Conference Speakers
Mark Boyd, director of content, BBH
Mark is Director of Content at advertising agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty, where he is responsible for developing new branded content opportunities for advertisers. BBH is seen as setting the agenda in content, in using emerging platforms and in new funding models for media.
Projects include branded TV programming, theatrical film releases, contract publishing, radio, mobile and gaming. Mark recently created The Audi channel, the first general advertiser channel in Europe.
Previously, Mark was Director of Content and Stream MSI/TBWA, having joined from Hutchison 3g (now 3) where he was Head up Young Adult Markets.
Before this, Mark worked Drum PHD and worked on a number of advertiser funded projects in different media. He joined from Virgin Media, his first media role after a brief detour via the civil service.
Mark has always worked to find new roles for brands beyond traditional advertising, working for all of the key stakeholders: agency, media owner and client side. He has worked on a range of brands including AXE, Audi, Bertolli, Johnnie Walker, HSBC, Sainsbury's and Orange.
Mark is also and founder and the Chairman of the Branded Content Marketing Association (BCMA), bringing together people interested in branded content from film, music, TV, mobile and gaming industries.
The BCMA runs in UK, US, Australia and Germany.
Catriona Campbell, director, Foviance
Catriona is one of the most recognised females within the digital industry.
She is included in Internet Magazine's top 50 most influential people, and Tim Berners-Lee's list of 100 most significant contributors to the development of the Internet.
James Cherkoff, Director, Collaborate Marketing
Cherkoff's unique passion for melding the worlds of computer software with the world of marketing is entirely relevant to this new 'long-tail' era." Professor John Maeda, MIT MediaLab, Cambridge, MA, USA.
James Cherkoff spent the first part of his career at global marketing consultancy Burson-Marsteller. There he managed programmes for Unilever, Philip Morris and Accenture, which he then joined as part of the European marketing team.
In 1998, James went exclusively online at the web design agency Bluewave, before founding and managing Pumpernickle, a consultancy focused on Internet Culture. The company's first assignment was a major strategic review on behalf of James Bond Enterprises Ltd, which went deep into the world of online community and how the web distorts traditional notions of IP.
In 2003, James brought together his marketing and online experience at Collaborate Marketing. Today, the consultancy helps companies in Europe and the US operate in networked media environments.
James is editor of the blog Modern Marketing, one of the best regarded strategic marketing blogs in Europe. He also contributes to the FT, BBC, Independent, Observer, Ad Age, Research Magazine, Media Week, Reuters, WebProNews, changethis.com, Business Week and the Guardian.
James speaks at conferences and events around Europe and the US, including MIT MediaLab, Reboot, PICNIC, NESTA, Danish Institute of Technology, Durham Business School, Chinwag, IRS, NMK and MRS. You can here him here talking on the BBC Radio 4's Shop Talk and here in a panel discussion at Content 2.0.
In 2007, James was named as a Thought-Leader in Research Magazine's '50 To Watch'.
Matthew Dodd, VP research & analytics, EMEA, Nielsen Online
Matthew Dodd joined Nielsen Online, in April as VP Research & Analytics EMEA. Nielsen Online delivers comprehensive, independent measurement and analysis of online audiences, advertising, video, consumer-generated media, ecommerce and consumer behavior enabling clients to make informed business decisions regarding their Internet, digital and marketing strategies.
Previously he was the Director of Customer Insight for Telegraph Media Group where he oversaw the integration of many different and disparate data sets to help place the customer at the heart of the business and drive growth. Prior to this Matthew worked in the newspaper business in the UK in a variety of research roles.
Rufus Evison, digital strategy director, Dunnhumby
Rufus Evison has been in Web Analytics since 1996 and has been a C level executive of such web related companies as Clickstream Technologies, Global Diagnostics and Green Cathedral.
On a technical note he was the creator of the first hybrid mechanism for data gathering and of what was possibly the earliest of the "if you are buying this you might also like that" cross-sell engines. Over the course of his career Evison has worked with such online players as GE Capital, Virgin Money, MyTravel, Thomas Pink, SAP and Pipex, helping them with everything from Web analytics of call centres to affiliate programs and site design.
Currently Evison is working for data insight company dunnhumby helping the retail experts to apply their knowledge and expertise throughout the digital arena.
dunnhumby bring the retail and direct marketing experience of large scale marketing and loyalty programs to the online world. dunnhumby deal with data from around one household in every two in the UK and nearly 60 million households in the USA as well as loyalty data from a variety of different retailers across various countries.
Alison Fennah, Executive Director, European Interactive Advertising Association
Alison Fennah is the Executive Director of the European Interactive Advertising Association, the pan- European trade organisation for sellers of interactive media. Alison helped to launch the organisation on 2002 and has overseen the development of a wide-ranging activity programme involving EIAA members, media agencies and advertisers with the aim of growing the European interactive advertising market.
Prior to her work with the EIAA, Alison worked as European Marketing and PR Manager for Yahoo! Her involvement in interactive entertainment and technology began in the early 1990s marketing PC games and continued with the launch of some of the first Sony Playstation products. Fluent in French, Spanish and Portuguese, she has a BA Combined Honours in Modern Languages from Birmingham University.
Scott Gallagher, director of online and partner marketing, Sky
Scott is responsible for Sky's™ online sales & marketing across their expanding product portfolio including digital TV, Broadband, Telephony, HD & Sky +. Sky, according to Nielsen, are the largest online spender in the UK underlining a commitment to digital, echoed by the companies recent move into extending their Sky Anytime content service on TV, Web & Mobile.
Previous to BSkyB, Scott worked at OgilvyOne as Client Services Director for the American Express International Online account covering 38 countries, during which period his team performed a global redesign & rollout of American Express's online presence. Prior to this he served as a Vice President for Digitas handling various roles from Technology Consultancy to New Business development working on clients including Ericsson, RBS, Kingfisher & Sony. Scott holds a PhD in Multimedia innovation & social learning from Edinburgh, M.Sc. in Human Computer Interaction from Heriot Watt and a BCom in Business Studies from Edinburgh
Rob Grimshaw, Managing Director, FT.com
Rob Grimshaw was appointed Managing Director of FT.com in June 2008. As the FT board representative for FT.com he is responsible for website's commercial performance and overall strategy. Prior to this, Grimshaw was a member of the FT.com Executive leadership team and was Advertising Strategy and Global Online Director.
Grimshaw joined the Financial Times in 1998 and has held a series of commercial roles within the business, including Head of Global Key Accounts & Clients Sales and Head of Global Advertising Strategy & Operations.
Grimshaw holds a Bachelors degree in Philosophy and Politics from the University of Warwick.
Phil Guest, Habbo Hotel
Phil's media career spans TV, radio, magazines and the Internet.
Starting in radio after leaving school Phil became the Commercial Producer for Radio Victory, a local commercial radio station in Portsmouth. Having reached his first goal of becoming one of the countries youngest producers in this fledgling sector he sought greater adventure as a Royal Marine Commando serving across the globe.
Continuing his search for excitement he returned to media five years later to the world of advertising, working first in display advertising sales for Emap's consumer magazine division before seeing the opportunity the internet presented and joining Capital Radio's Interactive division in 1998. Here he was part of a team that pioneered a number of early online advertising initiatives, including personally securing what is believed to be the first site hijack on Capitalfm.com by Sky Digital's launch.
In 2001, he joined Fox Kids children's television network as General Manager for the UK website and became Commercial Director for Europe, working across TV advertising, online, licensing and programming.
He joined AOL as Director of Strategic Alliances in November 2004 brokering many of the company's more significant commercial partnerships including the ad serving deal that led to AOL acquiring AdTech and AOL's founding partner sponsorship of the UK's pre-eminent music destination, The O2. In time, Phil was given responsibility for managing AOL UK's Commercial Development team brokering deals across all aspects of AOL's business - from sales and marketing to product development and technology.
Phil joined Sulake in February 2007 as Managing Director for Habbo UK, one of the world's largest virtual worlds for teenagers with over 90 million registered avatars. Soon after joining he took responsibility for the management of Habbo across Western Europe, adding Germany and the Netherlands to his portfolio amongst others.
Habbo generates the majority of its income from micro transaction sales of credits that are used in world to decorate a virtual room (think of Habbo as having your own virtual apartment and decorating it the way you want), and in 2006 turned over of $61 million in revenues. 2007 saw Habbo successfully grow the advertising part of its business as brands increasingly look to engage with an elusive youth audience. Phil is able to provide an insight as to how brands can build sustained advocacy through developing engaging activities in virtual worlds that add value to the consumers both Habbo and its partners are looking to attract.
Phil is married with two daughters is a keen sailor and rugby fan who nowadays keeps his highly tuned commando skills up to date playing video games, which is a lot less hazardous than his previous adventure.
Robert Horler, MD, Diffiniti
Robert began his Media career in 1993 @ Times Newspapers. This followed a short stint working in the City for a major financial services company following his graduation from University.
In 1996, Robert joined LineOne, one of the first Internet Services to launch in the UK, where he helped build their online advertising business. He has been working in Digital Media ever since.
Over the past 5 years, Robert has worked for some of the countries leading online companies including FT.com where he headed up their agency sales and EMAP Online as Commercial Director, where he had overall responsibility for all of the revenue generated from their portfolio of websites.
Robert joined Carat in 2000 as Managing Partner and was promoted to Managing Director in 2002. He joined the Aegis Media UK Board in the same year.
Robert helped launch ISOBAR in the UK, Aegis's global digital network. ISOBAR now comprises 5 seperate companies, covering Online media, creative, and web design, search and mobile. Isobar employs over 300 people in the UK and has a turnover in excess of £200 million.
Robert is also MD and founder of Diffiniti, the largest stand alone online planning and buying company in the UK. Clients include Sky, Aviva and AutoTrader> Robert also sits on the Interactive global executive committee which helps formulate and execute Aegis Media's global digital strategy, including identifying and evaluating acquisition targets for the group.
Robert has hands on experience of managing digital marketing strategies on behalf of many of Europe's leading online advertisers, including AOL, HBOS, Dell, Coca- Cola, Abbey National, Sky, Renault, Diageo and Aviva.
He has a proven track record of running digital media businesses profitably.
Robert was a founder member of the Internet Advertising Bureau and continues to work closely with them and the IPA DMG on a number of initiatives to support the growth and development of online advertising in the UK.
Adriana Lukas, founder of VRM Hub and the Big Blog Company
Adriana Lukas is a social web expert, who started blogging in early 2002 on a political blog, Samizdata.net and her work related writing is on Media Influencer
She founded the Big Blog Company in early 2003 and since then has advised companies in Europe and the US on how to make sense of the 'social media' hype and if and how to use blogs, RSS, wikis and tags in their communications and beyond. She is now working with the Project VRM (Vendor Relationship Management, headed by Doc Searls, a fellow of Berkman Center).
Her clients are varied, ranging from individuals to large healthcare, pharmaceutical companies such as Johnson & Johnson to the Adam Smith Institute, National Opinion Poll, the Social Affairs Unit, Kable (Ideal Government), JWT, Syzygy and YouGov. A short video created for non- Web savvy executives, showing the tools Ad riana uses and how to manage information online is available at http://www.mediainfluencer.net/2007/11/power-to-thepersons/
Kieron Matthews, head of marketing, IAB
Kieron Matthews was appointed in April 2006 as the IAB's first Head of Marketing and recently to Marketing Director. His role is to promote online to advertisers and agencies. This includes overseeing all IAB marketing communications across brand marketing, agency presentations, PR, conference marketing and promoting results from IAB initiatives.
Before becoming Marketing Director for the IAB, Kieron was Marketing Director at the lead digital marketing agency Dare. There he worked on award winning campaigns for Lynx and the COI and was also involved in attracting new clients to Dare such as Sony Ericsson, Magnum, Vodafone, The AA and the BBC. In the time he was there, Dare grew from 9 staff to over 70.
Before joining Dare, Kieron worked at McCann's, HHCL+P, TBWA Chiat Day (Toronto) and BBH where he launched Xbox across the web. Kieron has also worked on a diverse range of accounts including Coca-Cola, The FA, National Savings, Martini, Bank of Scotland, Early Learning Centre and T-mobile.
Jim McNiven, MD, Kerb
A lifelong interest in digital technology has made Jim McNiven the consummate "early adopter".
He started Kerb in 1996 during his second year at university when the initial internet boom began, juggling a full-time degree course and business start-up. In these formative years of the internet, Jim spent much of his time trying to convince marketing departments not to transfer his cold calls to their IT units and understand that they should own this opportunity to create a worldwide advert for their company.
Kerb won its first national award in 1997, for a website that won the Yell.com Award for e-commerce. At a time when e-commerce websites were forms-based monstrosities, the seminal Mathmos Lava Lamp site was an intuitive point-and-click shopping experience.
In 2000, Kerb extended its online services to include digital marketing and created its first interactive viral campaigns for a variety of brands including Pepsi.
Since then Jim has been the creative force behind scores of campaigns, applying a philosophy that he refers to as "Digital Engagement". This concept challenges traditional marketing, relying on the strength of the advertising creative to capture the imagination of target audiences and spread a brand message among them.
He has shown time and again that this non-interruptive approach gives better returns on the both an emotional level and also in audience reach than the traditional method of buying huge amounts of media space to shove messages at the audience.
This way of thinking has resulted in over 15 campaigns that have achieved more than a million unique visitors.
As well as a long list of awards, Jim's viral success stories include;
- a viral campaign that over 60 million unique visitors engaged with
- a viral campaign that increased a client’s sales by 127% in its first month
- and a viral campaign acknowledged by the UK's leading independent viral charts as the fastest-growing campaign ever tracked.
Kerb regularly works for global brands including Playstation, Disney and Microsoft.
As well as speaking at marketing events, Jim has also shared his knowledge with a variety of audiences including:
- Animators/animation lovers at One dot zero, Tokyo
- VC's/Entrepreneurs at 1st Tuesday, London
- Broadcast media at MELIA, Cannes
- Flash developers at Flash Forward, Amsterdam
- Microsoft developers at Microsoft Mix07, London
Jim has been building User Generated Content online since the mid-eighties when he produced Commodore 64 demos along with other geeks on something known as "Compunet" - a bit like a UK version of the Internet only a lot, lot slower.
He "lost" nearly a decade of his life working for investment companies before quitting his job in the marketing department of a multinational bank to return to his first love by doing a BA in Electronic Media design at Wolverhampton.
Jim was born in Manchester and currently lives in London with his wife, a Chinese-born fashion designer. Despite having been exiled in the South East of England during his formative years, he remains an ardent Manchester City supporter.
Simon Morris, Marketing Director, LOVEFiLM.com
Simon Morris is a Londoner and a graduate of the European Business School in 1987. His career began at Lintas Worldwide advertising Agency, where he worked on various Unilever accounts, as well as Boddingtons, Japan Airlines and Virgin as account director.
He crossed over to a marketing role with SEGA UK at the start of the legendary games wars in the early 90's as UK marketing director.
In 1994 he moved to become consumer Marketing Director of BSkyB for 2 years, and stayed in television as Marketing Director of Ginger Television Productions. During this time his own consultancy firm helped Lego Media break into international television, and also provided marketing for the launch of Autonomy in 1997.
From 1998-2001 he was a co-founder of the dot.com content super brand 365 Corp.
He has been involved with Arts Alliance Media in the creation of LOVEFiLM since the beginning of 2004. The company has won through a fiercely competitive market as the largest online DVD rental company in both the UK and Europe.
Dominick O'Brien, head of emerging technology, glue London
Dom O'Brien is Head of Emerging Technology at glue London having worked across accounts including Nokia, MTV, Bacardi, Adidas, T-Mobile, McCain and COI.
The role focuses both on identifying how technology can enhance glue's creative product, and also how audiences can be reached by understanding and leveraging the many digital channels.
Dom's been with glue for 8 years and was Design Director for the first 7.
Nick Reid, Head of UK Sales for MySpace
Nick Reid is UK Head of Sales for MySpace, the world's leading social network, and Fox Interactive Media (FIM). In this role, he oversees the UK revenue business and advertising relationships for MySpace, IGN, Ask Men and Rotten Tomatoes.
Since MySpace's inception in January 2004, the site has grown exponentially, with 110 million global monthly unique visitors. By integrating web profiles, blogs, classified listings, entertainment content, photo galleries, applications and user forums, MySpace has created the world's most engaging and popular community, driven by people, content and culture. Users are living their lives online and discovering communities, new music and cultures.
Nick joined MySpace from Emap Advertising, where he was Head of Sales and responsible for digital ad revenue across brands such as FHM, Kiss, Zoo, Empire, Heat. He also focused on launching new sites and titles such as Arena and helped to develop new revenue opportunities around video and mobile.
Prior to Emap, Nick was Account Director at media agency Mindshare, overseeing the digital strategy, planning and buying across Nike, 3 and Ford.
Dan Rosen, head of AKQA Mobile
Dominick O'Brien, head of emerging technology, glue London
Daniel started his mobile career in 1995 as a client side marketer within Orange UK before a stint in traditional media by joining Express Newspapers as Group Marketing Manager
In 2000 he launched 12snap UK's mobile marketing business running pioneering campaigns with brands including McDonald's, Coke, Proctor & Gamble, Cadbury, Walkers Snacks and MTV. Industry awards included New Media Age's "Mobile Campaign of the Year" for McDonald's and Orange's "Small Business award for innovation" in 2002.
Associated Newspapers recruited Daniel early in 2004 as Managing Director of their interactive subsidiary Greenland Interactive. A series of successful mobile initiatives were launched with clients including mobile operator 3, EMAP, ITV, Daily Mail, and GSK. Revenue growth exceeded 60% within 18 months, resulting in the company's successful sale in September 2005.
In January 2006, Daniel launched AKQA Mobile. AKQA Mobile is the specialist mobile division of AKQA working with clients globally. Clients include Nike, Xbox, Coca Cola, Smirnoff, McDonald's, Visa, Sky, Target and Fiat.
Daniel is the mobile columnist for Marketing Week magazine in the UK, sits on both the EMEA Board and the Global Executive Board of the Mobile Marketing Association and is jury foreman for mobile at the D&AD Awards 2008
Leo Ryan, partner, Ryan MacMillan
Leo has worked in digital media since 1996 in New York, Sydney and London. He has worked agency-side for brands including Levi's, MTV and GAP.
He has also worked client-side establishing the digital arm of Australian publishing company IPMG. In 2006 he started a specialist social media consultancy, Ryan*MacMillan with his partner Iain MacMillan.
Ryan*MacMillan provides training, research, planning, project management and delivery to clients include Sony Consumer Electronics Europe, Discovery Europe, Capgemini UK and BBC
Iain Tait, co-founder, Poke
As well as working with clients like Orange, WWF, American Express, Zopa and Yahoo! Iain writes a blog at crackunit.com and gets involved with a bunch of industry things. He's been a judge for D&AD, OneShow, Art Directors Club of New York, The Clios, Creative Circle and the Webbys. This experience has left him with a brain full of other people's great work and a sense of inadequacy.
Before Poke, Iain worked at a couple of other agencies as well as being employed as Director of Product Development at First Tuesday, being responsible for bringing together entrepreneurs and cash. Playing and all-important role in the (over)inflation of the dotcom bubble.
Iain lives in Brighton and the commute gives him time to reflect on life, work, and why the smell of pasties never quite leaves train upholstery. He likes great things and hates writing about himself in the third person.
Al Tepper, Head of Marketing, NaturalCollection.com & former editor of green blog cityhippy.net
Al Tepper is currently the Head of Marketing at the UKs leading mail-order and online eco department store, NaturalCollection.com, where he also has responsibility for business development and web strategy.
Prior to joining NaturalCollection.com in late 2006 Al was Head of Online Development at B2B magazine publisher Caspian Publishing and simultaneously the Founder of the 'lauded' multi-editor green blog cityhippy.net.
Ben Tompkins, general partner, Eden Ventures
Ben Tompkins has over 20 years experience advising and investing in high growth businesses in Europe and North America.
Ben spent the first 18 years of his career in corporate finance, advising on over 75 transactions and specializing in the digital media, internet and software sectors. Ben worked for Chesham Amalgamations & Investments in London and Henry Ansbacher & Co in New York before joining Broadview (now Jefferies Broadview) in 1993.
At Broadview, Ben was Co-head of the Software, Services and Media global market group and has advised on transactions involving Yahoo!, IAC, Vivendi, News Corp, Microsoft, Openwave, Lagardere, British Telecom, Cendant, E*trade, Havas, DMGT and Experian.
Ben joined Eden Ventures in 2006 as General Partner. Eden is an early stage venture capital investor and Ben focuses on investments in the digital media, e-commerce and internet sectors. Ben manages the firm's investments in Reevoo (www.reevoo.com), huddle (www.huddle.net), Pixsta (www.pixsta.com) and SmithBayes (www.smithbayes.com).
Ben is a lawyer by training.
James Tye, Chief Executive, Dennis Publishing Ltd
James Tye is Chief Executive at Dennis Publishing, a position he has held since January 2006. James joined Dennis in October 1992 and reports directly to Felix Dennis. He has over 15 years experience in magazine publishing, with a strong background in both editorial and publishing disciplines.
Prior to taking on the role of Chief Executive, Tye held the position of Divisional Managing Director for Dennis' Technology Division. In this role he oversaw the successful launch of the Dennis Gambling Division in 2004.
Tye began his career at Dennis working on the editorial teams of various titles, including the editorship of market-leading magazine PC Pro. After six years he moved into a publishing role and then joined the Executive Board in 2000 as Operations Director.
Tye's vision for Dennis is clear: turn Dennis Publishing into an innovative, brand-centric, 21st century media company with great editorial and content at its heart. He is part of a new generation of CEOs, focussed on future publishing technology, as well as the bottom line. He values editorial excellence and has 20 years experience of digital and internet technology.
James Tye is a Director of Dovetail Ltd and a member of the Periodical Publishers Association (PPA) Board.
Peter Ward, co-CEO, WAYN
Peter Ward is the co-founder and co-CEO of www.WAYN.com (Where Are You Now?) the world's largest and most successful travel and lifestyle social network with over 11 million members across 193 countries. Having raised £10K initial investment from Steve Pankhurst (co-Founder of Friends Reunited) in 2003, Peter, along with Jerome Touze and Mike Lines, boot-strapped the business whilst working at Accenture and went full time when WAYN reached over 1 million members in October 2005. The company raised $11M Series A funding in November 2006 for a minority stake and brought on board Brent Hoberman as Chairman. Since then, WAYN has grown fast with over 300% year on year growth to over 6m unique monthly visitors. WAYN won Website of the Year in 2007 for Best Community as voted by the public and was a Red Herring top 100 private company Winner in Europe and top 100 Finalist, globally in 2007.
Peter was also an "Enterprising Young Brits" Finalist as Business Entrepreneur of the Year; a "Young Gun", class of 2007 according to Growing Business Magazine and Commended for Entrepreneur of the Year 2008 at the UK Technology Innovation and Growth Awards. Peter was also recently recognised by the Sunday Times as one of the media industry's rising stars: top 40 under 40. Prior to working full time on WAYN, Peter worked as a management consultant for Accenture for 3 years in Market Making and High Performance Finance. Peter also won scholarships to attend Entrepreneurship programs at MIT Sloan School of Business in Boston; London Business School and Cambridge University and graduated in Economics & Business Finance from Brunel University. Peter has a passion for entrepreneurship and travel and enjoys attending talks to help budding entrepreneurs and travelling whenever he gets the chance!