Leadership Spotlight: David Bailey

Our latest Leadership Spotlight features David Bailey!

David Bailey is a digital professional with over a decade of experience and expertise managing multi-million-pound performance marketing budgets and leading high-performing teams across various organisations. David is currently the Digital Marketing Lead at John Lewis. His career background includes working with established organisations, which include UK Flooring Direct and soak.com.

In our Q&A with David, he discusses his career journey to date, the ‘incredible’ Digital Leaders Club network, his current position at John Lewis, the differences in culture between soak.com and John Lewis, his love for sports, and the trend he’s most excited to see in 2025 and beyond.

Read our Q&A with David below.

Why did you join the Digital Leaders Club? 

Recently, I have really been thinking about my development and growth, hoping to connect more with like-minded people in similar roles. This all started with a recent LinkedIn post I published where I asked for recommendations on Digital events/meetups. When Jack messaged me about the club, as soon as I looked into it, I thought this looked incredible with the huge network to tap into, as well as such a wealth of information available, it was a no-brainer!

What's your career journey been like to date? 

It's been great. I started my career in a small, local independent bathroom retailer called soak.com. Soak was a great experience as I grew with the business from an eBay Marketing Assistant to E-Commerce Director, covering Digital Marketing and E-Commerce and much in between, too. Since then, I have ended up at John Lewis, which is at the complete other end of the spectrum in terms of structure, size, and resources. When I finished university, the role at soak proved to be a blessing in disguise as it really did unlock an enthusiasm and interest in Digital Marketing.

What do you love about working in digital? 

I love the fact that no two days are the same, and just how quickly campaigns, technology, measurement, tracking, etc, all move at such a pace, making it such an exciting area to work in. The future is also incredibly exciting with (sorry to use a few buzz words) the way that AI and privacy, etc, are really changing the way we think as marketers.

Tell us about your current position 

I've been with John Lewis for three and a half years, looking after a number of the Digital Marketing channels. It's fantastic working for such a huge retailer across so many product categories, also with a strong store presence, and some really iconic stores at that! Currently, a lot of my focus is on measurement, effectiveness and harnessing our wealth of data in the most accessible way possible! Some meaty topics for sure! 

You spent an extensive period overseeing digital and Ecommerce operations at soak.com; was that your first senior role in digital, and how did you find it?

soak.com was the first business I worked for after graduating from University. I absolutely loved my time at soak. I have so much respect for the founder and learned so much from him through watching him grow and scale the businesses. I joined as around the 21st employee, and when I left, there were well over 100, so I absolutely loved the fast growth, the appetite to test and learn, and the opportunities it provided me to develop and to learn marketing before moving into a broader Ecommerce role, too.

The culture was so different from the culture at John Lewis, where it's fair to say, due to the size and scale, the time to implement projects can vary. Soak was great for generating an idea, testing, and moving on quickly! Unfortunately, soak went into administration a few years ago but for a while it was a fantastically profitable and fast-growth business. 

It genuinely is a privilege to work for John Lewis, where the love and passion for the brand is a culture I hadn’t experience before. 

In your view, what's the most important trait of a successful team 

Collaboration. I love being a collaborative leader, and I love bringing teams and experts together to have idea sessions and discussions. I find this breathes new life and new ideas and keeps excitement and momentum going.

Which trend are you most excited to see in 2025? 

I'm really excited about the topic of "incrementality" this year, with so many changes from a tracking and measurement perspective, and really understanding the value of marketing.

If you could give David (at the start of his career) a piece of advice, knowing what you know now, what would that advice be? 

"Don't speak for the sake of speaking"... I'm naturally quite a shy and quiet person, and early in my career I put myself under a lot of pressure to speak up when in meetings or discussions, just to show I was contributing. I was very fortunate to have a brilliant manager who made me feel comfortable with the fact that when I do talk, it's because I've got something to add, so this is something that I still think about daily.

What are your hobbies away from work?

I'm a massive sports enthusiast, so I try to play Golf and a little bit of Cricket whenever I can. Although I became a father for the first time in early 2024, so my weekends will largely be dictated by the little one for the foreseeable future!! Also love going for walks with our dog, Penny, and getting away from the laptop!

What's your plan for the future? 

I've always struggled with long-term goals and would say I don't really live by 1, 5 or 10 year plans or anything like that, but I very much see myself remaining in Digital and Ecommerce and helping people grow their careers in a field I absolutely love. I like to seize opportunities and would like to grow into a Director-level position in the future, and, ideally, at some point, combine my passions of sport and marketing (Director of Digital for the England Cricket Board would be the real dream!)

What would you be doing (for a career) if you weren’t doing this?

 I played Cricket to a high level as a junior, and for a long time had ambitions of being a professional Cricketer. I love sports stats! I could see myself as becoming a sports performance analyst as sport has really advanced its use of data to drive performance. Alternatively, while I was at University, I worked at a big local HSBC office during the summers, and becoming a financial advisor was a career path I thought about seriously for a while. 

Connect with David on LinkedIn