TOUCHNOTE
COVID accelerated both demand and expectation, creating an opportunity to redefine how the brand showed up in moments of connection.
Impact on the business
Marketing investment tripled whilst maintaining LTV/CAC ratios
Members grew 4.6x
Achieved best-in-class DTC subscription retention rates
New US agencies and team established in New York
“As Chief Marketing Officer, I led marketing at through a period of transformation, repositioning the brand and growth strategy to support a pivot to subscription-led growth in a volatile market while maintaining disciplined unit economics.”
— Joana Barros
The work done to get there
The strategy centered on making the brand more relevant in a moment of heightened need for connection. I led teams in London and New York through a rebuild of the creative function and a more integrated operating model across brand, acquisition and retention.
At the core of that was the development of a "kindness economy" platform that anchored the brand in everyday acts of connection. A partnership with behavioural scientist Dr Anna Machin grounded the brand in human insight, while a creative collaboration with Central Saint Martins raised its cultural cache, and later expanded into a revenue-sharing program with artists that strengthened TouchNote’s cultural resonance.
From there, creative and channel strategy moved beyond direct response into creator-led and content-driven formats, with a significant increase in experimentation across DRTV and paid social, and scaling of an SEO content strategy.
In parallel, retention became a more deliberate growth lever. Working in cross-functional tribes and drawing on data including natural language processing to identify use cases, the team partnered with product to deliver more seamless experiences in app and across CRM channels. Identifying the triggers of long-term value enabled more precise lifecycle design, better activation rates and stronger customer engagement and retention at scale.
