Craig Inglis, the marketer behind John Lewis’s Christmas advertising era, joins toy retailer The Entertainer’s parent company on 7 September as group chief customer officer at Teal Group. He has advised the business since April.
Inglis takes a seat on the group board with responsibility for customer, marketing, licensing and brand building across both The Entertainer and its sister business Addo Play, which includes owned brands such as Meccano and Early Learning Centre. It is the first time the group has put customer, brand and marketing under one person.
Craig is a hugely accomplished customer, marketing and brand leader.
Andrew Murphy OBE, group chief executive of Teal Group Holdings
He joined John Lewis from Virgin Trains in 2008 as head of brand communications, became marketing director in 2010 and customer director in 2015, leaving in 2020. That tenure covers the entire adam&eveDDB Christmas sequence, starting with “The Long Wait” in 2011, the film that turned the British festive schedule into an annual creative arms race and made the John Lewis advert a fixture of the news agenda rather than the ad break. He was most recently chief customer officer at Merlin Entertainments, which he left in late 2025.
One correction worth making: the job is chief customer officer, not chief marketing officer, and the distinction is the point. Toy retail is a category where licensing negotiations and range decisions settle the year long before any advertising runs, so putting brand and licensing in the same hands is a structural change rather than a communications hire.
Why it matters: The Entertainer is a business that lives or dies on the fourth quarter, and it has just hired the person whose reputation rests on making Christmas mean something for a retailer. That is not a subtle appointment. It is probably the right one. Marketing Week reported the move.
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