A curated overview of three senior marketing candidates for amicable's hiring team.
Rigorous Candidate Qualification
To ensure an optimal fit for the Marketing Director role, each candidate was meticulously evaluated against four critical dimensions and responded to a comprehensive set of interview questions.
Leadership Style & Character
Relevant Experience
Motivation & Fit
Logistics & Practicalities
Key Interview Questions
Candidates were asked to provide detailed responses to the following strategic and tactical scenarios:
- Marketing Automation & Agentic Workflow: "Walk me through a marketing automation or agentic workflow you have personally architected and built from scratch. What was the exact tech stack, how did you ensure automated output did not compromise brand creativity, and how did it change your team's operational velocity?"
- Performance Channel Optimisation: "Can you share an example of how you have ruthlessly optimised performance channels to hit tight unit economics, preferably in a highly sensitive, emotionally charged category?"
- Strategic Headroom vs. Tactical Execution: "Tell me about a time recently when you had to move from a high-stakes executive meeting straight into executing a low-level, tactical task yourself due to lean resources. How did you protect your strategic headroom while getting your hands dirty?"
- Major Change Programme Leadership: "Tell me about a major change programme you led from inception to tangible success over a long tenure. How did you reinvent the marketing operating model, restructure the team or tech stack to support it, and what were the hard commercial outcomes that proved the transformation worked?"
Robert Watkins
Leadership Style & Character
Robert operates as a "player-coach" who comfortably navigates between board-level strategic discussions and hands-on tactical execution. He describes his upward management style to the C-suite as stoic, measured, and highly data-literate, whereas his downward management style is empathetic, direct, and focused on "cheerleading" his team.
He prefers operating in agile, structured, and fast-paced environments. He states he is most effective managing smaller teams (under 10 people) due to the ability to implement rigid sprint planning and asynchronous communication, actively avoiding the "pageantry" and bloated processes of larger corporate structures.
Robert Watkins — Relevant Experience
Question 1: At Ordnance Survey, Robert acted as the marketing data owner to build an automated customer engagement architecture connecting Amplitude and Braze. He integrated API event tracking to trigger gamified in-app notifications (e.g., rewarding a user for hiking to a specific trig point). He also integrated CMS web forms with Dynamics CRM to automate B2B lead routing based on user intent and role. To protect brand creativity, he utilises AI as a "thinking partner" for ideation rather than relying on it for generic content generation. This infrastructure replaced brittle manual data uploads, allowing the team to orchestrate journeys via agile sprint planning and story point valuation.
Question 2: Robert led the digital app growth at Ordnance Survey, increasing subscribers from 320,000 to 540,000 over 2.5 years. While not a traditional sensitive category, he notes the environment was highly emotionally charged due to deep brand affinity. He drove unit economics by raising the subscription price to £30 while maintaining a 3:1 LTV to CAC ratio with high margins. He achieved this by scrutinising profitability margins and championing incrementality testing to ensure paid media genuinely drove incremental growth, rather than just taking credit for customers who would have converted naturally.
Question 3: Robert frequently moves from Executive Leadership Team discussions regarding 5-year growth plans and budget trade-offs directly into hands-on tasks. He actively participates in physical photo shoots and reviews tactical AdWords accounts to verify incrementality testing. He protects his strategic headroom by remaining deeply involved in the agile sprint planning process, allowing him to challenge execution across social, email, and performance channels without losing high-level oversight.
Question 4: Robert led a massive digital transformation at Ordnance Survey, evolving the business from a heritage paper map provider to a consumer subscription and data technology platform. He reinvented the marketing operating model from a campaign-based structure to a data-driven growth engine supported by agile sprint processes and project management tools like monday.com. Commercially, he grew the core digital growth engine revenue from £7.8m to a projected £14m, achieving 20% year-on-year growth and fully replacing the paper map business revenue.
Robert Watkins — Why amicable & Why This Opportunity?
Motivation & Drivers
Robert is drawn to purpose-led organisations and states his best work happens at companies that truly stand for something based on trust and emotion. He is motivated by the opportunity to apply commercial rigor to amicable's mission.
Current Context
Ordnance Survey is currently undergoing structural changes that include the removal of the CMO role and the dissolution of the marketing function. While his position is not redundant, his role is being repositioned, providing him a window of opportunity to explore external leadership options.
Robert Watkins — Logistics & Practicalities
Salary Expectations
Seeking a base salary of £110,000 to £120,000.
Notice Period
His standard notice period is 3 months, but he has a short window where he may negotiate a one-month paid-in-lieu exit.
Location & Mobility
Based in Charlwood, Surrey.
Comfortable commuting to Holborn on a regular basis.
View Full CV Below 👇🏻
Danny Mahon
Leadership Style & Character
Danny is a highly commercial, data-driven operator who combines strategic oversight with hands-on execution. He prioritises genuine scope, board-level impact, and career satisfaction over job titles.
He excels in fast-paced, highly regulated environments (fintech, marketplaces) where he can collaborate closely with product, data, and compliance teams to remove funnel friction and drive measurable outcomes.
Danny Mahon — Relevant Experience
Question 1: At Pfida (an FCA-regulated Islamic finance firm), Danny rebuilt a slow creative workflow using an AI-centric stack. He fed raw Voice of Customer data into Claude to generate concepts, which were then deployed through Meta Ads Manager and HubSpot for A/B testing. To protect the brand in a faith-sensitive category, he loaded brand guidelines into the system and restricted final compliance sign-off strictly to human legal judgement. This workflow accelerated campaign deployment from 15 days to same-day execution and allowed a leaner team of three to produce significantly more output.
Question 2: Also at Pfida, Danny ruthlessly optimised acquisition by retiring expensive physical mosque events and replacing them with a digital GoToWebinar engine running pre-recorded webinars. He segmented customer funnels by intent and lifetime value (families, fast buyers, larger investors). This reduced CAC from £750 to £400, increased average lifetime deposits from 3x to 4x, and improved the LTV to CAC ratio from 2.4:1 to 5.5:1 within a highly emotional, faith-sensitive financial category.
Question 3: During a January senior leadership meeting, a major investor threatened to withdraw funds unless they could progress their home purchase faster. Danny immediately left the room to execute a tactical solution, redeploying a proven "investment window" flash sale mechanic. He personally pulled old HubSpot emails, wrote copy, adapted creative, and used AI to refresh the daily messaging, handing the final execution to his single available resource. This generated £350k in new investment in one day. He protected his strategic headroom by explicitly deploying a proven mechanic rather than inventing a new one.
Question 4: At Seat Unique, Danny transformed an inefficient marketing model where every event received identical marketing spend regardless of organic demand. He restructured the operating model into a demand-tiered system (A, B, C) and cut wasted affiliate margin on high-demand events. To support this, he implemented Monday.com to automate workflow tagging and task distribution. Commercially, this transformation delivered 112% year-on-year growth in new customers, a 182% increase in marketing-driven revenue, and scaled the team from 7 to 16.
Danny Mahon — Why amicable & Why This Opportunity?
Motivation & Drivers
Danny possesses profound lived experience with amicable's sector, having navigated his own divorce recently. He built a child maintenance app post-divorce and has spent significant time researching how to make the next stage of life amicable, giving him deep personal alignment with the mission.
Current Context
Danny transitioned to a fractional career path but is now actively seeking permanent employment for the right opportunity. He retains a one-day-a-week strategic role at Pfida but is actively interviewing for other permanent roles.
Herman Lopez
Leadership Style & Character
Herman describes himself as a direct, open, and sincere leader with an academic, curious mindset. He operates as a "player-coach" who empowers his direct reports by providing strategic direction while giving them autonomy to test new ideas.
He thrives when breaking down silos, having successfully transformed disparate channel teams (PPC, SEO, CRM) into a unified, collaborative "ecosystem" focused on collective business goals rather than isolated metrics. He uses data-driven persuasion (A/B testing, LTV metrics) to overcome resistance to change.
Herman Lopez — Relevant Experience
Question 1: At LloydsPharmacy Online Doctor, Herman identified an opportunity to utilise AI as a decision engine to personalise CRM journeys. Working with CRM, Clinical, and Compliance teams, he built a library of over 300 pre-approved content blocks. The tech stack included Claude, Acoustic, Fresh Relevance, Tantalum, and BigQuery. AI did not write any copy, ensuring zero compromise to brand or compliance, it simply selected the most relevant approved content based on patient data. This automated personalisation sped up deployment, reduced manual variations, and increased LTV from 1 to 3 purchases across several treatment categories.
Question 2: Following Pharmacy2U's acquisition, the Medicated Weight Loss market saw rapid CAC increases due to intense competition. Rather than increasing media spend, Herman shifted focus to broader unit economics, introducing regular cohort analysis and evaluating price elasticity and LTV by acquisition source. He strengthened the subscription proposition and allocated spend based on long-term value rather than simple CPA. This discipline increased the average number of orders per customer from 4 to 11 over a 23-month lifetime, fundamentally changing unit economics and allowing confident investment in acquisition.
Question 3: During the launch of a Two-Pen Bundle proposition, Herman spent the morning in high-stakes meetings with Commercial, Clinical, and Finance executives to agree on pricing, eligibility, and the go-to-market plan. Immediately following, he executed tactical tasks, reviewing landing pages, QAing CRM emails, and testing the end-to-end customer journey and tracking. He protects his strategic headroom by constantly seeking opportunities to standardise or automate repetitive bottlenecks once they are identified during tactical execution.
Question 4: Herman led the operating model transformation across LloydsPharmacy Online Doctor (and subsequently Pharmacy2U), shifting the marketing team from a channel-focused delivery function to a commercially driven growth engine. He integrated marketing with Commercial, Finance, and Clinical teams, and changed success metrics from acquisition to LTV and profitability. He embedded cohort analysis and AI-driven CRM personalisation. Commercially, revenue grew from roughly £26m to over £110m, EBITDA increased significantly, and LTV improved dramatically across multiple treatment areas.
Herman Lopez — Why amicable & Why This Opportunity?
Motivation & Drivers
Herman strongly connects with amicable's mission, drawing direct parallels between the highly emotional, critical life decisions found in divorce services and his extensive background in regulated healthcare. He is drawn to the business stage, viewing amicable as primed for scale where he can build smarter operational models.
Current Context
Herman is actively looking for a new role after his position was made redundant following a restructure from the Pharmacy2U acquisition. He officially finished last Friday.
Herman Lopez — Logistics & Practicalities
Salary Expectations
Seeking a base salary of £110,000 - £120,000
Notice Period
Immediately available .
Location & Mobility
Based in Emerson Park, East London.
Comfortable commuting to the office on a regular basis.
Shortlist - Marketing Director