘test and learn’ approach.

Technology is moving so quickly that it is hard to know what will exist in 18 months or how behaviour will change, she said. She is sceptical of claims that search is dead because people will use ChatGPT, arguing that more than 12 months' exposure is needed before changing strategy. She prefers testing “little and often” to “going the whole hog on a whim”.

Sustainability and climate

Research has repeatedly shown that while everyone says sustainability matters, few will pay for it, she said. Finisterre's customers do care and hold the brand to high standards, but more broadly shoppers are still mainly swayed by trend or price.

The question she would put to other senior marketers is what they are doing to prepare their businesses for climate change. “If we want to ensure there are still consumers to market to, then we all need to be asking ourselves the tough questions around what we are willing to sacrifice to be better to the planet.”

“The world is heating up, the climate is changing, and consumers (and employees!) want to know what we are all doing about it,” she said.

Asked about a recent cultural moment that stopped her in her tracks, she cited K Pop Demon Hunters, saying it shows that if something appeals to parents, every child on the planet will watch it.

Handling pushback

When challenged in the boardroom, Foster-Butler said she stops talking, listens and asks clarifying questions. Pushback usually has rational reasons even when it feels emotional, she said, so she considers what data and storytelling she needs to bring the board with her.

“What do I need to do to prove my point here? What data do I need? What compelling storytelling do I need to do in order to bring the board on the journey with me?” she said.

Her advice to her younger self would be to set better boundaries. “Your identity is not the brand that you work for.”

She would also repeat her main lesson: let other people contribute to your success.

Ultimately, she said, marketing comes down to people, who are not rational, change their minds from day to day, are heavily influenced by others and “care far less about your brand than you think they do.” She welcomes marketing being more data-informed than ever, but said marketers must still be creative, trust their instincts and listen to customers.