Spark North 2015

Farrah Storr was appointed Editor of Cosmopolitan in July 2015 tasked with revolutionising the brand for young millennial women. Under her watch, sales of Cosmopolitan increased by 59% year-on-year and the magazine swiftly went back to being the best-selling women’s glossy in the UK – a title it had not held for 15 years.

Cosmopolitan engages women via multiple platforms, including digital platforms like Snapchat and large-scale consumer events such as Self Made Summit.

Previously, Farrah was the launch Editor of Women’s Health magazine. Under her direction Women’s Health became the most successful women’s magazine launch of the decade. Her achievements were recognised by the British Society for Magazine Editors when she won the prestigious award ‘New Editor of the Year’ in 2014.

@Farrah_Storr

Chris started his career in automotive marketing before moving into grocery retailing, joining Tesco.com in 2007. This move provided him with a foundation in retail eCommerce at scale. Since then he has built a specialism in digital marketing and CRM, leading key digital change programmes for Jet2.com, the low cost airline,  and most recently leading the digital and CRM strategy for Asda.

Heather Andrew is CEO of Neuro-Insight in the UK and her background is in marketing and communication.

Originally with Rowntree Mackintosh, she worked on brands like Kit Kat and Yorkie before becoming Marketing Director of a retail subsidiary.

Working as a Marketing Consultant for Price Waterhouse and Oxford Strategic Marketing, Heather ran projects for multi-national companies across a range of industry sectors including food, retail and OTC.

Since joining Neuro-Insight, Heather has managed projects for clients across many industries, looking at brain response to brand communication, with a view to maximizing the effectiveness of this communication across different media.

Jon Tickner is Creative Director for Time Inc. UK.  A creative solutions & content marketing practitioner for around 15 years, he launched and runs Time Inc. Content. He provides creative and strategic leadership for Time Inc. Creative Media. Jon was previously Head of Creative Solutions for Telegraph Create.

Sue has 30 years of expertise in Brand, Communications and Media, in UK and Global roles spanning insight and evaluation, media technology, marketing and innovation.

Sue operates at the leading edge of consumer intelligence, with a passion for ensuring it genuinely helps brands make real life decisions; ultimately to deliver more meaningful connections and better ROI.

Working through the independent consultancy, Skin the Cat Ltd, she helps businesses successfully maximise the decision-making power of their consumer intelligence resources.

She is also co-launching a disruptive new Intelligence Design and Technology company, that will help clients get significantly more for their market research money.

Jon was one of the founders of Naked, the ground breaking international communications agency. Jon pioneered the concept of media neutrality during his time at Naked, speaking regularly at the World Federation of Advertisers on integrated marketing. He worked on a range of local and global clients including Coca-Cola and Unilever and remained at Naked for 13 years as it grew into an international group with offices in cities including New York, Melbourne, Sao Paolo, Paris, Singapore, Dubai and Tokyo.

Jon joined Karmarama at the beginning of 2014 as Executive Chairman, his first role since leaving Naked. Jon has been developing the Karmarama integrated offer, increasing the capabilities of the agency in data and mobile and working with key clients to help them grow their business through strategy and creativity. He also is a regular speaker at the IPA, The World Federation of Advertisers and Cannes Lions.

@karmajon

Sophie taps into WIRED's collective brain to translate the complexities and opportunities of the future for corporate leaders. She runs WIRED Consulting, designing future-proofing sessions across every industry.

Sophie has curated WIRED conferences including WIRED Retail and WIRED Money, and has spoken at conferences on the future of luxury, of retail, of real estate, financial services, media, work and productivity, and data/drones/satellites/quantum computing.

Sophie has recently returned from working in Silicon Valley at Singularity University, a group of futurists on the NASA campus evaluating the impacts of robotics, artificial intelligence, supercomputing, genetic sequencing and other accelerating technologies on business and society.

Before California, Sophie helped to transform an interdisciplinary research department, the Oxford Martin School, at Oxford University into a thriving academic community of experts from pandemics to food insecurity to systemic risk.

Aptly named for his current role of Executive Director at The Week, David Weeks has over twenty years experience in UK and International media sales.

A self confessed ‘frustrated creative’ David has a reputation for applying original thinking to winning business; his recent successes include an award winning partnership with Rolex and an exclusive iPhone project with Coutts.

Applying his 360 account management mantra David has worked with a wealth of senior client and agency contacts across all sectors – from luxury to finance and corporate campaigns.

Prior to joining The Week, David was the EMEA Advertising Director of The Economist. He is a Board Director of the International Advertising Association.

@TheWeekUK

White is an award-winning editor with fifteen years’ experience working for publishing companies on both sides of the Atlantic. She joined Bauer from Time Out New York where she worked as Editor-in-Chief, overseeing the brand’s editorial direction and content across all platforms.

Under her leadership, Time Out New York won several American industry awards including Most Improved Publication, Overall Digital Excellence, Best Use of Instagram and Cover of the Year. White herself was named one of Folio’s Top Women in US Media, 2015.

Prior to joining Time Out, White was Executive Editor at Life & Style and Editor of the freemium men’s title, ShortList, where she was named BSME Men’s Magazine Editor of the Year and PTC’s New Editor of the Year. She was also Editor of Buzz, the entertainment magazine published with The Sun, and Deputy Editor of Maxim. She has written for Q, Red, Elle, Stylist, Grazia and The Observer magazine.

@Terri_White

Dominic has over a quarter of a century of experience as a business journalist and editor for leading international B2B publishers. Before becoming Editorial Director of Haymarket Business Media in 1998, he was Editor of Campaign.

He wrote a column on advertising and media for the Daily Telegraph for 10 years and these days writes a weekly ‘Mills on Monday’ column for Mediatel.

Sue Todd launched Magnetic, the marketing agency for magazine media, in March 2015, to help customers get the very best return from their advertising spend with magazine media. Working with the UK’s largest consumer publishers, Sue and the Magnetic team have a remit to champion the power and vitality of magazine media in all its forms to the marketing and advertising community.

Sue began her career at EMAP in the research team, working through the ranks to become Marketing and People & Culture Director. From there she spent two years as Marketing Director at CBS Outdoor (now Global), before running specialist brand and culture consultancy Wonder for seven years, where her clients included Channel 4, Harrods, MEC, Primesight and Grey.

She is a non-exec Director on the board of The Big Issue and in her spare time enjoys the theatre, podcasts, singing and cycling.

@SueTodd2
@magneticmedia

Douglas is a leading expert on print and digital publishing. He analyses supplier strategies and forecasts consumption, revenue and advertising. He is a former director of Fish4, the online advertising portal, and was Director of Sales Development and market insights at the HMV Group. Douglas holds a degree from Stirling University.

@DouglasMcCabe

An insight practitioner with sixteen years’ experience spanning start-ups to big agencies, Anna started out as a research executive at Carat before moving onto Rise Communications and then MediaCom.

She now fronts the insight narrative for Magnetic and prides herself on telling compelling stories with all sorts of research, data and evidence. Anna believes insight starts with curiosity but really delivers when it is successfully applied and observation matches up with opportunity.

@annasampson7

Bob’s is a career of two halves. Twenty years in senior operational, management and ownership roles in some of London’s most successful advertising agencies, and a spell as a partner in a specialist communications and management consultancy.

He then joined ISBA in mid-1996 as Director of Media & Advertising, where he is a member of the executive management team with specific responsibilities representing advertisers across all media, advertisement production and content issues.

He is or has been a director of all the industry’s audience research and content regulation bodies, and is a frequent commentator in industry and national media. A keen cook, mushroom hunter, musician and guitar collector, he still makes time to play every day.

@bobwootton

Amanda Wigginton leads the Customer Strategy team at Time Inc. UK, a fusion of three specialist departments: research, data and analytics, to form one central unit. Amanda works with all areas of Time Inc. UK including content development, advertising and marketing to put the customer central to strategy and revenue generation.  Amanda has held a number of different roles in her time at Time Inc. (UK) including overseeing the development and implementation of the new product development research process, leading the centralisation of the research and insight team across the business, and developing a number of award winning research initiatives including The Origin Lounge, GenerationYNot! and Live the Passion!  Amanda sits on a number of industry committees including representing the PPA on the PAMCO Technical Committee.