It wasn’t just the impending festive period, and a chance to spoil his six-year-old twin boys, that put a spring in Andrew Murfitt’s step as he strolled down the high street this Christmas, it was also professional pride.
Murfitt and his team had been working throughout the year on an “ambitious” display roll out, and as the garlands and jingling bells joined the shop windows so did Citizen’s revamped point-of-sale material. “After all the hard work of launching the new Citizen display, it was fantastic to walk down the high street and see the change in how the brand looked in the jewellers’ windows,” recalls Murfitt, who is a keen mountain biker in his spare time.
The new campaign was well received by retailers and also had an impressive effect on consumers – sell through was up 7.8% in December, and the year as a whole delivered an uplift of 7.7%. “Citizen celebrated another record trading year and GfK figures also put us in pole position yet again,” says Murfitt. “Obviously having great product, as we do at Citizen, helps, but as brand manager you are responsible for spreading that message, which I think people are really receiving loud and clear.”
Since then, Murfitt has been working on a range of other initiatives – bolstering Citizen’s ladies’ watches, promoting its partnership with the Aviva Premiership League as Official Timekeeper and driving forward its online watch registration programme. But most important to him is to simply keep moving forward.
“We’ve had a phenomenal year in terms of the success of our marketing campaigns and sales, but, as always, and in keeping with our Better Starts Now philosophy, we look forward to building on our achievements into 2015 and beyond.”
