Lisa Thomas, CEO, M&C Saatchi Group (UK)

Lisa graduated from Cambridge with a degree in French and Spanish. She spent the early part of her career in direct marketing at Wunderman Worldwide and Craik Jones.

In 2000, Lisa joined M&C Saatchi to found its direct marketing agency, LIDA, which has grown from a one person agency, to an industry leader with over 100 staff. LIDA was named Customer Engagement Agency of the Year by Campaign in both 2013 and 2014.

Lisa was appointed as CEO of M&C Saatchi Group in the UK in 2010. She has since spearheaded the agency’s growth, with revenues increasing by 13% YOY in 2012. She has also continued to build the agency’s portfolio of expertise, aligning with social media agency, Human Digital, in 2011, and acquiring the talent management company, Merlin, in 2013 to create M&C Saatchi Merlin.

Lisa is an active member of WACL and the Marketing Society, and is a great public speaker on business and entrepreneurialism. She has appeared as an industry commentator on CNBC, The Business Class, and Newsnight.

Martin Brooks, Co-Founder and Partner, Havas Work Club

Martin Brooks is a digital agency entrepreneur with a track record of founding and building successful and awarded agency businesses.

He is the Co-Founder and Partner of Havas Work Club – a 75-person digital agency based in London that has been named Digital Agency of the Year by Campaign (2012) and Marketing (2011) in the UK. The agency has0 also been listed on Creativity/AdAge’s 2013 Global A-lIst of creative agencies.

Previously, Martin co-founded and ran Agency Republic for Omnicom, a 120-person agency that won4 Digital Agency of the Year awards between 2001 and 2006. During this time, he established the Zulu network of 6 agencies within Omnicom by buying and building a range of specialist digital media businesses to fit the needs of a wide client base including O2, Mercedes-Benz and Unilever. Also in2006, Martin was named Digital Achiever of the Year by Campaign.

Martin lives in London, loves sailing and spends weekends with his wife Sarah and their 3 children on a Dutch Barge on the UK’s south coast.

Colin Byrne, CEO, UK & EMEA, Weber Shandwick

Colin is one of the UK’s leading PR and Public Affairs practitioners with nearly 30 years’ experience spanning domestic and international PR, political and public affairs campaigns.

He joined Weber Shandwick in 1995, rising to lead the public affairs practice in London in 1997, the UK region in 2003 and is now Chief Executive Officer of the EMEA network and a member of the global management team.

After several years in private and not-for-profit sector PR, Colin joined the British Labour Party’s communications team in 1987 and was quickly promoted to Head of Press & Broadcasting. He served as deputy to then Communications Director Peter Mandelson. In 1992 he became the first Communications Director of The Prince of Wales Business Leaders Forum, the international NGO founded and still today presided over by Prince Charles and supported by many leading international firms.

Clients at Weber Shandwick have included IKEA, Oracle, The Marine Stewardship Council, The BBC, Coca-Cola, Nestle and the British Government.

Cilla Snowball, Group CEO, AMV BBDO

Cilla joined AMVBBDO in 1992 as the agency’s first New Business Director. Twenty three 
years later, she now oversees the 4 companies that comprise the AMV Group in the UK –AMVBBDO, Proximity, Redwood and Fishburn.

Cilla sits on the boards of BBDO Worldwide, Derwent London plc, Comic Relief and theWomen’s Business Council. She was Chairman of the Advertising Association from 2012 –2015.

She was awarded the CBE in the 2009 New Year Honours list for services to the advertising industry.

Most importantly, she is Fred, Albert and Rosie’s mum.

Mark Lund, CEO, McCann Worldgroup UK

As CEO of UK McCann Worldgroup Mark heads a 1,700 strong organisation made up of some of the UK’s best marketing services companies, with a footprint right across the country. His remit is help them come together to deliver total integration at scale in all aspects of business and reputation building.

Prior to joining McCann Mark helped co found two independent advertising businesses, one of which, DLKW, became a top 10 UK agency. He has also served as the chief executive of the COI, the government’s marketing and communications arm and behaviour change centre.

He has been Chairman of the Advertising Association and served on the councils of both the IPA and ISBA. He is currently the Chair of the AA’s Media Smart and Children’s Panel and sits on the AA council.

With Kate, he is the father of Oliver and Elspeth and lives in Oxfordshire.

Sam Williams-Thomas CEO, OgilvyOne UK

Sam Williams-Thomas is CEO of OgilvyOne London, arguably the UK’s leading Customer Engagement Agency.

Sam has worked at OgilvyOne for the past 12 years and has risen through the ranks.  He joined to lead the BBC TV Licensing account, as well as BT, the largest UK Telco business, which he is still heavily involved with today. 

He was appointed Client Service Director in 2006 and Managing Director in 2008.  After four years running the London Agency, and overseeing record growth, as well as a record number of awards for creativity and effectiveness, he was promoted to CEO.

Prior to joining Ogilvy, Sam spent 5 years at Craik Jones, (sadly, no longer in existence since its merger with Proximity in 2008) where he worked on Land Rover.

He sits on the DMA Awards Council and is a Fellow of The Institute of Digital and Direct Marketing.

Sam lives in South London with his wife and three daughters.

Yvonne O’Brien, Chief Insight Officer, Havas Media Group

Yvonne began her career  on the client side at Tiimex Watches…

During her time at IPG Mediabrands, Yvonne established its Marketing Sciences division which comprised insight, research and analytics for the holding group. She focused on data partnerships and integration of key digital data sets to improve agency insight strategy product.

Prior to this, Yvonne held the position of Managing Partner, specialising in research & insight, at UM London. Working on ensuring key insights were integrated into strategy and planning on high profile accounts such as Microsoft, MasterCard, Burtons Foods & Tiffany. Yvonne developed thought leadership programme as well as redeveloping new agency and effectiveness tools. She has also held senior insight and marketing roles at Clear Channel UK, Opus and JCDecaux.

At Havas Yvonne oversees the research, insight and econometric teams and works closely with the Group’s unique data and insight capabilities, namely data and marketing tech consultancy DBi and trends agency SCB Partners.  Yvonne will also play an instrumental role in the evolution and direction of HMG’s annual Meaningful Brands research.

Darin Brown, CEO Europe, Middle-East and Africa, Possible

Darin is our CEO across Europe, the Middle-East and Africa. In this capacity, he works closely with our key EMEA clients, drives our business strategy and leads expansion efforts. Darin is one of those unique executives that has equal parts experience in ATL advertising and deep digital (marketing and technology). Notable clients include Microsoft, Levis, Turkish Airlines, Mondelez, P&G, adidas, SAB Miller.

Prior to POSSIBLE, Darin was President of Europe for CP+B where he founded the London office and managed the business across Eastern and Western Europe. During the late nineties and early naughts, Darin was part of the leadership team that built much of Razorfish - serving as President of the West Coast, Global CSO and President of Europe.

Darin began his career at Leo Burnett and as an early pioneer in digital, was the founder of their digital group in 1995.