Judith Forth-Blake:
Wanted: Swashbuckling pirates, light-footed wenches, skilled makers of treasure-chests and an 18th Century military fort.
As you strapped on your eyepatch and picked up your best machete for the interview no doubt you said to yourself, “the marketing guru behind the scenes who thought this up is an eccentric dreamer with an eye for the dramatic”. But voila! Sedately sitting in the manager’s chair would be the tranquil Judith Forth-Blake.
Marketing manager at Courts Jamaica Limited, she is part of a multinational company that has the largest share of the appliance and furniture retail business in the English-speaking Caribbean. Forth-Blake allowed All Woman to interview her at home among her favourite flowers, orchids, and gives us an insight as to what motivates the ideas behind the Company’s extensive marketing campaigns, and of her involvement.
She immediately debunked the idea that successful campaigns are all about imagination, media savvy and technical know-how; but that it starts with the unglamorous task of crunching numbers.
“A lot of people see marketing as advertising, and it is not. The commercials come after. They are at the end of the process. We have to ensure that the experience that customers have is one that will sustain the business. One thing that Courts does, and it critical to our success, is that we do not take research lightly. We get a lot of customer feedback in different areas of our business all of the time, to ensure that we are meeting their expectations.
“So if we are having a promotion it is not something that we sit in an office and say, ‘OK we are going to do this’. It comes from an understanding of what is going to drive the business, what are the things that our market will respond to in a positive way. When you understand that, then you come up with an offer and then you package the message.”
Courts’ messages have become a part of the media landscape with reassurances that “we’re here for you” and temptations of the chance of a big prizes such as motor cars or cash. Who hasn’t heard of Bimmermania, Beetlemania, Worl’ O’ Cash and the current Treasure Chest.
This understanding of what the Jamaican customer wants started shortly after she graduated from CARIMAC and landed a job at the Jamaica Information Service. A professional experience that she ranks as being one of the best that she has ever had.
Speaking of her stint with government, Judith says, “At first I was not too enthused, but to my surprise it was one of my best working experiences, an excellent training ground for me. It was eight months, not very long, but I loved every minute of it. I got to discover Jamaica. I worked with Ken Chaplin and left a mark there. I put a package together for JIS television and the head, Neville Bramwell, was so impressed that he left South Odeon, where TV was at the time to Head Office to see who had put that package together. I also went to New Market to cover a story of a flooding in St Elizabeth and my story got a centre spread in the Star with my byline, something that was rare.”
She got further experience in Marketing at the Jamaica Institute of Management, and while there, used the opportunity to do all the marketing and most of the management courses offered by that institution. After doing that she went into advertising by joining the Grimax advertising agency, that had its own television studio, so she got first hand exposure to every aspect of the client’s business. She was assigned to the Courts’ Account and worked directly with Richard Coe who was the marketing director. From him she gained a practical appreciation of marketing and how to run “big money’ prizes, and admired his commitment to doing a job well.
The next challenge for Forth-Blake was to try her hand at directing the marketing thrust for a company. In 1993, Workers Bank was a formidable task.
She says that, “The bank had traditionally been a government bank and you don’t change overnight. My focus became developing the strategy and the programmes and the campaigns and we were able to change the entire image.”
The team there developed the innovative “Partner Plan” savings product that challenged the austere bank stereotypes and made it attractive to a new market.
Forth-Blake recalls that, “All the banks at that time were very formal and we came out with the first jingle using the local vernacular, and popular music, and that was a departure from everything that existed before and caught everybody’s attention and was hugely successful. The Partner Plan was based on a cultural practice and was developed from a study of the market.”
Riding on the success of the Partner Plan that had repositioned the bank in the public’s mind, Forth-Blake believed that the bank could have continued to be hugely successful as they were meeting their marketing objectives. However, after five heady years, that ended. She recalls sitting in her office one Monday morning in February, when about six Men In Black walked into the bank from Musgrave Avenue and posted signs that said that they were now in charge. In front of her eyes, Workers Bank had been Finsacked.
“Nobody had expected it”, she says, “the weekend before we had all been at the bank in a strategic planning retreat. So we came in the Monday quite hyped about the vision and what we were going to do.”
That was a turning point in her life and she started questioning her future in Jamaica. Her five siblings had migrated to the States and done well for themselves, leaving her alone here. She said that she always felt optimistic about her future in Jamaica; and in any case she did not like the cold of winter. For the first time since the death of her parents, she seriously considered migrating to join her relatives. The only thing holding her now, was her focus on completing her MBA.
Within days of the Workers’ takeover, Richard Coe, who was now the managing director of Courts, remembered her work at Grimax and invited her to join their team. After completing her MBA, she joined the Courts team and since 1998, has been responsible for developing all the promotional strategies for the company.
One successful promotion was the “Worl’ O’ Cash” game where customers got a chance to increase their winnings by grabbing money in a wind chamber. Forth-Blake said that she got the idea while attending a meeting in Florida, that was attended by Courts marketing managers from around the world. The Papua New Guinea representative had made a presentation on a similar game and she knew that it could also be a hit in Jamaica. When she returned home she did the background research that is necessary for a big game launch, and then contacted her Oceanic colleague to get engineering details on how the wind chamber worked.
Sometimes projects do not go according to plan which is why Forth-Blake insists that you have to be persistent and committed to your job so that when the going gets tough, you still have the motivation to go on. One promotion that she admits did not work out as well as they thought was the Beetlemania. She noted that they took a decision to go with the beetle after having two successful BMW runs because they wanted more people to win cars. A major Beetle marketing campaign that should have dovetailed with their promotion, and properly introduced the Beetle, a recognized sports car in Europe and the USA, to Jamaicans did not materialise, and they did not gain the advantage as they would have liked.
She also proposed and then headed the team that launched the telesales arm of Courts, and has launched the Web-site as an emerging business unit. The company has benefited from these moves in tangible ways as the telesales has contributed to an overall increase in sales. The Web-site is only a year old, but is already reaching untapped markets, and will be an important component of the company’s strategies.
Forth-Blake explains of the Web-site that, “Our primary target market is the Jamaican community overseas. On Valentine’s Day we got an order that originated from Saudi Arabia and shortly after we launched, we had an order from Norway. These are orders that we would not have done otherwise. The Internet is coming, it is not going.”
It would seem as if she is not going away either. She is once again optimistic about her future in the country and when she had almost resigned to living her entire life as a single woman, “along came my husband at a time when I did not quite expect it”.
Forth-Blake considers herself to be a spiritually aware woman who tries to allow God and teachings of the bible to guide her daily life. She had been involved in various organizations, including the Optimist Club, and quietly gives financial assistance to a boy’s home. All Woman asked what additional joy having a husband brought to her.
“Being married is so much better. You feel as if you have somebody in your corner; that makes it even more relevant. Somebody there who will put you first, who will support you, who will want you to do well. That is what he provides for me.”
Described by the people who know her well, or even passing acquaintances as calm, Forth-Blake shows that vision and method can reap excitement and bottom line results.
Gwyneth Harold is the author of the booklet Storyteller.
