We\u2019re sitting upstairs in the diningroom of the famous old Red Lion pub on Parliament Street in Westminster, but part of me wishes we weren\u2019t. It\u2019s my fault. I picked the place. <\/p>\n
The pub, which sits just beyond the back gate to the houses of parliament, has a reputation as a favoured haunt of politicos. But they usually just drink here. Only tourists hoping to catch a glimpse of a famous face choose to eat at the Red Lion.<\/p>\n
Now I\u2019m beginning to understand why. <\/p>\n
Lorraine Butler is no tourist. The effervescent Laois woman, who runs the UK and Ireland arms of outsourced sales group CPM International, politely pushes a frankly weird-looking lump of fish pie around her plate. I feel guilty for getting her into this.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, I\u2019m pretending not to be hungry after inhaling a Lilliputian slice of drab quiche \u2013 it took just two forkfuls to dispatch the lot. It should be renamed on the menu as Copperfield Quiche, because the magician couldn\u2019t make it disappear any faster. <\/p>\n
How\u2019s the fish pie, I ask.<\/p>\n
\u201cFine,\u201d she beams, poking it. \u201cHow was the quiche?\u201d<\/p>\n
Perfect, I lie right back at her. Never complain was part of the late British Queen Elizabeth\u2019s old motto. Right now, it\u2019s just as apt for these two Irish people in London.<\/p>\n
Butler splits her working week between CPM\u2019s offices in Buckinghamshire, just west of London, and the company\u2019s Irish headquarters in west Dublin. Mondays and Fridays are spent in Dublin, Tuesday to Thursday in Britain. She\u2019s too affable to admit it, but something tells me Butler won\u2019t be spending her weekends eating at the Red Lion.<\/p>\n
This year is a blizzard of anniversaries for Butler and CPM, which is owned by the New York-listed marketing communications giant Omnicom. CPM celebrates 40 years in Ireland and 90 years in its home country, Britain, where it was founded as Counter Products Marketing \u2013 the business originally marketed Mars products on shop counters. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the former Eir executive has just celebrated 10 years running CPM\u2019s Irish business, while it is five years since she took over the UK operation too. Finally, in December, Butler turns 50. She has tickets for this year\u2019s Electric Picnic in her home county, determined to attend the music festival for the first time before the half century.<\/p>\n
Butler runs the Irish and UK businesses as separate units with distinct balance sheets but says they have joint revenues of about \u20ac140 million. The Irish unit, which has trebled in size since she took over, accounts for near 30 per cent of this figure. Joint staff numbers are 3,500.<\/p>\n
The British business, meanwhile, is expanding more slowly in Britain\u2019s moribund economy, but has still grown close to 20 per cent during Butler\u2019s five-year tenure.<\/p>\n
CPM runs outsourced sales teams for its clients, which are mostly fast-moving consumer brands such as Samsung, Vodafone and Guinness-owner Diageo. In Britain it also has contracts with brands including Porsche and British Airways. <\/p>\n
Tough place<\/p>\n
Running a broad brand-focused business in two different countries gives Butler a unique insight into the how consumers are faring in each. Broadly speaking, Butler says, Ireland is okay but Britain is in a very tough place.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got momentum in Ireland, years and years of growth. There is still a general business optimism in Ireland and a sense of \u2018let\u2019s get things done\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
In comparison, how does it feel in the market in Britain?<\/p>\n
\u201cOverwhelmingly, it is quite negative, although it can depend on the category. Fast moving consumer goods are really challenged. The drinks industry is really challenged, although non-alcoholic drinks are compensating for the alcoholic ones,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Consumer electronics in the UK are \u201con the floor\u201d. She says many straitened British consumers are struggling to afford to replace their bigger brand-name items.<\/p>\n
\u201cNew Chinese operators are coming in to deliver at costs that people can afford \u2013 TVs, washing machines. They used to come from Korea, but now it\u2019s all from China. With the eventual obsoleteness that is built into most technology nowadays, British people don\u2019t always have the luxury of being able to replace big brands any more.\u201d<\/p>\n
The long-running UK consumer confidence index published by GfK (Growth from Knowledge) has just fallen for the third month in a row to its lowest level for almost three years. Meanwhile, surveys show many businesses expect output to decrease.<\/p>\n
While Butler and I are eating upstairs, there are probably MPs at the Red Lion bar down below. If not there, they will be around the corner in parliament, shouting at each other in the House of Commons. Does Butler feel the ongoing sense of political chaos that has long gripped Britain is a worry for many of the big consumer brand owners?<\/p>\n
\u201cThey absolutely do worry about it,\u201d she says, adding that many are concerned about how they can influence policy. The Republic is seen as far more stable, she says.<\/p>\n
Yet those engaged in the Irish economy don\u2019t always have the luxury of simply gawping over the garden fence at what is happening to our next door neighbours. Butler says the ructions in Britain are having a direct influence on how some big international brands are structuring their Irish businesses.<\/p>\n
The Irish operations of Samsung, for example, are now almost wholly run from Britain.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany brands are de-layering their UK businesses and moving their Irish and UK operations closer together for administration purposes, to cut costs. With growth as slow as it is in Britain, some are then cutting their Irish operations to protect UK profits. They take from Ireland to offset challenges in the UK. That is definitely happening.\u201d<\/p>\n
Butler says Irish businesses can learn a lot from their British counterparts on how to handle scale in a bigger market. But British businesses, she suggests, have much they could learn from Irish operators about entrepreneurship and how to be nimble. <\/p>\n
\u201cUK businesses are focused on taking out those layers and simplifying, although it\u2019s probably not happening as quickly as it needs to. It takes longer to get things done here.\u201d<\/p>\n
CPM, meanwhile, motors on. The UK and Ireland units combined are in line for annual growth of \u201c8 or 9 per cent\u201d, she says. It is harder won in Britain. Butler says earning growth last year in Britain made it one of the toughest years of her career.<\/p>\n
The company recruits and develops sales teams for consumer brands, trying to get their products stocked by retailers and distributors.<\/p>\n
Ten or 15 years ago, a salesperson might have \u201cgot into a car with their briefcase and done five or 10 calls, knocking on doors, hoping for the best\u201d.<\/p>\n
Now, the company harvests wide pools of data and uses artificial intelligence to make the whole process smoother and more efficient for sales teams.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow with technology, before they get up in the morning, they already know where to go because the technology tells them. It tells them what to say when they get there. We take data from a wide variety of sources and dissect it in real time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sales staff get alerts on traffic when they\u2019re driving, alerts on whether to call in person or to make an offer over the phone \u2013 which is obviously cheaper to do. The technology helps to work out what specific offers might suit specific clients.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe knowledge gleaned from the technology saves 30 per cent of the time on a call. So you can make 30 per cent more calls. Or you can try to sell 30 per cent more stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
CPM has been using big data since 2018, but recent advances in AI have speeded up the process. A year ago, its 3,500 staff got one million daily alerts. Now it\u2019s 1.3 million. Butler says AI drove \u00a322 million in sales growth for her customers last year with no investment.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not just a people business any more, we are a people-supported-by-technology business. But you still have to do the old fashioned work of building relationships. I spend as much of my time as I can with our clients, and with my clients\u2019 clients.\u201d<\/p>\n
Background<\/p>\n
The fast-whizzing, head-spinning world of consumer goods is a far cry from Butler\u2019s background on a farm in Killeshin in Co Laois, near the Carlow border. She is one of eight girls. \u201cI think Mammy and Daddy got sick of trying for a boy and gave up.\u201d<\/p>\n
After convent school in Carlow she wanted to be a teacher and went to UCD for an arts degree. But she \u201cabsolutely hated it\u201d and dropped out after less than two years. Butler went back to college at the old Institute of Technology Tallaght (now part of TU Dublin) to do computer science.<\/p>\n
While in between courses and then back at college, Butler worked for five years in Pizza Hut in Rathmines. A couple who were regular customers there gave her a job in their software business. After a few years it moved to Germany but Butler did not want to go and switched to recruitment, first for the now-defunct Marlborough, later for Sigmar.<\/p>\n
During the Celtic Tiger era in 2001, she wound up in Eir selling phone lines to businesses in the booming construction sector. Over 14 years with the company, she was repeatedly promoted and wound up running its business sales division. The company used CPM, and just over a decade ago Butler was tempted over to run its Irish unit.<\/p>\n
At the time, its turnover was \u20ac13 million. Then Xavier Neil, the last of a long line of Eir\u2019s corporate owners, who does not believe in outsourcing, ended its contract with CPM (and a host of others) and Butler had to rebuild the business on the hoof.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was heart breaking,\u201d she says. But she did it.<\/p>\n
When she took over, Butler says many fast moving consumer goods businesses were run by men and some of them \u201cwouldn\u2019t answer my calls\u201d. Bear in mind, this was only a decade ago, not the 1950s.<\/p>\n
She recalls chasing one particular executive who never rang her back. One day she spotted him in CPM\u2019s offices and directly confronted him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI asked him why he wouldn\u2019t return my calls. He said \u2018you haven\u2019t a clue what you\u2019re doing and you\u2019re a woman\u2019. I told him I could do nothing about being a woman but I definitely knew what I was doing. I got him to explain his business to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, says Butler, this man is \u201cone of her best friends\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe killed each other. Then there was a common respect there once we\u2019d had it out.\u201d<\/p>\n
She set up a business network called Twig (Today\u2019s Women in Grocery \u2013 big retailers and supermarkets are the customers of her brand clients). It held annual gatherings with speakers from Tesco and other businesses. Twig did lots of press interviews, helping to boost Bulter\u2019s profile. <\/p>\n
\u201cMy customers saw I was engaged with their customers and then they started returning my calls,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Back to the present and immediate future and her responsibilities on both sides of the Irish Sea, Butler says there are challenges facing CPM\u2019s Irish unit, which are manageable, but the difficulties facing businesses in Britain are a \u201cmultiple\u201d of this.<\/p>\n
But she intends to drive forward.<\/p>\n
Her Irish home is in Laois, but this summer she plans to move her family, including husband Jeff and their five year-old son Kelligh, whom they adopted from Thailand after years of trying, to live in London full-time for five weeks. The dog is coming, too.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, however, Butler admits she is a \u201chome bird\u201d. She\u2019ll be back to commuting across the seas in September when Kelligh starts school in Ireland.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a different business culture in Britain but I\u2019m at peace with it now. You just have to lean in to it. We Irish, we\u2019re a nation of relationship builders. So that\u2019s what I do. There is a lot more we can achieve by working together.\u201d<\/p>\n
CV<\/p>\n
Name: Lorraine Butler.<\/p>\n
Age: 49.<\/p>\n
Job: CEO of CPM International in Ireland and the UK.<\/p>\n
Lives: Killeshin, Co Laois \u2013 built a house on the family farm.<\/p>\n
Family: Married to Jeff, son Kelligh (5) and dog Bart.<\/p>\n
Hobbies: Keeping fit and pitchside support for Kelligh.<\/p>\n
Something we might expect: \u201cI operate in the fast lane, with high energy and drive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Something that might surprise: She won a singing scholarship while at college \u201cbut now I only sing in the pub\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We\u2019re sitting upstairs in the diningroom of the famous old Red Lion pub on Parliament Street in Westminster,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":930042,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[748,260307,393,4884,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-930041","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-eir","12":"tag-england","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-northern-ireland","15":"tag-scotland","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116497577904403644","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=930041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/930042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=930041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=930041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=930041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}