Egham, England, United Kingdom
A Senior Brand & Innovation Director with a strong marketing track record in leadership roles across global, regional and local remits for some of the world’s most admired brands for global businesses such as Diageo, Pepsi and British Airways. · Responsible for developing and implementing strategic & annual brand plans; that enhance value, market share and profitable growth for some of the world’s leading brands e.g. Lays in West Europe, Jacob’s ™ (UK & Ireland) and Smirnoff & vodka portfolio in Latin America & Caribbean. · Seen as a creative leader; strong track record of differentiating market leading brands under competitive pressures like Smirnoff, Lays, British Airways including winning Cannes Lion Gold for work on ‘Windows’ for BA. · An ambitious commercial thinker; seen as someone who can simplify strategy & galvanise a business behind it. Winner of Gold Effie for Mini Cheddars UK performance (2022) inc. new flavours, new PPA formats & new campaign. · Proven AI & Performance Marketing experience; responsible for developing total connection plans for brands like Lays, BA, Virgin Atlantic and Jacobs ™ grounded in ROE & MMM learnings to maximise both short & longer term impact. Using AI platforms like Boldspace to better understand visibility within LLM’s into content strategy plans. · Cross sector experience across FMCG to drinks to airlines; in recent years with weak economic growth post COVID and with the Great Stay talent trend I have been fortunate to leverage my experience & passion for brand building beyond FMCG into airlines (DTC) on an interim basis until permanent market recovers. · People leader; recognised as a champion & developer of talent. On Lays I led Pepsi’s biggest marketing team in Europe.
Responsible for brand strategy, partnerships & propositions, consumer insights & analytics, campaigns & media and marketing effectiveness. - Highlights include the launch of ‘Save Your Tiers’ for Virgin Atlantic Flying Club across creative & omni channel media plan targeting disenfranchised competitor customers. Received an additional 7k new customers, paid social drive 44% of site visits. - Creation of an end-to-end customer proposition & unifying creative platform & media launch strategy for the relaunch of Virgin Atlantic Holidays. - Worked with tomoro.ai to develop an AI powered content operating model to optimise demand generation. Workstream has helped deliver +30% efficiency and enabled personalising at greater scale.
Responsible for the marketing of all of Disney Franchise brands (Star Wars, Marvel, Princess, Stitch) across their FMCG partners and toy licensee partners such as Lego, Hasbro, Mattel, Funko etc … - Highlights included global lead for Star Wars ‘May the 4th be with you’. Results included Biggest Ever Star Wars performance; EMEA region delivered double the growth of North America, ROS +35% across top G5 markets and Amazon sales for May were up +32% vs year ago.
Since the first time I flew to New York as part of a US - Ireland college summer visa progamme I have always been curious about seeing the world and experiencing new cultures, people and places. I figured it would be a regret if I never worked in the airline industry. In November '23 I took the opportunity to join British Airways as Global Head of Campaigns looking after their advertising & paid media in UK & International Markets.
Responsible for the Savoury Portfolio of Brands (Jacob’s, Mini Cheddars & Carr’s) in UK & Ireland (£230m RSV business). Led a marketing team of 10 including front end innovation & consumer insights. Some highlights included: • As a team we won a UK Gold Effie award for the performance of Mini Cheddars in 2022 including Gold European Effie. During my time on Mini Cheddars household penetration exceeded that of Doritos and the brand grew x3 faster than the category rate. • Given changing dynamics in UK (HFSS & healthier lifestyles, sharing growth in snacking, aging population) our team developed new product lines up such as Jacob's Mediterrean, Mini Cheddars Crunchlets (77cal per pack) & Nibblies (30% less fat). • Worked with TBWA London, Good Relations & OMD UK to develop a compelling brand positioning to drive reappraisal for both Jacob’s & Carr’s grounded in cultural insight, new creative platform, CSR approach & total connection plans with the mentioned agency partners. • Led a complete redesign of Jacob’s & Carr’s brands with Bloom London elevating flavour & food appeal. The new designs exceeded all benchmark targets among heavy & light buyers.
• Promoted to lead full Lays TM portfolio in Nov 2019. Full accountability for the creation & delivery of 5yr strategic plans and 18 month calendars for European's biggest snacks brand of Lays. In my time on Lays we managed to accelerate growth with Lay’s TM growing in Vol & NR ahead of 2020 AOP (+11.9% & +10.3% resp.) with Lay’s gaining share across Europe at +0.6% despite competitive pressures. • In my time I led a restage of Lays in Europe from new Lays purposeful positioning, creative platform with 180 Kingsday in Amsterdam, new comms & brand architecture & brand playbooks for markets (comms, activation, media). • In my time in role creative output has significantly approved (Lays summer equity work 2019 – STSL 95, Festive campaign 2020 – creative impact score of 98, Baked ‘Say Yes’ campaign STSL 92). • Development 3yr pipeline of innovation pipeline across Lays TM with scaled activation (2021 Restaurant Icons campaign– KFC, Subway, Pizza Hut), launch of Oven Baked with veg snacks (Q1 2019), Lays Homestyle pipeline (Q2 2021), and next generation of flavours through new model of working with flavour houses (Q2 2021). • Worked with Mullen-Lowe Salt London & cross functional LT to develop 5yr sustainability strategy and roadmap • Marketing Leadership lead for ‘insight & inspiration’; creating a drumbeat of marketing capability trainings across creativity, total connection planning, sustainability etc … • Leadership of the Lays One Team in WE is seen as the best practice model in Pepsi Europe.