Gousto CMO Tom Wallis to depart

CMO Tom Wallis is leaving meal kit brand Gousto after six years to explore new opportunities.

Named one of Marketing Week’s Top 100 Most Effective Marketers in 2022, Wallis is looking to leverage the experience gained at Gousto with a business “searching for data-driven, high growth marketing leadership.”

Going forward marketing will sit under the leadership of Gousto’s new chief customer officer, Sally Matthews. In this newly created role, Matthews will oversee proposition strategy, insights, brand, acquisition, food, buying and customer care. She joined the business in 2016 as chief financial officer, before being appointed chief product officer in 2018.

Prior to joining Gousto, Matthews served as finance director for global ecommerce at Unilever. This position was preceded by more than two years at Tesco, where she became the business partner of the CMO in the role of finance director for the marketing function, overseeing £1bn worth of spend.

Matthews also spent over eight years at The AA, serving as head of finance, pricing and group strategy.

How Gousto plans to build salience beyond the recipe box market

Thanking Wallis for “professionalising” the marketing team and helping to scale the business, Gousto praised the “huge legacy” he leaves behind. In a LinkedIn post, Wallis referred to the company’s impressive revenue growth during his tenure, as Gousto branched out into brand building with the unveiling of its ‘Give it some’ platform in 2019.

Launched on 22 December, the latest iteration of the campaign builds on the Give it some platform, which has driven strong uplifts in awareness and consideration over the past two years. Indeed, while 80% of sign-ups to the meal kit service were driven by performance marketing in 2018, by late 2021 82% of registrations came organically and through referral.

Gousto posted an underlying profit of £18.2m in the year ending 31 December 2020, after more than doubling sales to £189m during the pandemic. This marked the company’s first profitable year, having made a £9.1m loss in 2019. During the first quarter of 2021 alone, Gousto sold 25 million meals. 

Having proven the value of marketing, Wallis was given the green light to double his team in 2021, with the addition of 30 roles, mainly of mid-level seniority, across marketing and tech.

He joined the meal kit business in 2016 as vice-president of growth with responsibility for the acquisition and customer marketing teams. The move to Gousto came after 10 months as head of online sales and marketing at Ovo Energy.

Prior to his shift into the energy sector, Wallis spent more than seven years at Sky. He joined the broadcaster from Accenture in 2008 as a senior business analyst within marketing, before being appointed sales performance controller for acquisition marketing.

Wallis was promoted to head of trading and digital marketing at Now TV in 2012, with responsibility for executing the channel’s acquisition and digital marketing plans.