My journey began as a marketing grad at CompareTheMarket
Barney Martin, Brand Media Campaign Manager
My CompareTheMarket journey began in February 2019 when, during my final year of university, I started applying for graduate schemes for that summer. I came across the BGL/CompareTheMarket marketing grad scheme and it really caught my eye — in particular, the testimonies of current and former grads explaining the trust and responsibility that CompareTheMarket offers, as well as opportunities to work on exciting projects at the forefront of its iconic brand.
Following a couple of rounds of interviews and an assessment centre, I was fortunate enough to be offered a place on the scheme and joined in September 2019. It was a two-year graduate scheme consisting of four six-month rotations in BGL/CompareTheMarket.
After six months in BGL working on SEO and Digital Marketing for some of BGL’s partner brands, I moved into my second rotation of the scheme, and my first at CompareTheMarket, in brand media planning. This brought me to March 2020 and the onset of the COVID pandemic, so my second rotation was (unsurprisingly) extremely eventful.
As a result, though, I was given plenty of opportunities to become immersed within the role and the world of brand media planning. I got to work on projects like Meerkat Music with Take That and Little Mix, alongside the campaign planning and reporting of Meerkat Movies and Meals. My scope included supporting in the media planning of TV, video on demand, out-of-home advertising and radio (amongst other channels) with our agency and to plan and buy the advertising/media space that our adverts would feature in — plus helping to track performance and ensure our plans were delivered to set budgets and KPIs. After six months, I knew this was the role that I wanted to return to post-scheme.
Before doing so, I spent a further six months in the PPC team, which was an invaluable experience. I learnt about one of our most important marketing channels, which involved harvesting consumer demand to ensure customers were converting with CompareTheMarket rather than our competitors. My role involved supporting with the spend forecasting, strategy and reporting of our paid search activity, which strengthened my analytical skills — something I really enjoyed!
During my third rotation, the opportunity arose to return to the brand media team for my final rotation before taking on a permanent role post-scheme. After my last six months of the scheme and a successful interview, I took up my current role as a Brand Media Planning Manager within the Brand Comms function — where I’ve been working since February 2021. Since then, I’ve been very lucky to work on some super exciting projects, such as the launch of CompareTheMarket x Caffe Nero, launching Carl the Wombat and onboarding our new media agency.
My core responsibilities involve managing and executing our brand media advertising plans, working with our comms team, media agency and media/advertising owners to make sure our ads are showing in the most effective places — whether that be on the TV, radio or social media, to name a few. A key part of this involves tracking and measuring our performance to consistently evolve our media buying strategy and working with other internal teams and our agencies to ensure we’re delivering the best plans for our audiences to achieve our goals.
As we’re continuously evolving our new media strategy, there’s lots to look forward to in the coming months and years for CompareTheMarket from a brand media perspective. From a personal perspective, my longer-term ambitions sit very much within brand media planning. I hope to continue to develop my media expertise as well as stakeholder and people management as I progress in the coming months and years.
