John Bernard Mozilla Firefox OS marketing director and Hudds grad
John Bernard, Marketing Director for Mozilla Firefox OS, returns to the University of Huddersfield to talk to current students.
Thu, 13 Feb 2014 11:24:00 GMT
John Bernard, Mozilla’s Global Marketing Director for Firefox OS, returns to the University of Huddersfield to talk to current students
JOHN Bernard is an award-winning marketing expert whose impressive CV includes key roles with global giants such as Ford, Siemens, LG, Sony Ericsson and Mozilla Firefox. If he were to make another major move, corporations such as Coca Cola or Pepsi are at the level he aspires to. But it was the University of Huddersfield, he says, that gave him the grounding he needed before his career could take flight.
Mr Bernard – who holds the title Senior Marketer of the Year, awarded by the influential Marketing Week – is currently in charge of the drive to ensure global penetration of Mozilla’s new Firefox OS for mobile devices. His strategy is to target emerging markets where there is strong brand awareness of Firefox but where smartphone take-up has so far been slow.
He is therefore operating in territories that include Eastern Europe, Latin America and South East Asia. To begin with, entry level handsets are being marketed. In time, fuller-featured Firefox smartphones will follow.
The technology of mobile devices and operating systems is a rapidly changing one, with technical innovations on almost a weekly basis. But John Bernard describes his strategy as a timeless one.
“Whether you are a new entrant or an established player in an industry, if you focus on your brand awareness, and if you focus on the volume of your product and supporting sales of that product, you should have a level of success.”
Firefox OS challenge
In this video John Bernard talks about the challenge of his appointment by Mozilla.
St Alban’s born, he studied for his degree in marketing at the University of Huddersfield, graduating in 1995 and taking his first job with the Granada group, with its motorway services and Travelodges. “I was basically getting people to spend more money in petrol stations!”
Then came a move into the mobile phone industry, with marketing roles at some of the biggest names in the sector, leading towards the Firefox OS challenge.
He is committed to the company and its technology, but believes that core marketing skills are the same whatever the sector.
“It does help if you are passionate about your industry. For example, I love the fact that we help people communicate and get online, things that maybe they previously couldn’t do.
“But I think I could apply myself to, say, paper clips, because a lot of the levers of marketing – such as sponsorship, direct marketing, online sales – remain the same. It is about your attitude. I would want ours to be the best paper clip and I would want to sell the most paper clips. I think good marketers can probably flip to another industry, because the skills are transferable.
Huddersfield graduate – class of ‘95
“I think the University of Huddersfield is great because I don’t think I would be doing the job I am or having the measure of success I have had without the grounding that it gave me.
“You are taught about the essentials of marketing, plus life-skills such as negotiation and how to deal with difficult situations – the building blocks which apply when you go out into the big, wide world.”
Is there another sector that could attract him?
“I think that the work that Coca Cola is doing – its adverts, the marketing, the positioning – is really very good. If I were to move into another industry outside telecoms and mobile, I would choose someone like Coke or Pepsi. It’s another dynamic industry with two or three close competitors and lots of platforms to get involved in.”
Meanwhile, Mr Bernard is providing inspiration to the next generations of successful marketers. Returning to the University of Huddersfield he lectured and held discussions with a cohort of current undergraduates. Questions came thick and fast and the session over-ran by 20 minutes – “Not a bad sign really!”
