This blog is mainly written by Martin Thomas. His co-author, David Brain, has been writing his own www.sixtysecondview.com for a while and can’t quite bring himself to do two.
Martin Thomas can be contacted by email: martin@catchsnapper.com
Martin Thomas
Martin has led award-winning media, PR and sponsorship teams and has been one of the pioneers of integrated brand and communications planning as a specialist marketing discipline. He has been operating as a marketing consultant, trainer and writer for the past two and a half years, working with brand owners and marketing agencies, on a broad range of business, brand and communications planning assignments.
He began his career in public relations and after managing one of the UK’s leading agencies, Cohn & Wolfe, moved into the world of media with Mediaedge:cia (MEC), where he became global head of communications planning. At MEC Martin was responsible for the global development of communications planning as a core industry discipline for the 5,000 strong media planning and buying agency and ran the agency’s Central Planning Group. He was also directly involved in strategic planning on many of the agency’s multi-national clients, advising them across a range of communications disciplines, including advertising, sponsorship, event marketing, media relations, new media and direct marketing. He also launched specialist sponsorship and entertainment marketing units and ran the agency’s new media division.
Martin then went on to co-found Nylon, WPP’s specialist communications planning business, where his clients included Xerox, Morrisons and Sony Ericsson. Nylon was the first communications planning agency to be created within a major marketing services group and was selected by the UK government’s marketing arm, the COI, for its Marketing and Brand Strategy Consultancy roster.
Following Nylon, Martin worked at media agency MPG as UK Head of Strategy, where his clients included Camelot and Bhs. He also wrote the marketing communications section of Camelot’s successful bid submission for the UK National Lottery.
Martin is a non executive director of Sport England and the Commonwealth Games Council for England and is also a Fellow of the RSA and a member of the Marketing Society and Account Planning Group.
Martin has a degree in Modern History from Jesus College, Oxford and is married with two children.
David Brain
David has worked in PR, corporate communications and advertising for 26 years; a continual span broken only by a brief gullible 18 months when he ‘did a dot-com’. He lived and worked in Asia Pacific for seven years and is now based in London where he runs the European operations of Edelman, one of the top three PR firms in the world and the only one that remains independent. He continues to consult with some of the world’s top companies and their brands. He studied Literature and History at the Redlands University in California and graduated from the University Of East Anglia in the UK. He is married to a New Zealander, has two children and follows Manchester City FC.