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Philip Borthwick
Chief Marketing Officer at Vivobarefoot
Professional Background
Philip Borthwick is a highly accomplished, creative, and commercially astute strategic leader with a career spanning several high-profile roles across competitive industries. With his expertise in progressive marketing, Philip has developed an impressive track record in formulating integrated global go-to-market strategies that cover diverse channels including product merchandising, eCommerce, retail, and wholesale. His strong focus on transformative growth has made him a key player in the high-tempo businesses where he has spent his career, always aiming to harness new solutions to adapt to the ever-changing landscape of consumer culture.
Philip's contributions have consistently been characterized by a growth mindset, a trait that energizes him each day as he eagerly boards the early train to work. As an inspirational leader, not only does he focus on driving results, but he prioritizes developing outstanding talent and uniting cross-functional, international teams. His efforts have significantly shaped market-leading consumer brands.
Over the years, Philip has gained rich experience across a broad category mix, primarily focusing on Consumer Soft Goods, Digital Entertainment, and Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG). This flexibility has allowed him to adapt to varying market conditions while consistently delivering exceptional results.
Education and Achievements
Philip began his educational journey at Archbishops CE where he laid a solid foundation for his future endeavors. While the specifics of his further educational qualifications are not mentioned, his extensive professional experience speaks volumes about his knowledge and expertise in the marketing and branding domains.
Throughout his illustrious career, Philip has achieved remarkable milestones that are a testament to his strategic vision and execution capabilities. Some of his key achievements include:
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Incremental Sales Generation: Philip delivered an astounding $38 million in consumer sales within an impressive 18-month timeframe through the creation and execution of the innovative global product franchise, RePowered. This initiative brought a new generation of consumers into an established brand, reinforcing his ability to merge traditional strengths with modern consumer preferences.
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Integrated Marketing Success: He masterminded an integrated go-to-market approach across a carefully curated group of heritage brands within the EMEA region. This initiative resulted in a remarkable 20% increase in forward order revenue and a phenomenal 38% pre-tax profit increment, attesting to his effectiveness in brand positioning and strategic marketing execution.
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Brand Strategy Revitalization: Philip played a pivotal role in redefining the brand strategies, cultures, and behaviors of an iconic global consumer brand. This strategic overhaul facilitated a $150 million revenue growth over just 4 years, highlighting his capability to influence and direct significant organizational change.
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Community Building: His innovative approach extended beyond traditional metrics; he focused on creating community connections. Philip successfully built a social community of over 2 million consumers, significantly transforming reach, conversion rates, advocacy, and consumer loyalty, which are indispensable in today's digital-first marketplace.
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Award-Winning Campaigns: His industry contributions have been recognized through numerous awards for delivering creatively disruptive yet commercially powerful marketing campaigns. This accolade underscores his expertise in understanding consumer dynamics and applying that knowledge to diverse brands and categories, resulting in scalable successes.
Career Milestones
Philip's career trajectory has been marked by a series of distinguished positions, each adding valuable experience that has contributed to his current role as the Chief Marketing Officer at Vivobarefoot. Previously, he held the positions of Marketing and Product Director EMEA at Cat Footwear under Wolverine Worldwide, where he influenced marketing initiatives across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. His tenure as the EMEA Marketing Director for Heritage Brand Group (which includes prestigious brands like Hush Puppies, Sebago, Cat Footwear, and Wolverine) provided him with an expansive scope to apply his marketing insights to well-established brands, yielding impressive results.
Before his time at Wolverine Worldwide, Philip was instrumental as a Global Brand Marketing leader at Dr. Martens — Airwair International Ltd., where he contributed to maintaining the iconic status of the brand within the global market. Additionally, his foundational years as a Group Account Director at Davison Smiley-Jones and as a Senior Account Director at Claydon Heeley Jones Mason further honed his abilities to drive functional excellence in marketing and account management.
Personal Insights
Philip Borthwick is not only a seasoned strategic leader in marketing but is also known for his passion for embracing change and fostering innovation within teams. His engagement in high-energy environments reflects a relentless drive to pursue excellence. He thrives in roles that challenge the status quo, enabling him to leverage his marketing acumen for transformational projects that align with emerging consumer trends.
In the constantly evolving marketplace, the blend of Philip’s visionary approach and his hands-on experience positions him as a valuable asset to any ambitious company looking to enhance its marketing strategy or drive dramatic growth.
As Philip continues to champion innovative strategies, develop talent, and enhance brand presence, he remains a formidable figure in the marketing landscape and a true inspiration to those around him. His career path illustrates not only his commitment to professional excellence but also his ability to adapt and lead in a dynamic business environment.
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Clay works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Clay offers several powerful features including:
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- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
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Clay is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Clay is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Clay as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Clay offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Clay takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Clay encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Clay work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Clay is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Clay is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Clay is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Clay offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Clay offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Clay for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Clay accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Clay offers extensive integration capabilities. Clay introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Clay supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Clay also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
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Clay makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Clay's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Clay is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Clay stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Clay excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Clay is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Clay offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Clay is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Clay's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Clay has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Clay is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Clay beneficial.
Clay offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Clay offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Clay's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Clay offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Clay focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Clay also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Clay offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
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Clay is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Clay helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Clay's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Clay has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Clay a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Clay's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Clay's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Clay has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Clay's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Clay as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Clay eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.