At a time when consumer attention is fragmented across infinite feeds and platforms, Jessica Myers, Chief Customer Officer at The Very Group, delivered a marketing masterclass on how to build true brand distinction, internally and externally. Her session at MAD//Fest wasn’t just a brand campaign debrief. It was a data-rich, emotionally grounded playbook for how Very turned its marketing from “good” to “Very good”, and backed it with commercial performance.

Jessica opened with a metaphor that would thread through the session: be the flamingo in a flock of pigeons. A symbol she credits as both brand icon and strategic north star. But this wasn’t just about attention-grabbing creative. It was about building emotional fluency and long-term brand equity.

Very's context was tough. A once-beloved catalog brand disrupted on all fronts, retail competitors had gone digital, fintech challengers had entered their core lending category, and even the brand itself had lost confidence. When Jessica joined in 2022, her goal wasn’t just to refresh the look and feel. It was to reinvigorate relevance, internal alignment, and commercial momentum.

Very holds 500+ data points on every customer. But instead of defaulting to generic segmentation, Jessica’s team ran value-based and attitudinal segmentation in parallel to surface a new hero persona: the Hustler Mum. Busy, budget-conscious, joy-seeking, and fiercely loyal to her family. She became the anchor for creative, media, and measurement decisions, a powerful reminder that the best campaigns start not with an idea, but with an intimate understanding of the customer.

The team layered this understanding with cultural research, zeroing in on a hyper-relevant British subculture known as “Hun Culture”: maximalist, joy-filled, unapologetically extra. This insight, rich in emotional fluency, allowed Very to reconnect with its core audience and build brand codes that stick.

Very’s transformation was powered by what Jessica calls the “More Machine”, a framework inspired by System1's creative effectiveness principles: Fame, Fluency, and Feeling. The bar wasn’t to be good. It was to embody “Very good”, defined as the emotional lift a consumer feels when everyday moments are made bigger, brighter, bolder.

That came to life through animated flamingo mascots (Terry, Kerry, and Cherry) and a series of campaigns spanning Christmas, Back to School, and Black Friday. But unlike seasonal one-offs, Very ran the same high-performing creative across multiple moments, tweaking and reoptimizing based on data. The result? A top-1% score on System1’s ad effectiveness database and 3.5% YoY sales lift.

In an industry that often mistakes novelty for strategy, Very proved that consistency compounds.

Fashion is a strategic growth lever for Very and one where attention to both inspiration and affordability matters. Rather than dilute the brand’s core strategy, Jessica’s team extended the flamingo narrative into fashion-specific campaigns. The “House of Flamingo” TVC marked Very’s first return to TV fashion in seven years and retained their distinctive brand codes while speaking to a new emotional layer: style confidence.

Importantly, these creative assets were built not by an external agency, but by Very’s in-house production team, Pełlet Studio. It’s more than a content arm. It’s a data-driven engine designed to build custom, signal-rich creative at scale offering brands the measurement clarity Fospha champions: emotional consistency plus commercial proof.

And it’s working. Very has now relaunched its retail media offering under a new banner, Very Media, with brands like Meta, Ray-Ban, Apple, and Under Armour leveraging their data and creative infrastructure to drive joint outcomes. It’s a case study in how full-funnel measurement, brand insight, and creative excellence can co-exist.

Jessica closed with a message few CMOs emphasize enough: brand health starts inside the building. From flamingo-themed recognition walls to warehouse décor, Very has embedded its brand strategy into internal rituals, decision-making frameworks, and employee experience. The brand isn’t just a campaign, it’s an operating model.

For marketers seeking to drive meaningful change, her final advice was clear:

This article was produced as part of MAD//Fest 2025 coverage, with support from Fospha. Fospha is the leading full-funnel measurement platform built for retail brands. From upper-funnel investment to downstream impact, Fospha help teams prove what works - daily, across every channel. See how at Fospha.

That’s your 24-hour head start.

Keep this guide handy, make your picks, and book your meetings early — the most valuable conversations won’t wait. See you in Shoreditch.

— The Unofficially MAD//Fest Team