Branding Speakers

Barnaby is Managing Director of the brand bucket® company, a fully integrated creative sales and marketing agency using, The Brand Bucket®, a revolutionary process developed for SAAB in 1985.

For the last 11 years he has been applying this definitive methodology to over 300 businesses at various stages of the business lifecycle building branded sales both in the online and offline arenas.

Although advertising accounts for less than 20% of activity, the agency is ranked in the top level of UK advertising agencies with 30% accounted for by the online arena and the balance on business definition and collateral creation.

There have been fundamental changes in the way marketing works over the last 5 years, businesses are wasting up to 80% of their marketing spend on outdated, demographically inspired media. Barnaby provides insights into the way business works from a ‘customer in’ viewpoint.

Barnaby’s background in re-brands and new business launches extends back to the late 80′s including the introduction of a wide range of products from The Fiat Ducato and Fiorino, The Ford Sierra and Granada, Radion washing detergent, Liptonice Ice Tea, Red Stripe Lager, Toshiba Home Cinema, Boots Opticians, E*Trade, Deutsche Post and full re-brands for the likes of Argos, The Children’s Society, Marie Curie Cancer Care, Bookham Technology and Oclaro, Oncore IT, Payzone Worldwide Money among many others.

In the last 5 years The Brand Bucket Programme has helped start-ups, small to medium enterprises and national FTSE/NASDAQ and especially not for profit organisations. In all with over 200 brands to his name, Barnaby finds himself in the unique position of having acted as marketing director, brand owner and creative consultant on a wide range of business propositions.

Topics include:

How marketing has changed forever
Crossing the business chasm
Creating your value proposition
Creating branded sales
Measure your marketing effectiveness
Online marketing

Mark’s face is known to millions. He is the man they see on their TVs when producers need authoritative comment on scandals, celebrity and the media itself. They might seek his opinion on the latest reality TV shock-horror story, a celebrity’s faux pas or on the craft of PR itself. Whenever the celebrity news agenda hits hysteria point, Mark offers thoughtful analysis, a wry point of view and an insider’s insight.

That insight is drawn from hard-won experience. He’s not merely an academic observer of the media and its celebrity machinations: he’s in it, up to his neck, every day. This is the man who has handled PR for some of the biggest names in the business and continues to do so. He’s worked for Eddie Izzard, Graham Norton, Joan Rivers, Macaulay Culkin, Sir Cliff Richard, Shirley Bassey, the Bolshoi Ballet, Cirque du Soleil, the Three Tenors, Michael Jackson, Michael Flatley and Michael Moore. His roster of the rich and famous even extends to Mikhael Gorbachev and Diego Maradona.

Mark has also publicised some of the best TV drama series over the past decade – including Spooks, Our Friends in the North, The Lakes, and 40, and he launched The Word, The Girlie Show, Never Mind the Buzzcocks and They Think It’s All Over, at a time when everybody thought they were very bad ideas.

He’s been behind the high public profile of a string of West End successes, and his portfolio of film promotion includes cult classics such as American History X, Best in Show, and Thank You For Smoking, as well as multi-million-dollar box office hits like The Matrix.

What distinguishes him is his willingness to engage with challenging international work from left-field companies and artists.

Early in his career, he brought to the attention of the British public a ramshackle but inspired grunge circus from France called Archaos. The name is now legendary in alternative theatre circles. At the start of Mark’s stewardship, Archaos was performing in a shoddy 400-seat tent on Clapham Common.

Three years later, thanks in part to the immense media storm he had succeeded in whipping up, it had shifted into a 5,000 seater. During that time, Mark saw to it that Archaos split a moving vehicle in two in Princes Street in Edinburgh (a journalist in the back, who was eight months pregnant went into labour as a result), and leapt over traffic junctions on a motorbike. He encouraged the company’s Iraqi strong man to bend lampposts before claiming he had run away from the circus to join the first Gulf War. Mark pressed performers into running amok with chainsaws in public and deliberately outraged every moral watchdog and local authority wherever it went.

He went on to scale new heights of extreme entertainment by publicising Jim Rose’s S&M Circus Sideshow, in which a selection of freaks dangled breeze blocks from nipple rings, hung flat irons from their penises, ate light bulbs and cockroaches and persuaded audience members to drink the regurgitated contents of their own stomachs. “He is the greatest publicist I know” says Jim, a man ready to hammer a nail into his head at the drop of a hat.

Mark publicised XXX by La Fura, a multi-media Spanish theatre concoction which enacted de Sade’s Philosophy of the Bedroom in the most graphic and explicit detail ever seen on a British stage. Was it pornography? or was it ART? While the debate raged, the press printed the stories and the pictures Mark gave them, securing the total sell-out sought by both the venue and the company.

He also launched the fantastical circus-cum-rave-cum-performance-art aerial ballet De La Guarda in the UK, personally securing the sponsorship to secure their debut at the London International Festival of Theatre (but only after he’d been persuaded to travel to Marseilles to watch them perform in a disused submarine workshop).

A whole roster of off-the-wall, radical and groundbreaking acts owe their success in this country to his tireless, committed and passionate approach to PR. The list includes everybody from the original Stomp, through to Robert Lepage, Momix, Mummenshanz, Lindsay Kemp, Ken Campbell, Philippe Genty, the Kodo Drummers and the Shaolin Monks.

Mark views PR as an instinctive, spontaneous, totally creative business whose sole function is to fire the imagination of the reading and viewing public. He doesn’t care whether this involves leaving a live scorpion in a BBC green-room, inventing a troupe of performing pit bull terriers for no better reason than it seemed a good idea at the time, building the biggest paper boat in the world, staging a theatre show in a two-seater car, twice presenting and twice earning a place in the Guinness Book of Records for the Biggest Custard Pie Fight in the World (on the second occasion in the Millennium Dome, possibly the best use to which it was ever put) or simply doing a Jim Rose by hammering a nail up his nose and setting fire to his chest hair. Anything, in fact, just so long as it gains the column inches that attract attention and bring punters to the box office, or as the great showman Silas Bent once put it, “if there’s no excitement ready made, some must be invented”.

The widely held belief that PR should be about the absolute, rigid, undeviating control of a message is anathema to him. The message, he believes, can only be properly communicated by stirring the imagination, and ultimately what stirs the imagination more than anything else is the ability to conceive and tell a great story. In that sense it would not be too high-flown to say that Mark Borkowski regards PR as an art form in itself.

Entertainment – and the technique which sells that entertainment to the public – is in his bloodstream. His career started with humble beginnings at the Wyvern Theatre in Swindon, followed by a successful tenure as in-house publicist at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, during one of its heydays under Philip Hedley as London’s most vibrant centre for multi-cultural theatre and new writing.

But it would be wholly wrong to pigeon-hole Mark as purely an entertainment publicist, locked into the superficial celebrity circus. While he may be on call for a professional take on Jordan’s latest pneumatic exploits, his opinion is regularly sought on more substantial issues of PR practice, particularly its moral aspects.

He writes opinion pieces for the broadsheets, and produces a regular, provocative and cogent column in The Guardian online, (“Stuntwatch”) which frequently focuses on corporate and political abuses of the media. In academic and industry circles he is a respected lecturer and thinker. During the course of the 2nd Gulf War, he established a significant American audience, through his repeated, thoughtful and detailed criticism of the techniques employed by the US propaganda machine. On this subject, he wrote a BBC 3 documentary How The War Was Spun.

Mark has played a key role in developing the careers of a number of advertising stars, notably Trevor Beattie and Tony Kaye, and he’s increasingly in demand from an industry that is – at last – beginning to understand that its erstwhile poor relation can make a potent contribution to ‘marketing product’.

Much of this side of Mark’s work depends on his understanding of the ways consumer brands operate. Although his profile is connected with celebrity, much of his agency’s day to day work comes from the representation of major brands. In this guise, his company manages – or has managed – PR for the likes of Vodafone, Tiscali, P&O, Eurostar, Smartcar, Lotus, Hovis, Virgin Megastores, Selfridges, Harrods, Norwich Union, Thorntons, Horlicks, Bacardi, Pimm’s, Piat d’Or, Gordon’s Gin, Hasbro UK (Europe’s largest toy maker and manufacturer of Action Man, Trivial Pursuit and Monopoly).

The techniques Mark views as essential to entertainment PR are the identical techniques he strives to use when generating media coverage for corporate clients.

After all, what journalist in his or her right mind would want to write an article, unprompted, about Bacardi Breezer? Breezer is Breezer is Breezer. Let’s not be cynical, but it’s sticky flavoured tart-fuel which gets you drunk, and there are no column inches in that. But if you turn the Tom Cat from the Bacardi ads into a Hollywood star, weave a series of outlandish stories round his contract riders and pampered celebrity lifestyle, take him to film premières, award ceremonies and first night parties, organise media trips to Prague for his latest advertising shoot, get him pictured with glamorous soap stars and finally secure him a newspaper column in a national daily, then the media can’t resist the story.

It’s a showbiz style of PR: it makes the media flock to the brand, and so secures the kind of prominence that the product alone would never warrant. And as far as the bean-counters who control such things can see, it bears fruit on the bottom line. As PT Barnum once observed “Every crowd has a silver lining”.

One of his strengths – and one of the aspects of his character that can be infuriating for his colleagues – is his restless, enquiring mind, his curiosity and his readiness to embrace the new, however far-fetched the concept, however impractical the idea. But what inspires the lasting loyalty and affection of his staff is the knowledge that at least one in ten of those ideas has genuine value and exploitable potential.

Which brings us to the genesis of SONS OF BARNUM. When he began working as a PR in the theatre, Mark’s discovered the extraordinary power to be gained in provoking the press; the power which resides in the ability to create stories the media swallow, and the resultant impact on the public and on sales at the box office. That was his education, pure and simple, in perhaps the hardest PR environment around.

Mark’s growing interest in the history of PR and specifically the publicity stunt led to his creation in 2001 of an exhibition – “Improperganda: the Art of the Publicity Stunt” and an accompanying book – which drew together some of the most classic PR images of all time.

The power of images to communicate directly with an audience had long been a theme in Mark’s work, and the exhibition provided an historical perspective on his established practice.

What also became evident in the compilation of the book was that Hollywood’s early publicists, knowing no other way of working, had adapted Barnum’s techniques to the evolving movie business. There were no rules or constraints, (such as there are today in the modern, tightly controlled superstar environment) and these publicists – amongst them Harry Reichenbach, Warren Cowan, Jim Moran and Russell Birdwell – operated with a free-wheeling, buccaneering spirit which 21st century studio chiefs and PR fuhrers would regard with profound horror. Perhaps for that very reason they scored some resounding successes. They did nothing by the book – there was no book to follow – they were anarchic, indisciplined, and sometimes just plain dangerous. Who today, for instance, would book a crated lion into an hotel room under the pretence that it was a grand piano? And more to the point, why would they think it useful to do so? These pioneers showed a creative spirit and a truly inspired ability to improvise their way out of tight corners.

In the summer of 2004 Mark took to the stage of the Wildman Room at the Edinburgh Festival to premier “Son of Barnum: A Stunt Too Far”, his live one-man exploration of the world of the publicity stunt. Part lecture, part performance, his run on the Fringe was greeted with genuine appreciation, as well as laughter, applause and offers of corporate bookings. The stories he tells in the show are those of the publicists of the past 150 years, going back to Barnum himself in the mid nineteenth century. In short, they were exciting, and the work they produced was also exciting. More than that, it was memorable and thoroughly, thoroughly entertaining.

Following this, Mark was approached by book publishers and a year later he was commissioned by Macmillan to write “In Search of the Sons of Barnum”. That book, now titled The Fame Formula, is out on general release in August 2008

For Mark, this approach is what still lies at the heart of great PR. The means of ‘delivery’ may have changed; we may operate in a far more sophisticated, diversified media market, but at the root it all rests on the ability to fire the imagination of an audience. Spin will never engage, convince or excite the public: real PR will. It’s his belief in these principles, and his practical application of them to business problems, which makes Mark Borkowski

“the proud inheritor of the Barnum tradition” Jeremy Paxman.

It’s often easy to disagree with Jeremy Paxman. In this case it’s impossible not to.

Malcolm Levene teaches business leaders and political figures how to significantly improve their communication skills and develop positive personal brand values.

Malcolm’s client list has included former Prime Minister Tony Blair, Alastair Campbell, Michael Marks CBE, Robert Walters (CEO of Robert Walters Plc) and Michael Gove MP.

As a Self Development Business Coach, Malcolm works with companies whose vision demands that their employees, at every level, perform at their optimum. He offers his extensive experience as it relates to enabling business people to attain their goals, maintain focus and be highly effective in their day-to-day interactions. Malcolm’s corporate clients include Prudential, Deutsche Bank, Tesco, CitiGroup, Robert Walters plc, Nestlé, Volvo (UK), The Bank of New York Mellon and M&G Investments.

In a previous business life, Malcolm owned and ran the Malcolm Levene retail fashion business in London’s West End. His retail experience enables him to understand the relevance of the customer experience and how important it is for an organisation to create long-term loyalty and trust.

Malcolm has created the Power of One: Personal Development for Business Success programme as a response to the business-world’s request for ‘something different’. The big difference with Power of One is that it is designed to spark or fuel change – real, sustainable, measurable change. Simply put, it enables people to be the best, most effective person they can be.

Malcolm is a Board Director of the Society of Complementary Medicine (SCM), a registered charity. He is a panel member of YougovStone, a Think Tank that ‘provides feedback on the most important issues facing this country’.

As a passionate advocate of authenticity as a key to success in business. Malcolm writes and speaks eloquently on the subject. The author of two books, published in the UK and USA. He also writes articles for business magazines, focusing on personal development for business success.

Malcolm has been profiled in The New Yorker, The Independent and The Observer. He is frequently quoted by the press, regularly appearing on television as an expert regarding Self Development for Business Success, Identity and Personal Branding.

Who else could stand in an old ballroom above a pub in Battersea and see the future of comedy? That’s what Jongleurs Comedy Club founder Maria Kempinska did in 1983. Building an empire of purpose built venues including state of the art city centre major capacity entertainment arenas and changing the face of European comedy forever; all from a room that smelt of nothing more than sticky carpets and Stella Artois.

The Jongleurs brand is the UK’s funniest calling card; it’s synonymous with comedy and has launched a host of stars into comedy’s firmament including Jack Dee, Harry Enfield, Paul Merton and Lee Evans. Twenty years later and the brand and clubs are still pioneering new talent and showingcasing the best comedy.

A regular presence on TV and radio, Maria has talked business and comedy with Trisha as well as with Channel 4 and BBC 2. While on air time for radio includes appearances on Radio One, Radio 4’s Start The Week and other leading London commercial stations, including LBC. Maria has been recognised with awards including Real Business magazine’s ‘Entrepreneur award’ and by Buckingham Palace to collect an MBE.

Maria’s topics include, the business of comedy, leadership, a woman as a leader of men and how to build successful brands and inspire markets. She’s also developing a series of masterclasses for management groups to understand the use and relevance of humour in successful negotiation and people management.

Maria is currently working on projects such as content provision for 3G phones, live comedy on the internet, the ongoing Jongleurs on the Road Theatre tour across Europe and is the executive producer of ‘Live at Jongleurs’. She’s currently also overseeing the overhaul of the hugely popular Jongleurs website and e-zine.

Maria is on the Women in Business board for Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme with the Countess of Wessex, she is also a member of Anti-Slavery committee. She’s recently been involved in developing a screenplay called Out Of The Dark, which is currently in pre-production. And finally, as if comedy is not enough, Maria has co-created Lockout, a live music event and label that introduces new artists to the British public and music industry. She intends to sleep only when she’s dead.

As one of the worlds leading style and retail experts, Kinvara Balfour advises today’s culture-conscious brands on what is happening in the world of fashion, beauty and style, both physically, on the catwalk and most famously, on the web.

Kinvara has worked in almost every area of the fashion industry. Having won the Lloyd’s Bank Fashion Challenge out of 29,000 entries at 16, she began her career assisting the competition’s judge, Vivienne Westwood, in her design studio. Several years at Tomasz Starzewski followed, alongside a spell as a fashion model.

After university, Kinvara worked as Fashion Assistant and then Features Writer at Tatler. Her appointment as Style Editor at the Saturday Telegraph Magazine followed, where Kinvara gained a reputation as one of London’s most instinctive style writers.

Three years later Kinvara was awarded the role of London Editor for daily email phenomenon DailyCandy.com. A cult hit in USA, this was to be DailyCandy’s first international edition, and Kinvara launched it to mass acclaim. In this role she has become a leading web expert and an authority on everything from fashion and beauty to food and retail culture.

In addition, she has contributed to The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, Vogue, Sunday Times Style, The Observer, ES and Quintessentially magazines. She has sat on the British Fashion Council’s prestigious London Fashion Week selection committee and, for several seasons, compiled much of their official literature.

Kinvara’s topics extend well beyond the field of fashion, she speaks on subjects ranging from youth markets to recognising trend changes and leading brand strengths.

Today she hosts trend presentations and consultations around the world. Clients include Pantene, Max Factor, Wella, Clairol, Gillette, Coutts, UBS, Value Retail, Citigroup, Beyman and Canon; she has spoken to audiences in countries as diverse as Romania, Lebanon, Turkey, Egypt, USA, Israel and Russia. Her groundbreaking seasonal ‘Catwalk Trend Report’ is a favourite with corporations who need to know what’s emerging on the runway.

In addition, Kinvara trained as an actress at Central and has written two plays. Her first, ‘Dazed & Abused’ was staged in Edinburgh, London and New York. Her second, ‘After Invisible’ will premier in London in 2010.

KINVARA BALFOUR CONSULTING

“Kinvara offers an edge as sharp as any Samurai sword, her insights translate into profits for my clients- its that simple”
Jonathan Gabay, Founder, Director Brand Forensics

“Kinvara interprets trends with clarity and insight; she is an articulate and informative speaker with an impressive knowledge of what is happening in the world of style, fashion and beauty. Her sense of humour and charming character serve her well.” Andrea Witty, Communications Manager Procter & Gamble Beauty and Prestige Beauty.

“The moment I met Kinvara I knew she was going to become indispensable to us- she is an articulate, intelligent and very likeable individual. Her knowledge of the world of fashion and beauty is impressive.” Jane Boardman, Director, Talk PR

‘Kinvara’s insights are invaluable and her enthusiasm, infectious. Any fashion, trend or beauty-related company will undoubtedly benefit from what she has to say.’ Brent Hoberman, Co-founder www.lastminute.com, Founder www.mydeco.com & www.profounderscapital.com.

Kinvara has consulted some of the largest global retail brands in the run up to the crucial Christmas trading period. Ever focussed on the future, Kinvara now delivers key insights through The International Catwalk Report: Key Trends in Fashion, Hair & Beauty for Spring/Summer 2010*

During the last few years Kinvara has travelled the world for clients such as Wella, Max Factor, Panthene, Coutts and UBS to share what is happening in the world of fashion, hair and beauty – at private events, conferences and on TV. Industry experts she has worked with on this include Pat McGrath, Mary Greenwell, Sam McKnight and Josh Wood. Now, by popular request Kinvara provides an independent catwalk round-up for Spring/Summer 2010.

This consulting service meets the needs of companies that need to know how to pitch their clients/products to magazine editors and retailers. Any culture-conscious company needs to keep up to date with current trends.

Kinvara has advised many design-related organisations seeking inspiration in modern times, and even fashion-following individuals wanting a secret update on what’s hot (and what’s not)

The leading global futurist Anne Lise Kjaer’s exceptional eye for social trends is matched by an original and inspiring way of translating fledgling concepts into commercial business propositions.

She is a popular and charismatic speaker – with regular conference engagements throughout Europe, Scandinavia and North America. Her audiences range from today’s leading executives to tomorrow’s brand developers.

Kjaer’s insight into every area of futures – from food to fashion, cars and electronics to the next big thing in retail – has given her a worldwide client base and a unique ability to engage and inspire her audiences. ‘The future is not some place we go but one we create,’ she says.

Kjaer’s 100+ international clients are an A-Z of world-leaders including Nokia, IKEA, Masterfoods, Sony, Unilever and Toyota. Her speciality is bridging the creative and intellectual process, shaping the strategies and core concepts that drive the businesses and brands of the future. She delivers an intelligent and inspiring outlook on the future.

This unique world vision was defined by Matthew Temple in the Financial Times thus: ‘as fertile as Dali’s only she creates social prototypes…based on nascent trends.’ But Kjaer’s real talent is to create clarity out of the many and complex micro trends that threaten to overwhelm and confuse us. By defining future consumers, she breathes life and inspiration into the serious business of designing and marketing into the 21st century.

Her pan-European career began in the trends forecasting business – via her native Denmark, Paris and Hamburg – and led eventually to London where kjaer global’s unique philosophy was further developed. Using holistic principles, by combining scientific with social, emotional and spiritual research, the company builds up a complete multidimensional picture of the next generation of consumers – and their must-have products and services. ‘Our methodology is complex and many-layered, but the core philosophy is simple – by logic we prove, by intuition we discover,’ says Kjaer.

‘We are surrounded by conflicting trends, yet so many of them will fall by the wayside. So the key – as never before – is to view the future consumer not as mere end user, but as a dynamic part of your business growth,’ says Kjaer. ‘If the challenge is to create clarity out of complexity, then that means getting to know – and identify with – your consumers. Only then can you understand what they will want from you.’

BJ possesses a rare combination of business and creative credentials. He is a successful entrepreneur, charismatic speaker and acknowledged thought leader in the field of branding, brand marketing and communications.

He completed his MA in 3-Dimensional design at Middlesex University following his undergraduate degree in Economics and Social History at Exeter University.

On return from his subsequent travels through SE Asia, he started his first enterprise called The Karma Connection, which imported classic cars and Harley Davidsons from LA to London. This stopped abruptly when the market collapsed. He lost everything except his overdraft.

He took his considerable debt and created DEATH™ Cigarettes. His Enlightened Tobacco Company PLC, which he describes as a vertical learning curve, culminated after five years in a spectacular tax arbitrage scheme, threatening to overturn the tobacco industry and truly open up Europe for the consumer.

His Tobacco Direct scheme, took him to the doors of the European Court of Justice, where he found himself up against the combined might of the tobacco industry who were joined by every Member State of Europe. He lost.

His verve and irreverent reputation led him on to establish an Integrated Brand Marketing agency built upon his experience in business and the philosophy of ‘Corporate Religion’, a UK business best seller that he edited and to which he wrote the introduction. He then went on to win business as diverse as Volkswagen, Canon, Fairline Boats, Korn Ferry and Red Devil. He successfully sold the Agency after three years in August 2001, coinciding with the birth of his first child.

More recently, he and his wife have launched the highly acclaimed Georgina Goodman brand of shoes and accessories from their flagship store in the heart of Mayfair. The Georgina Goodman luxury brand is now stocked by the major fashion retailers globally.

After just 18 months GG’s hand made exclusive GG designs, have attracted celebrity clients like Jerry Hall -is seeing profits increase at a rate of 25% per season.e. growth of over 50% yearly, a phenomenal achievement for an unknown designer competing in a rarefied market against designers like Jimmy Choo.

Having recently appointed a new Managing Director GG is set for continued success and to compete with the good and the great designers of this century.

BJ is now channelling his energy into his latest venture and taking his corporate learning into the SME market. In his usual provocative style he will challenge business owners and entrepreneurs to re-examine the truth and their brand.

BJ continues to work as an independent brand marketing consultant and has become a much sought after keynote and after dinner speaker for international conferences and events.

Alan Mitchell is a former Editor of Marketing Magazine, marketing correspondent of The Times, and Contributing Editor of Marketing Week. He also serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Brand Management and The Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice, and is consulting editor to The International Commerce Review.

Mitchell is author of two books (with Andreas Bauer and Gerhard Hausruckinger); Right Side Up and The New Bottom Line. He is Founder of the Buyer Centric Commerce Forum. As Founder of Ctrl-Shift, he and his team research and advise organisations about consumer empowerment. He also works with Mydex, a Community Interest Company whose goal is to ‘help individuals realise the value of their personal data’.

Richard Reed is the co-founder of Innocent Drinks, the UK’s fastest growing food and drinks company and the no.1 smoothie brand in the UK. Richard is a fabulous keynote speaker for events geared around business, leadership and CSR (corporate social responsibility).

The Innocent story shows that with a non-corporate attitude, a sincere commitment to the cause and creative thinking it is possible to create a fast growing, profitable company that acts responsibly.
In 2006 Innocent Drinks employs 89 people, and has its little tasty drinks selling in over 6,000 outlets. The innocent range has expanded to include: special smoothies for children, big one litre cartons for families at home, juicy waters for a more refreshing natural drink and thickies for a yoghurt and fruit blend. The drinks regularly win industry awards, including Best Soft Drink in the UK.

After graduating from Cambridge University and working in advertising for four years, Richard and his two college friends Jon and Adam, decided to set up a lovely fresh fruit juice company. After six months of developing recipes in their kitchen, they boys wanted to test their drinks with a wider audience. To do so, they bought £500 of fruit, turned it into smoothies and sold them from a stall at a music festival. They put up a sign that said, ‘Should we give up our jobs to make these smoothies’, and put out a big bin that said NO and one that said YES. Fortunately, at the end of the weekend, the YES bin was full so they went in the next day and resigned.

Business Awards won include:

• Orange Small Business of the Year
• Orange Marketing Campaign of the Year
• Orange Innovative Company of the Year
• Small/Medium Business of the Year – National Business Awards
• Best Investors in People – National Business Awards
• Innovative Company of the Year – Growing Business Awards
• Most Promising New Company – Growing Business Awards

Drink awards include:
• Best UK Soft Drink – International Food and Drink Expo
• Best UK Soft Drink – Q Awards
• Best UK Soft Drink – Great Taste Awards (1999-2002)

Speaking topics include:
• Entrepreneurship
• Setting up a Business
• Marketing

Tony is best known as the first Marketing Director of easyJet, launching what has become one of Europe’s best known and most successful new brands. After working with entrepreneur Stelios Haji-Ioannou to establish easyJet, Tony went on to take the easy brand into new territory becoming easyGroup Marketing Director and becoming a board director at other easyGroup companies.

He has also held Executive positions in the UK and North America with easyJet’s most famous rival British Airways and counts HSBC, Thomas Cook Group and internet bank egg among former employers.

Among the UK’s leading marketing names he has been shortlisted for the prestigious marketer of the year award and featured in the Marketing Power list. Today Tony is Group Development Director of TNS PLC the world’s largest market research company. He also runs his own consultancy business and is a regular speaker at corporate events and conferences around the world.

Jonathan Gabay is a creative branding expert. He is founder of Brand Forensics and on the core faculty of the world’s biggest marketing training body – The Chartered Institute of Marketing.

As a journalist, Jonathan regularly delivers incisive comment and analysis in the national and trade press, including SKY, BBC, Channel 4, Five and ITN and Bloomberg TV.

He has addressed business gatherings all over the world and graduates at various major global academic institutions.

Jonathan is consistently voted as the most sought after speaker at the Chartered Institute of Marketing. He also delivers captivating, up to the minute lectures to senior managers around the world.

Leading business organisations as well as UK FTSE companies in sectors ranging from finance and technology to FMCG and travel, feature Jonathan’s award winning copywriting and marketing strategies.

His vast experience of working for some of the best known creative agencies and cutting edge brands in the industry – heading up departments at the UK’s top agencies, among them, Saatchi & Saatchi Direct – has shaped his work as an author

Jonathan has authored 12 best selling business books, many of which are now recognised at benchmark texts for marketing study having been translated into over 52 languages. (See www.gabaywords.com and www.soultraderstruth.com ).

The rare fusion of corporate experience, audience rapport and outstanding creativity gives Gabay significant status on the speaking and conference circuit. By avoiding jargon, ‘the camouflage of the incompetent’ and dry analytical prose, his approach provides insight and entertainment in equal measure and his incisive comment on brand-related issues, get to the heart of any event.

Key topics for Gabay include:

Brand strategy
Marketing strategy for directors
Creative advertising
Marketing and propaganda
Leadership for directors
Dealing with creative suppliers
Brands in the news
Establishing and re-establishing trust in business
Marketing and ethics
The future of training
Public Relations – where next?
Web 2.O and social networking on the web
The future of marketing
International branding
Marketing design
Terrorism and marketing
Marketing for government bodies
Reinventing Yourself (team building – a highly inspirational and interactive talk)

Highly successful and popular speaker Wayne offers audiences insights into entrepreneurship, creativity, common sense and moving onto new challenges. Inspirational and hugely entertaining, Wayne’s energizing presence leaves audiences feeling inspired, motivated and empowered.

Wayne Hemingway’s career in fashion began in 1982 with a stall selling second hand clothes on Camden Market and peaked when his label Red or Dead was sold in a multi-million pound deal in 1999. Red or Dead became one of the strongest British brands of the 90s. Hemingway has since been involved in many award-winning redevelopments of urban environments in Gateshead, Manchester, Lothian, London and elsewhere.

Born in Morecambe in 1961 Hemingway grew up in Blackburn, the son of Billy Two Rivers, a Mohawk Indian wrestling champion. Hemingway is part punk, part pop star, part speak-it-like-it-is northerner. He relies heavily on gut instinct when looking at new projects and backs it up with a remarkable work ethic. The enormous success of Red or Dead came despite opposition from the fashion industry which sneered at the labels cheap, playful street style and didn’t like it when Hemingway grinned back.

After dominating the London fashion scene in the mid-1990s, Red or Dead was sold in 1999 and Hemingway began a new business, Hemingway Design. Operating under the strapline “We design things” the firm has created objects ranging from Pure’s “The Bug” radio, to carpets, to Sky’s set-top digibox. Hemingway prides himself on creating designs that “can add something to people’s lives–without hurting their wallets!”

Hemingway Design has also been successful as a creator of affordable low-cost housing. Wayne is a Geography and Town Planning graduate from University College London but had no experience of the construction industry. Working with house builder Wimpey in 2005 he created the Staithes South Bank, an 800-unit development In Gateshead, Tyne and Wear. This was the first in a series of award-winning building projects that includes The Birchin, an apartment block in Manchester built with affordability for the inhabitants ahead of profitability.

Hemingway insists that his main motivation is to change things and to leave a legacy. He has done just that first in the fashion world and now with development projects across Lancashire, the North and in London.

Hemingway’s extensive humour and no-nonsense style have impressed audiences in over 30 countries.
His mission is to deliver messages that inspire and improve the daily effectiveness of each and every member of the audience, making them more productive, creative, forward thinking and above all, able to get straight to the point!

Sahar Hashemi founded Coffee Republic, the UK’s first US style coffee bar chain with her brother and built it into one of the UK’s most recognised high street brands with a turnover of £30m. Giving up highly professional jobs, she a lawyer in London and he an investment banker in New York, they staked everything on a dream – and made Coffee Republic one of the main players in the ‘coffee revolution’ that transformed a nation of tea drinkers into one obsessed with ‘triple decaf half-caf lattes’.

Sahar left the day to day management of Coffee Republic in 2001 and wrote a book called ‘Anyone Can Do It – Building Coffee Republic from our Kitchen Table’ which tackles some of the fears and answers some of the elusive questions about what it really takes to become an entrepreneur. It’s a personal story about two people who stopped ‘thinking about it’ and ‘did it’. ‘Anyone Can Do It’ has reached #1 on the Amazon business chart. It is ‘suggested reading’ for the London Business School entrepreneurship course.

In 2005 Sahar Hashemi launched Skinny Candy, a high profile brand of sugar free sweets. It has already received wide press coverage and is available across big department store chains throughout the UK.
In 2007 she announced the formation of a joint venture between Skinny Candy and Glisten plc.

Sahar and the management team of Glisten Plc’s Confectionery Division will work together to develop the Skinny Candy product range and particularly, to build upon its low-fat, low-calorie, confectionery credentials. Both parties feel that this is an area of the market which has very exciting growth prospects.

Sahar Hashemi and Paul Simmonds, Glisten Plc Chief Executive will be the Directors of this new joint venture.
Sahar commented, “I always talk about entrepreneurs within a large company and now I am one. It’s really exciting doing something I am passionate about and yet having the support, infrastructure and expertise of a large established company behind me. A real win-win.”

Sahar now inspires international business audiences with her unique story.

Sahar’s speaking topics include:

• Entrepreneurship
• Self Motivation
• Creativity
• Innovation
• Customer Service
• Brand Building
• Women in Business

As Head of Global Brand & Business Development, Christian Majgaard was creative genius and senior director at LEGO responsible for their global brand, product and campaign development of their core business (toys) as well as their Theme Park, Media and Brand Licensing divisions.

Christian left LEGO to help international companies develop and implement strategies for customer focused growth (Brand Strategy, Innovation and Corporate Vision/Identity).

Both through his leadership experience, his consultancy practise and his global record of success through innovation, Christian Majgaard is internationally recognised for adjusting corporate effectiveness through implementation of technologies and innovative strategies.

As a global executive leader, Christian championed world famous toy maker LEGO’s change from a low tech plastic brick manufacturer to a brand that thrived on technologies such as robotics and interactivity developing both company and product through applied technology.

Christian has successfully addressed change issues and applied strategy for international brands such as Motorola, Nestle and Unisys among his board level clients. His work with a major health sector client is an IMD Switzerland case study benchmark for innovation and implementation.

He has maintained close relations to LEGO and their CEO is Chairman of Christian’s consultancy business.

Christian is a renowned speaker at conferences throughout the world on Creativity, implementation, Innovation and Strategy.

Testimonials

“Your speech became the clue of the day”
ICBI/ Fund Forum International, executive summit, France

“Of all the seminars we have held this year, by far the most popular was the one with Christian Majgaard as speaker”
Norwegian Market Research Association, Norway

“a fire broke out in all of us after your speech Friday morning”
Head of marketing, Lindberg Intl.

“ Your presentation to Oras Intl. was SUPER”
Organiser of Oras intl. management seminar,

“ you made a great, great presentation”
PA consulting, head of executive seminar Global clients.

“A 1000 thanks for such an inspiring presentation and great management of the following discussion. We certainly hope to draw on you again”
Head of corporate HR, Copenhagen Stock Exchange. Management seminar.

“I think the team did an excellent job and I am really looking forward to working with you on the next steps…”
Swiss Re, head of Global Branding, Switzerland”

“The customers greatly appreciated your presentation to them, so many of them have now asked for copies of your presentation and further involvement”
Motorola, head of intl. seminar for VIP customers, London

Literature

Featured as one of the “21 leaders for the 21 century” in the book by
Dutch–British professors Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden Turner.

Featured in case on strategic business development by IMD business school, Switzerland,
about the development and global launch of the LEGO MINDSTORMS brand.

Consulting

Adviser to the innovation board of RABO Bank Holland
Brand strategy, Swiss Re, world leader in reinsurance
Brand strategy, Danisco, world leader in food ingredients
Brand strategy, LEGO, world leading creative toy brand
Brand research, Bang & Olufsen, world’s most prestigious audiovisual brand
Adviser to business development team at Heineken
On prize committee for Intl. media and advertising awards.