Spending time together in-person
In 2024, our staff were spread across multiple locations, but in 2025 we are all located in one building. It’s all white walls for now, but I’m planning on getting some glitter balls. I like making the space really dynamic. As a New Year’s resolution, I’m excited to be able to provide the most creative, inspiring space for all our employees, so they really enjoy coming in to collaborating. It’s really important in a business our size that we’re as connected as we can be, because there are so many different projects that we’re working on. Connectivity is key for our success.
We have been on a mandatory three days [in the office] for some time. We’re a service business with deadlines to meet and it’s so much faster to work together in the office. It slows us down when you have to book 30-minute slots on a screen, instead of being able to walk over to a creative director and share a quick idea, then go away.
Not all industries need to be together and that’s perfectly fine but, for us, there is a benefit. I’m keen to ensure that everybody understands from the day they join that there is a purpose for being together. There’s been a lot of press about more days in the office and I think the trend is that we’ll spend more time together. I believe that’s positive for business.
Standing for something bigger
In recent years, we’ve grown market share with Andrex and it’s a brand that’s performing well, but it’s also a brand that commands a pretty significant premium. In 2025, the opportunity and the challenge is to engage younger households, which are more sceptical and shop in different places from where big brands are typically sold. Younger generations might buy their toilet paper through social commerce or discount retailers, rather than supermarkets, for instance.
To reach this audience, we’re rapidly building our capabilities in social commerce and partnering with experts in the areas we want to put more focus and resources. Another way to reach younger customers is to stand for something bigger; that is going to be critical this year. Our “Get Comfortable” campaign is designed to tackle toilet taboos and puts Andrex at the centre of a very relevant health topic: bowel cancer. In 2025, we’re continuing our partnership with Bowel Cancer UK and investing millions of pounds to drive more awareness and ultimately get more people going to the doctor sooner.
Using technology to predict the future
In 2025, we’re trying to work out how to best utilise AI. We have a system in the business at the moment; we are using AI to make forecasting predictions based on past trends of annual cycles. For example, this might be linked to the weather impact on ingredients in certain products. It will really change how forecasting is done in the future.
We’re also investing in a new manufacturing facility, which we call the Blender. It uses all the latest tech so to have as small an impact on the planet as possible. It’s all electric and is powered by its own on-site solar farm. Instead of using water in the cleaning system, it uses high-powered air to push out any debris, so the water impact is far lower than a normal manufacturing site. It includes a lot of AI-powered robotics systems too. It’s been a huge investment and, in 2025, we want to share that knowledge and learning with others so we can help to raise the bar everywhere for manufacturing.
Understanding new generations
My New Year’s resolution is to really lean into what I’m seeing happening with generation Z. I think every company is about to get hit in the head with what is happening with gen Z, if they keep just doing the same thing. Part of that is just about listening. Are you listening to what’s happening on social media? Do you know what the trends are, what people are talking about, what they’re saying about your business, what they’re saying about your competitors?
The focus this year is on changing our business and our user journey to lean into what gen Z wants. They are a generation that grew up on self-service. They have Amazon in their hands at all times, Netflix at all times – and they don’t want to talk to a person to get done what they need to do. We’ve been investing a lot in our own product journey to make it so you don’t have to talk to a human.
There’s so much data out there to help with this and it’s one of the reasons we acquired consumer-intelligence platform Talkwalker in 2024. We’ve now embedded it everywhere across our company, not just in the software that we sell to our customers. We use it ourselves and we’re going to be doing more of that in 2025.
