Through The Lens: Tara McRae

In this interview, Rankin sits down with Tara McRae, the Chief Marketing and Digital Officer at Clarks, to discuss inspiring creativity, managing a brand’s global esteem, and the importance of being the best client you can be. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Rankin: Tara, great to have you. Let’s kick off. Where did it all start for you? What were you doing when you decided to go into marketing?

 Tara: It all started at university. I took some amazing classes on branding, marketing, communications, and PR, and just really fell in love with it. Then I got really interested in marketing and my first gig out of college was out in Los Angeles at an agency. So, I was on the agency side at the beginning of my career.

Rankin: And what made you move to the brand side?

Tara: I fell in love with brands, and I was lucky enough to be able to work for one of my favourites, Bose. An opportunity came up early in my career and I jumped at it. I grew up loving those products, aspiring to own these products. I was a big, big music fan. So I jumped at it.

Rankin: You seem to stay at brands for quite a while. The best people do seem to stay places…

Tara: I believe in staying in a brand for quite some time to see a full cycle because I really don't think you can get under the skin of a brand and really go through the cycle. And without spending some time there on brands, especially like a brand that I work for right now, you have years of rich history, you go through a lot of cycles. So, for me, having been at the brand for a handful of years, I've seen it go through the cycle and evolve. I'm not a big fan of jumping around from brand to brand.

Rankin: It's not just loving the brand is it. It's believing in it. It seems to be that you believe in the philosophy, and you believe in the quality of it. Is that important to you?

Tara: For me to work for a brand, I have to believe in it. I really have to buy into it. And again, I've been lucky enough if I think back to my days at Bose, when Amar Bose was still alive and still running the company, when he founded Bose he was a massive music fan. He loved live music and he would go home and not be able to replicate the sound that he heard in live music and that emotion. He worked endlessly to build music systems that could replicate live music. Everybody knows the story of the Dassler brothers. They used to be one shoe company, and then they broke up and Puma and Adidas formed as separate shoe companies. To me, that's just such a unique story; the competitive nature that it started so many years ago.

Rankin: And while Clarks were around before sneakers, it’s innovative technology that you’re putting into the work…

Tara: I think Clarks has been an inventor of many different ways to make shoes and they're responsible for so many innovations in shoe making that we haven't talked about historically at all. I think now those are opportunities. I think the consumers are interested in really authentic brands. In my opinion, there isn’t a more authentic brand in footwear than Clarks.

Rankin: When you’re hiring people, are you looking for the same sort of passion that you have for it? Is that your way of keeping the quality up within the team?

Tara: We look for partners that we can get along with, obviously. But often what we find is there's a lot of people that have personal relationships with Clarks, whether it's school shoes growing up, whether it's their love of hip hop and following the Wallabee culture. That is very important to us because we found that with our agency partners we hire into the brand they’re people that have had an authentic or intimate relationship with the brand and they can think back to their passion for the brand. It really does make a difference.

Rankin: That's what a lot of brands are trying to buy into the moment. You've got it running through the DNA of the brand. Do you think that makes it easier or harder?

Tara: I would say it's a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing that we have nearly 200 years of rich history, legacy, and perception. And it's a curse because we have years of rich history and authenticity. So it's definitely something that we like to excavate from, in order to push the brand forward, modernise it and evolve.

Rankin: Going into the role, did it make you nervous, or was it just really exciting?

Tara: Taking over the role at Clarks for marketing and digital has been really exciting. Of course, I'm nervous every day. People that tell you they're not nervous… I’d be concerned about them. To me it's exciting. I'm so humbled and honoured to be able to lead these functions at Clark's. Such an iconic brand.

Rankin: How do you inspire creativity within, let's say, an agency?

Tara: Whether it's working with our internal creatives or working with an agency, I believe in setting super clear directions and being very articulate with what the goal is so everybody's clear, and then giving everybody freedom within a framework. That's the easiest way. If you choke a creative brief, it can be the worst thing out there. But if you give everybody the guardrails and the guidelines, that's what I have found has been the best at finding greatness within creatives, really empowering them.

Rankin: Is it any different to work with a brand like Clarks than, say, Bose? Or is it just a kind of shift of how you bring those guardrails?

Tara: I think the most important thing for any creative internally or externally is to truly understand the brand – really understanding the brand, understanding the product, and being very articulate on who the consumer target is. That's the most important thing, because then you'll know where you can push the brand. If you're not as familiar with the consumer target or with the brand, that's when I've seen people struggle.

Rankin: When you’re hiring, do you keep in mind that someone has an openness to hearing other people’s perspectives?

Tara: I'm a sponge, so I'm constantly asking questions. But we bring on agency partners because they're experts in that space. If we were experts in that space, we would just do it ourselves. We bring on the agency partners to complement what we're really good at. And I think for us, it's really important that we find agency partners that can jive with our internal team so that we're one team together. I also feel very strongly, and the team knows this, that we have to be the best clients, and if we're not the best clients you'll never get the best out of your agency partner. A lot of the time I think that relationships can fail when the clients don't look at themselves in the mirror and say, ‘maybe we haven't been the best clients’.

Rankin: Can you explain what a best client is?

Tara: Rebels of the same thing. I believe being a great client means being super honest. And I know it's really hard to not like a creative or not believe that the creative works for the brand, but being brutally honest, being very consistent and being clear with the partner, and changing things as you go along, is a big strength for agencies.