Creativity as a CX Differentiator with Matt Broekhuizen

With over 15 years shaping CRM and loyalty strategies for brands like LEGO, Sainsbury’s, and Sky, Matt has a tonne of practical experience to draw on. He joins hosts Chantelle Casey and Mark Clydesdale to talk about what it really takes to combine data, tech and creativity in a way that feels human and drives results.

Matt brings a rare blend of brand insight and performance thinking to CX strategy, sharing how his team breaks silos, builds creative momentum, and makes sure customer engagement actually reflects the brand.

This episode covers:

• How to align tech, data, and creativity into a triangle that actually works

• Why CRM and email can be your brand’s weakest links

• How AI can fuel creativity (not kill it)

• What it takes to build cross-functional teams that deliver

• Why creativity in CX isn’t just visual – it’s behavioural, and rooted in deep customer understanding.

Listen now on your preferred platform:

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Mark – 0:35  Welcome to The CX Equation, a podcast by Tap CXM. We share actionable insights and real-world case studies to equip you with the tools you need to drive loyalty, engagement, and sustainable growth. We’re your hosts, Chantelle Casey and Mark Clydesdale. On today’s episode of The CX Equation, we’re delighted to welcome Matt Broekhuizen, Head of Customer Engagement at VCCP. With nearly twenty years of experience leading loyalty and CRM strategy, including founding his own award-winning agency, Table Nineteen, Matt has worked with some of the world’s most recognisable brands from Sainsbury’s and BlackRock to LEGO and Canon. At VCCP, he now helps challenger brands design loyalty programmes and customer experiences that are not just data-driven, but truly creative and human.

Matt – 1:25  Hi, Mark. Good to be here.

Chantelle – 1:27  Hi, Matt. I don’t believe we’ve met before, so lovely to meet you for the first time.

Matt – 1:31  Nice to meet you.

Chantelle – 1:32  To get us going then, as Mark alluded to, you founded your own independent agency, Table Nineteen, and now for the last few years, you’ve moved to leading customer engagement at one of the world’s largest challenger networks, VCCP. What has that transition taught you about how creativity scales in the world of customer experience?

Matt – 1:51  Moving to an agency like VCCP, which is world-renowned for its creative capability, it’s not something I didn’t believe beforehand, but it’s enhanced my belief that brand should be central to everything, not just broadcast activity. In the CX space, that often gets forgotten, especially in recent times with tech and data being the focus for a lot of organisations. What VCCP advocates, and will always advocate, is brand first. I think that has only enhanced my belief that the way to truly stand out in customer engagement—and it comes with the caveat that you’ve got to get your data and your tech right; if it’s not right, I can see why the focus is there—is creativity. That’s the only differentiator once you’ve done the rest. VCCP advocates for that in everything they do. It’s not just from a customer engagement perspective; it’s from a social perspective all the way through to things like employee engagement. Everything should align back to what the Master Brand stands for.

Mark – 2:56  I think that’s very true, and we’ve worked together on a few clients now. My sense of the way the market is going is that data and technology, as you say, are becoming increasingly important. Particularly, maybe the decision-makers that you and I deal with are getting even more focused on data and tech. So, how do you ensure that kind of creativity remains a big part of the puzzle and is important to those decision-makers when talking about loyalty and CRM?

Matt – 3:24  It’s not always easy, especially when the focus is on tech and data. A lot of what has been sold when big tech is sold to organisations is that it’s going to create efficiencies. So, often, what they’re looking for first is a cost efficiency, not necessarily an investment in brand in more customer-centric channels. So, it isn’t always easy to ensure that we do. But, the white space that VCCP and my team are trying to get to is, and I don’t think anyone’s truly cracked this, to find that triangle working effectively of tech, data, and creative thinking working together in harmony. That means you do need to work with slightly differently-minded creatives that understand data and the power of data, which aren’t always easy to find. But, I think we’ve built a team now that recognises that you can be creative with data. Creative isn’t always about pictures and words. You can be creative with data. You can be creative with technology. That’s what we’re advocating. If we can get that triangle right, I think we are in a unique space. I don’t think a lot of people are trying to get there, but I don’t think anyone’s fully got there yet. Organisations we work with have got to catch up. There are organisations that invested heavily in data and tech ten years ago, and they’re starting to realise the benefit. It’s taken that long—I don’t think any of us can believe it’s taken that long—but they are starting to realise the benefit, and then they’re realising the only differentiator is the creativity behind it and the alignment back to brand.

Chantelle – 4:55  I guess, historically, data teams, technology, and creative teams have worked in silos. I’m starting to see them join the dots. 

Mark – 5:01  Different personalities as well, isn’t it?

Chantelle – 5:04  For sure. I can imagine that comes into play. Just on that, you’ve worked with some very well-known brands like LEGO, Sainsbury’s, and Sky. Can you share any examples of where you’ve seen that creativity unlocking unexpected value in the customer engagement side of things?

Matt – 5:19  In pockets, I can. A lot of what we advocate is about programmes; we would always talk about customer programmes, less about campaigns. One thing about working in a big, well-known advertising agency is they still think very much in campaigns. We’re doing a lot of work trying to get them to think more programmatically and more in programmes. Where we’ve been successful with clients, probably most successful was when we worked with Sainsbury’s. Sainsbury’s, obviously, realised a lot of value in their data, but we built a number of programmes for them which were solely focused on increasing basket size amongst the customer base. We ran programmes like the ‘Great Fruit and Veg Challenge’, a month-long programme we did for them, which was encouraging people to eat healthier, aligning back to their brand at the time, which was about healthy eating and choosing a healthier basket. It used gamified programmes to get people to change what was going in their basket, but also increase the value of it. People were rewarded with things like badges, stamps, and Nectar points, obviously. We also encouraged that behaviour by serving recipes or giving people ideas of what they could do. If they’d never bought an aubergine in the past, for example, we would encourage them to buy one, they’d get a badge for it, and then we’d give them a recipe to do it. Programmes like that really… we saw about half a million customers when we first did it sign up. I think it’s more now. They still run it every May. The basket size and the incremental amount—I’m not sure the exact incremental amount—but it was significant to the fact that they’re now, I think, in their fifth year of running it. Things like that. We also do a ‘Collect for Christmas’ programme for them as well. Christmas at Sainsbury’s starts in September, and we wanted customers to start thinking about their Christmas shop and saving Nectar points over the final quarter so they could redeem them on their final shop at Christmas. They could reward themselves with things, especially for price-sensitive customers. It was a really rewarding way of getting customers signed up. Then, more recently, the work we do with LEGO. They launched a new partnership with F1 recently, and we launched a whole programme for that that spanned the calendar of the F1 season, trying to get customers engaged. They would tell us their favourite team, and then we’d feed them with content during the period, but also ideas on what they could do for LEGO sets that aligned to their favourite teams and those sorts of things. Again, there are brand attributes that can be apportioned back to what we’ve delivered, but there’s also a commercial one as well. Thinking slightly differently, and importantly for the LEGO one, a big investment in a franchise like F1, helping them realise the value of it in creative programmes is what we specialise in doing.

Mark – 7:59  I don’t know if you can see the LEGO Formula One car in the corner there, but I’ve got a couple, and I’m a massive Formula One fan.

Chantelle – 8:06  I’ve got LEGO behind me as well. I’m not Formula One, but yeah.

Mark – 8:08  It’s a great brand, isn’t it? I remember the Miami Grand Prix this year, the drivers driving around on their formation lap to the grid in full-size Formula One cars made of LEGO. It was quite extraordinary.

Matt – 8:21  On that, there were lots of other things going on. We tied what we were doing, CX, into in real life experiences as well, which, again, we’re increasingly starting to do more of that stuff to tie up the brand ecosystem much better.

Mark – 8:34  Absolutely. I actually loved hearing your Sainsbury’s stories as well because I used to work for Morrisons, and you talked about the Christmas collecting the Nectar points. It was at Morrisons where we were getting people to collect receipts to then swap them for a £25 off voucher for their Christmas shop. Things like that worked really well. For me, what was so important about getting it right was starting with some form of customer insight. There’s a bunch of price-sensitive customers that need money off their Christmas shop. One of Morrisons’ successful ones was that they’d lose market share in summer because Tesco’s and Asda’s are easier places to shop. Morrisons doesn’t have the same kind of offering. That then gets you into thinking of ideas that can help a family around the shop in the summer. You’ve got to have that insight to root it in.

Matt – 9:21 Locking in that, as you’ll know working on Morrisons, the ‘golden quarter’, as they call it, that’s where they make all their money. So, locking that spend in over that period is a massive part of their commercial reality.

Mark – 9:33  Absolutely.

Chantelle – 9:33  As a consumer, I think I can tell how that works. I’m a sucker for those kind of things.

Matt – 9:37  That’s the kind of customer we like, Chantelle.

Chantelle – 9:39  Yeah, there you go, that’s a customer. Just on that then, I’m going to ask you a little bit more about how a lot of our clients we see at the moment have so many technology platforms where they can contact customers across lots of different touchpoints where they want to. But I think a lot of the time, it creates these fragmented experiences because they don’t understand how to use creative storytelling, like you were just saying, to bring coherence and emotional impact. Can you tell us a little bit more about how they can do that?

Matt – 10:07  I think it comes back to when email first… I’m old enough to remember when email wasn’t around, but when we used to send direct mail, a lot, there was a creative process to that, I think. Because email is so easy to send, and it’s so quick and easy to send, and anyone can do it. There’s been a big focus on in-housing, again, with that efficiency play, that the creative element has been stripped out of a lot of that in-house work. So, having a customer strategy and a joined-up channel plan is massively important. Understanding what channel is the right channel to use for what task. Keeping it aligned to a story, I would always advocate, is, “Is it on brand? Is it talking as the brand should be talking?” Often, you’ll find—you see it in your own inboxes—you get loads of things coming through, and it could be from anybody because they’re just trying to flog you stuff. No consideration is given to what the brand is. We’re working on a project for a well-known chocolate bar manufacturer. They have such a brilliant positioning in terms of generosity—you probably know who I’m talking about. They have a brilliant proposition. When we show their TV ads, the people we’re showing it to actually cry. They weep because it’s so emotional in terms of how it’s delivered. But then when we show them the customer work, the customer experience, customer CRM, loyalty-type work, it’s really cold. We don’t currently do this, so I should probably caveat that. It’s a really good example of how that disconnectedness is there. Often, direct channels can be seen as sales channels and not marketing channels. I think that gets lost in that hungriness for, “I’ve got to send more emails because that’ll get me more sales.” More consideration needs to be given to what it’s saying about the brand, because it’s not the people who are responding you need to worry about; it’s the people you’re sending it to who are not responding or not engaging. You have to consider that as much as you are the people who are.

Chantelle – 12:09  Just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should do it.

Mark – 12:11  It sort of brings us back to what we were saying earlier about the different personalities in a business. How can you get people in maybe more technical roles who are responsible for targeting customers and building emails and doing operations invested in the brand and the creativity part of it?

Matt – 12:32  We talk about this a lot, don’t we, Mark? I think you’re probably more qualified to talk about it than I am. But increasingly, we get asked that question by clients in terms of how should we organise ourselves so that we are customer-centric and so that we are delivering on a brand promise that has been set from the organisation. I really like your idea of squads and bringing expertise into squads, so you’re working less in a horizontal way, more in a vertical way. I’d really advocate that. I don’t think many clients are doing it yet, to be honest. So, I guess an agency’s role, our role, has become increasingly to tie those three things together. You get the left- and right-brained people in the room, and then we try and be the facilitator of the conversation. Because I have the same conversation with our tech team that we’re working with. They think totally differently. But from the outset, you involve everyone from the beginning. At least they’re understanding why we’re asking to make sure that there is brand alignment in everything that we’re doing.

Mark – 13:34  Humans, we’re an interesting bunch, aren’t we? I think there’s psychology out there that says we all think we’re right more often than we are. When teams are siloed, and you know your role and what you’re doing, the moment someone comes in with their different thinking, you’re naturally going to maybe not agree with it first time round. It’s only by putting people together and getting them to work together towards a common goal that they actually start to appreciate how clever we all are and how we all bring something to the table that means the overall result is the best result it can be.

Matt – 14:11  It’s like the NASA analogy of asking their cleaner what his job is, and he talks about it being he’s helping put…

Mark – 14:17  …a man on the moon. Exactly. For those listening, when we talk about squads, we’re talking about bringing together cross-functional teams. Rather than work in traditional departments where I might have creatives, CRM strategists, digital people, in-store marketers, all working within their specialisms, we actually pull those specialisms into a cross-functional team and give them an aligned purpose. That could be to sell a particular group of products or build experiences for a particular group of customers or meet a specific challenge. You’re bringing those skills together and giving them an aligned objective so they’re going to work with people that are bringing all of the skills as opposed to working in that kind of specialisms.

Chantelle – 15:05  I guess that helps on the flip side of it as well, not just making sure that the technical teams understand the value that the creative teams bring, but helping the creatives understand a lot more around analytics, tech, and operations, how things are actually built and executed, adds to that idea as well. It works both ways.

Matt – 15:25  That’s a really good point. We send our creatives to things like Salesforce conferences or Adobe just so that they can understand where the technology is headed, what’s the next big thing. They have a broad understanding. They’re not experts, obviously. They do think differently, but it does help them when we talk to them about certain ways we want to engage.

Chantelle – 15:45  Just on that then, the elephant in all rooms at those kind of conferences and talks at the moment is the topic of AI. Looking into the future, how do you see creativity in CX evolving with new technologies like AI and new personalisation technology? Is there a risk of that kind of automation wiping out the authenticity that you’ve worked so hard on?

Matt – 16:08  From an operational perspective or a creative perspective? From a VCCP perspective, I guess what we’re trying to prove is that AI is going to enhance creativity, not stifle it. I think we’ve started to prove that now. Some of the things that we’ve been building, like Daisy, the O2 granny who was intercepting scammers on calls. She’s an AI we invented that O2 brought to the field to try and keep scammers on calls for as long as possible so that they didn’t have the time to call anybody else. From a creative perspective and a business problem or human problem perspective, it’s only enhanced what we could do because you build it, you switch it on, and it’s fielding all these phone calls, which means that O2 customers aren’t getting bothered. So, from a creative perspective, I think it’s only worrying at the beginning, but I think it’s just going to get better and better. We literally don’t pitch now that hasn’t got an AI or a Gen AI element to it. In terms of the decisioning and helping you build programmes, I don’t think we’re quite there yet. Mark, you may know more than me on this. I don’t think we’re quite there yet. Smaller organisations are using platforms like Salesforce to automate certain types of communications and certain types of prompts and things that customers get. For a big brand to use them, those sorts of models will need training. They’ll need to understand what the brand is. We’ve started to do some of that work, but I don’t think most of our clients are still trying to get the tech and the data aligned. Making sure that the data is feeding into the tech, the CDP is working. Then we are usually operating one, maybe two channels, so the priority is more on the channel mix than it is on, “How do we move towards automation, automated decisioning, and all of other things?” Even modelling data, we’re only really in its infancy. I know there are organisations out there that are far more advanced than we are, but we are starting to look at how we are using AI to model data and things like that.

Mark – 18:05  It’s an interesting debate depending on who you are and the context that you’re debating it. I can’t see AI replacing the work that creative people in businesses do. I can just see it making them able to do some things that they couldn’t do before. For example, you’re a holiday company, and you’ve got a video of someone in a water park, and you find it’s now easier to remake that video of them on a beach instead using the same kind of people. You can then get into the debate about whether we’re costing actors jobs and other things like that. But, from where we’re sitting on the CRM side, we are going to enable people to probably do more stuff more quickly. But, there always needs to be the human there that’s coming up with, “What is it that we want to do in the first place?” to then prompt the AI to help them…

Matt – 18:58  That’s the point of view of VCCP. There is definitely a speed benefit that we’re seeing now, especially if you’re working on pitches and things. You can storyboard, you can create live concepts much quicker, that sort of thing. I think we’re still a little bit wary about using Gen AI in actual live campaigns.

Mark – 19:17  Of course, they should be. Another nice use case is for international businesses and its ability to maybe translate a video now using the same voice and even make it look like the person’s lips are moving in the right way for the new language. So I can immediately make a consistent message available to multiple regions.

Matt – 19:39  We have done that many times. For our international plans, where you might be doing an educational video, you only shoot it once, and then the AI does the rest in terms of lip-syncing it to the language that the audience needs and automatically updating it into the language. That sort of thing is definitely happening already.

Mark – 19:56  I’ve got a bit of a tangent question. You and I talk to clients about loyalty and CRM a lot of the time. Where does loyalty end and CRM begin?

Matt – 20:07  I think CRM can engender loyalty. CRM done well and across multiple channels, highly personalised, I think, can engender loyalty without you actually having a physical loyalty programme. We’ve proved that many, many times. I think the reason we added ‘loyalty’ to our name is because clients are increasingly asking about loyalty programmes as a scheme. Usually, that entails that there’s some form of currency involved in building it. So, I would say CRM can be a loyalty mechanic. I think the reason we call ourselves CRM and Loyalty is so that when clients see us and they are thinking about a loyalty programme, they’re thinking, “These guys know how to do loyalty.” I don’t think the organisations always put the two together. I also think CRM should be used to make sure customers stay engaged with whatever loyalty programme they set up and sign up to. Often, what you’ll find is that the organisation will set up a loyalty programme, but usually at great expense. It’s not fully integrated into an app or it’s easy to redeem or it’s not a regular purchase. You need the CRM to make sure that the engagement continues, and you can monitor behaviours like we used to do with Nectar, I guess. If you were continuing spending, you were visiting Sainsbury’s regularly, we knew that you were engaged. We’d have flags in that data. If you didn’t come to Sainsbury’s for two weeks and you’re a weekly shopper, we would use CRM to get you back into the store and back engaged into the loyalty programme. So, I don’t think you need a loyalty programme to ensure that loyalty happens within your customer base, but I can see the attraction to a client. For many organisations, it works to have a form of currency to drive that loyalty activity.

Mark – 21:56  Great. Interesting. Thank you. I think we’re kind of getting to the end of our time. You’re actually our first guest, Matt, and what we’re planning on doing is asking all of our guests similar questions as we get to the end of our podcasts. So, our first question to you to close out the session is, when you think about your own experiences, not in work, are there any particular brands or particular brand experiences that have truly impressed you?

Matt – 22:23  I ask this question when I’m interviewing people always, and then I think I should probably have an answer myself. From a personal perspective, the one that gets me every time, probably telling you more about me than anything else, is the Peloton programme. I was silly enough to invest in a Peloton bike during lockdown, and I think it does a really good job to make sure that I keep exercising and keeping me engaged in lots of different programmes and different exercises. But also, there’s that appeal to the competitive nature that I have in the leaderboards and the social element to it. Another driving factor to keep me pedalling on the bike.

Mark – 23:03  So, what is the programme? I’ve never been on a Peloton.

Matt – 23:08  Basically, the programme keeps you… it will reward you for exercising, first off, and then it’ll tell you off for not exercising or find ways to try and get you back into exercising. There are milestones that you’ll achieve that it’ll give you badges and rewards for, so it’s highly gamified. There are leaderboards. You can sign up with all your friends, and you can do classes at different times, and you can try and beat other people that you know. Sometimes, you’re racing against people in India and America, people that you know around the world, or you could do it with strangers. I used to use Strava quite a lot. Strava is obviously another one that gets called quite a lot, and I was heavily engaged in Strava and doing all the things that they do that Peloton do on a static bike. But I fell off during lockdown, and I broke two ribs. That stopped my outdoor cycling. So I continued it with Peloton indoors, and their app is the way that I motivate myself to keep going.

Chantelle – 24:01  Great. Just on a little sidebar with Peloton as well, I think that’s a really good example of how brand reputation really affects how consumers interact with a brand. I don’t know if you saw a few years ago, there was an actor, Chris Knopf, who was endorsing Peloton. He was in an advert for them. He got accused of sexual assault, and suddenly Peloton stocks dropped. He was just in an advert for it, and they dropped dramatically. I think that’s a really good direct correlation between what you’re putting out there as a brand, obviously, and then the customer’s experience and the emotional impact of that as well, like we were talking about earlier.

Matt – 24:37  Exactly. But, obviously, I like the programmes that we’ve designed as well, Mark.

Mark – 24:40  Yes, of course. That’s why I said outside of work.

Chantelle – 24:46  This is another bit of a personal one, but has there been anyone that’s been a really big professional influence on your career, and what have you learned from them?

Matt – 24:54  Again, this probably tells you more about me as an employer. Probably my dad. I learned from a very young age that having drive, determination, and energy is way more important than any kind of certificate of education or anything like that. I see it more now than ever that I will always look for drive, energy, and determination over someone who’s come out of university with a First or something like that. Because what we do isn’t rocket science. If you’ve got the determination to make what you’re doing, showing that you’re doing a good job and you’re willing to put in the work and the effort, I think that produces better account handlers. But I think it also produces better tech people, better data people, better creatives as well, to be honest. So, I think my dad probably taught me that. Both my brothers somehow have got it as well. So, I think that’s probably the biggest influence I’ve had on my career. In terms of work people, I learned my trade in an agency called Black Hat years ago, who were a massively successful business. I learned a lot from the leaders from that organisation, and a lot of what I learned from there was what helped me set up the agency I did set up sixteen, seventeen years ago.

Mark – 26:05  I love what you said about the drive and the determination. We’ve got a few people in our business that are where they are today without having a university degree saying how clever they are. Actually, I find the requirement to have a degree to get a professional job is quite a big barrier to diversity, equity, and inclusion. When you look at it, people from more deprived areas are less likely to go to university and get a degree. By putting that barrier on entry to the business, you’re immediately excluding a whole group of people. Why do we need it? Because you might find some extremely bright, driven, determined people that did not go to university who could be a real asset to your business. So, I think that’s a great answer. Thank you, Matt. I think that’s probably about all we’ve got time for. Thank you so much, Matt. It’s been great having you on. Looking forward to seeing you again soon.

Matt – 26:56  Thanks, guys. Enjoyed it.

Chantelle – 26:58  Thanks, Matt.

Mark – 27:03  So, how did you find our chat with Matt, Chantelle?

Chantelle – 27:06  I thought it was really good. I think one of the things that stood out to me was how he spoke about putting the brand at the centre of the whole customer experience – teams, anyone that’s involved in the customer experience. From technology to data to the creative teams, the brand should be at the heart of all of that. I’m a technologist myself. Maybe day-to-day with clients, we’re not thinking about what the brand is and how that impacts how we build things or what technology capabilities that we need to unlock. So, I thought that was a really interesting point that he said there. How about you?

Mark – 27:38  The fact that we spend so long helping clients get their data right and plug their tech in so they can react to a data trigger and send the right messages to the right channels at the right times. I love that when he said once everyone’s got that bit right, the only way to then differentiate between each other is the brand and the creativity. It shows how important creativity is even in our more technical world.

Chantelle – 28:07  Yeah, exactly. That’s what’s going to make your brands, your customer experiences, stand out from the rest.

Mark – 28:12  And nice to have an AI debate that wasn’t completely negative.

Chantelle – 28:17  Yeah, exactly. Using AI to unlock more creativity or more time for creativity. I thought that was a really interesting perspective.

Mark – 28:24  Great. Well, that’s it from us. I hope you’ve enjoyed the podcast. Thanks for listening.

Chantelle – 28:28 Please like and subscribe.

Mark – 28:33 The CX Equation is brought to you by Tap CXM. To find out more about what we do and how we can help you, visit tapcxm.com.

Chantelle – 28:39  And make sure to search for The CX Equation in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you usually find your podcasts. Make sure to click subscribe so you don’t miss any future episodes.

Mark – 28:50  On behalf of the team here at TapCXM, thank you for listening.