Having won one of the Australian convenience industry’s most anticipated and hotly contested awards, the AACS Peter Jowett Convenience Award (Retailer award), in August this year Jack Murphy-Cruise of BP recently participated in the AACS overseas study tour to London and Amsterdam, and went on to win the Retail award at the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) Show in Atlanta this October.
Mr Murphy-Cruise’s presentation ‘Unblurring the Convenience Channel’ spoke of the importance of differentiating the convenience channel from its main competitors, such as supermarkets and pharmacies. The key ideas for the presentation were around more digitally immersive stores, marketing directly to our customers based on their buying behaviour and saving our customers time through some novel local partnerships.
Amanda Woollard, BP’s general manager, retail, told C&I Week: “Jack’s win at the NACS awards was a very proud moment for everyone at BP. Over the past few years we have reignited passion and energy across our retail business and invested heavily in our network assets. Jack’s success demonstrates that we have great talent working for us and a collective team that is focused on building a winning retail business.”
“Jack put in many long hours working on his presentation and is very deserving of the incredible experiences that have come from that – taking out this win was something to dream about, and it reminds us all that dreams really do come true.”
“Ahead of representing BP at the NACS awards, Jack had to first contend with the wider BP graduate cohort and nominations from across all retailers and suppliers for the AACS PJ Award. Jack won the Retailer – AACS PJ Award after delivering an exceptional presentation to an audience of about 400 people in Melbourne.”
“Jack’s professionalism throughout this experience has been second to none, along with his strong values and behaviours. I am confident Jack is on a path to future success stories and I know BP will be there to support him along the way.”
Mr Murphy-Cruise is an engineering graduate who currently works within BP’s retail asset management team as the fuels inventory coordinator. In this position, Mr Murphy-Cruise is responsible for assuring the integrity of BP’s fuels systems assets at retail sites. Prior to this, Mr Murphy-Cruise worked within BP’s internal control team as a finance intern. Mr Murphy-Cruise told C&I Week he has thoroughly enjoyed moving into the retail part of the BP business this year.
Mr Murphy-Cruise told C&I Week one of the highlights of the AACS study tour and the NACS Show was seeing firsthand “both the similarities and stark differences between Australian and American retail convenience”.
“My time in America was eye opening. The sheer size of the NACS 2016 conference in Atlanta was a highlight in itself, with over 40,000 attendees from all facets of retail convenience around the world. It was a privilege to be involved with the NACS presentations and awards, as it was a hub of bright ideas and brilliant innovations for the future, some of which will certainly be implemented in the short and long term!”