Michelle McEttrick Tesco

Tesco has turned to a high flyer credited for rejuvenating the image of British Airways and Barclays Bank- as well as creating the world’s biggest food website brand - to try to lift its image in the UK.

Michelle McEttrick, who has been appointed group brand director, is a former director of BBH, the advertising agency brought in by Lewis in January to take on the retailer’s £110m advertising account.

At BBH she led the BA, Barclays and Barclaycard accounts at the agency before joining the bank as chief marketing officer, later becoming managing director of brand and marketing until her departure last year.

At Barclay’s she oversaw a major restructure of global advertising strategy, and McEttrick arrives with Tesco under pressure to breathe life into the brands ad strategy, with Lewis admitting last week that he was concerned at the huge spending of arrivals such as Aldi, whilst stressing that Tesco needed to get its store strategy right first.

His new brand director’s previous roles also including working in marketing for Coca Cola in the late 1990s on its global ad strategy and in 2000 she led the relaunch of Allrecipes.com, which became the largest food and cooking website in the world.

“Michelle brings a real diversity of expertise and experience to Tesco,” said group customer officer, Robin Terrell. “Her experience spans working on and leading the rejuvenation of British Airways and Barclays at BBH, to building the world’s largest digital food brand, allrecipes.com, and working for agency clients including Coca-Cola and Frito Lay. She is a passionate, creative customer champion, and will be a real asset to our business.”