Thinkbox
TV advertising is transforming – and growing. From ITV to Netflix, Channel 4 to Amazon Prime Video, Sky to Disney+ and beyond, new opportunities are opening up for brands.
At this invitation-only event, the people leading TV’s transformation gave us the inside track on what the future holds and how brands can make the most of it. We also heard a range of inspiring, external viewpoints about connecting with, and moving, the nation.
You can catch up with all of the sessions in the video player above: get your hands on the key slides from the event using that handy ‘download button’: or click here to find out more about TV’s latest collaboration, Lantern. Lantern is a multi-outcome TV measurement initiative that will offer advertisers and buying agencies a way to measure the impact of their TV advertising activity on a host of online outcomes.
Agenda
13:30 Registration & refreshments
14:00 Welcome – Part 1: How To Move The Nation
Charlene White, Broadcaster and Journalist
14:05 Mr Bates vs The Post Office – TV’s impact on culture & society
- Patrick Spence, Executive Producer, Mr Bates vs The Post Office & MD, AC Chapter One
- Jo Hamilton, Former Sub Postmistress and Justice Campaigner
- In conversation with – Charlene White
14:30 Populating culture – the powerful role TV and brands play in shaping and moulding culture
Clare Hutchinson, Chief Strategy Officer, VCCP
14:45 Why TV is at the heart of effectiveness (and why brands can’t afford to be dull)
Peter Field, Author and Consultant
15:05 Signalling strength – putting a number on media’s X factor
Richard Kirk, Joint Chief Strategy Officer, EssenceMediacom UK
15:15 Shifting gear: an insider’s guide to brand transformation
- Kelly Engstrom, Brand & Demand Generation Communications Director, EE
- Ross Farquhar, Marketing Director, Little Moons
- In conversation with – Jon Evans, Chief Customer Officer, System1 Group and Host, Uncensored CMO
15:40 Coffee Break
16:00 Welcome back – Part 2: What TV Advertising Did Next
Charlene White, Broadcaster and Journalist
16:05 TV’s future: The best of both worlds
Matt Hill, Research & Planning Director, Thinkbox
16:20 What TV Advertising Did Next – TV Leaders Panel, chaired by Lindsey Clay, CEO, Thinkbox
- Veriça Djurdjevic, Chief Revenue Officer, Channel 4
- Kelly Williams, Managing Director, Commercial, ITV
- Brett Aumuller, Managing Director, Sky Media
- Phil Christer, Managing Director, Amazon Ads UK
16:55 TV’s next collaboration
- Victoria Appleby, Head of Sales, Channel 4
- Sameer Modha, Measurement Innovation Lead, Commercial, ITV
- Karin Seymour, Director of Client & Marketing, Sky Media
17:10 EVENT ENDS followed by networking drinks and canapes
Speakers
Peter Field, Author and Consultant
Peter has spent the last 25 years analysing effectiveness case studies. With fellow ‘godfather of effectiveness’, Les Binet, he wrote The Long & The Short of it, Effectiveness in Context, and The 5 Principles of Growth in B2B Marketing amongst many other works. He is very concerned about the direction advertising has taken over the last decade and this year has helped kickstart the ‘cost of dull’ project that alerts marketers to the downsides of dull creative and media choices. Peter has a global reputation as an effectiveness expert and communicator and speaks and consults on this topic regularly around the world.
Kelly Engstrom, Brand & Demand Generation Communications Director, BT, EE and Plusnet
One of the UKs leading tech marketers, Kelly Engstrom is a bold and brave business leader who prides herself in driving maximum impact, with maximum reach. She has been at the forefront of brand marcoms for more than 20 years and now has the audacious remit of driving both Britain’s biggest tech brand, EE whilst carefully shepherding one of its most venerated and respected, BT. It’s a role that means delivering trusted networks but more critically ensuring the nation, in its entirety, is always truly connected whether in covid lockdowns or celebrating Euro sporting triumphs.
Ross Farquhar, Marketing Director, Little Moons
Ross Farquhar is Marketing Director at Little Moons, makers of mochi ice cream. Little Moons are bite-sized balls of artisan gelato wrapped in soft-sweet mochi dough, and Ross is charged with accelerating already impressive growth to build the next global powerhouse brand in ice cream and introducing mochi to the masses. Prior to joining Little Moons Ross’ career took him across agency and client lines, starting with Cadbury and Diageo before joining creative agency 101. He later returned client-side as CMO at wagamama.
Clare Hutchinson, Chief Strategy Officer, VCCP
Clare has been an advertising strategist at various leading agencies over the last 25 years. Much of her career has been focused on Government campaigns. Driving behaviour change with the NHS ‘Don’t Give Up Giving Up’ smoking cessation campaign, that helped pave the way for the smoking ban, and supported over 1 million smokers to quit. And working with DfT on the ‘Think!’ Road Safety campaign, including the iconic ‘30 for a reason’ speed campaign. More recently she worked with DfE on the ‘Every lesson shapes a life’ teaching recruitment campaign.
Currently Clare is CSO at VCCP where she has been leading the strategy on the Cadbury campaign and ‘Every journey matters’ campaign for Transport for London. Clare is highly awarded for her work with multiple IPA Effectiveness awards, including the Grand Prix and Gold in 2022 for Cadbury and Gold for her work on Tobacco Control.
Richard Kirk, Joint Chief Strategy Officer, EssenceMediacom UK
Rich is Joint CSO at EssenceMediacom UK. Previously, he held the CSO role at Zenith Media, and led strategy at Amazon Advertising. He has worked on brands like Sky, Tesco, Toyota, Lloyds Bank, NatWest, Confused.com, and Reckitt Benckiser. He was named Campaign’s Media Planner of the Year for 2023 and is behind several projects that aim to quantify relative media quality.
Charlene White, Journalist & Broadcaster
Award-winning journalist and broadcaster, Charlene White is an ITV News presenter, a BAFTA-nominated and Royal Television Society-winning Loose Women host, and a pioneer at the forefront of news broadcasting.
Charlene is a columnist for the i paper, has previously worked as a writer for the New York Post and presented for BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra, BBC News Channel, BBC Five Live, and BBC Three. She co-hosted, alongside Sir Trevor McDonald, the notable documentary Has George Floyd Changed Britain?, exploring the impact George Floyd’s death had on people living in the UK, and hosted her own primetime ITV documentary, Empire’s Child looking at where her family sits in the British Empire. Charlene took part in the twenty-second series of I’m A Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here! and embarked on the Loose Women Live regional tour.
Charlene uses her platform to educate children about race and racism, mentor aspiring journalists, and work alongside various organisations to achieve better representation of women and minorities in the industry, winning a Royal Television Society award for Best Children's programme explaining racism and Black Lives Matter to children. Charlene’s debut work of non-fiction No Place Like Home will be published this September.
Veriça Djurdjevic, Chief Revenue Officer, Channel 4
Veriça joined Channel 4 as Chief Revenue Officer in November 2020, after spending over 20 years in media planning and buying agencies. She started her career at MediaVest in 1998 before moving to MEC in 2002. She worked in both the account management and strategy teams across a wide spectrum of clients during her time at MEC, before moving to PHD UK in 2009 to run the Sainsbury’s business. She became MD in 2013, before being promoted to CEO in April 2017. Veriça has always had a great love of television and was thrilled to have the opportunity to lead Channel 4’s commercial team. She has responsibility for all of C4’s revenue streams working in both linear and digital sales with an increasing focus on developing new innovative advertising models, especially in the digital space.
Kelly Williams, Managing Director, Commercial, ITV
Kelly joined ITV in 2011 as Group Commercial Director. He was promoted to Managing Director, Commercial and appointed to the Management Board in 2014. He has responsibility for all commercial advertising deals across the ITV family of channels. He is the Chair of the Board of Thinkbox, a member of the BARB Strategy Board, and also sits on the RTL AdAlliance Association Board. Prior to joining ITV, Kelly was the Sales Director at Channel 5 and prior to that held various positions at UKTV, Sky and Thames Television.
Brett Aumuller, Managing Director, Sky Media
Brett has 25+ years of corporate experience in a number of finance and commercial roles across various industries including Mining, Aviation and Media, and across multiple territories including Australia, the UK and Italy. Arriving in the UK from his native Australia, he joined Sky in 2001, working in senior finance, commercial and trading roles across both the UK and Italian businesses. He has also spent time as Commercial Director at Australia’s leading Pay TV business FOXTEL. Some of the more recent roles Brett has held include CFO of Sky Italy and Deputy MD of NOW, Sky’s streaming arm, which he held for just over two years before being appointed as Managing Director of Sky Media in April 2022.
Phil Christer, Managing Director, Amazon Ads UK
Phil has been with Amazon for over two years, beginning his journey leading Amazon’s Global Agency Development team, which has led him to his current position as Managing Director of Amazon Ads UK. Phil is based in London and works with teams across Amazon globally and in Europe to develop and execute Amazon Ads’ agenda and goals across both advertisers and agencies. Prior to Amazon, Phil worked in a variety of leadership positions at Dentsu, Google, and Zenith.
Jon Evans, Chief Customer Officer, System1 Group and Host, The Uncensored CMO
The Uncensored CMO is the world’s No.1 marketing podcast by Jon Evans, exploring the good, the bad and the downright ugly truth about the industry. Jon’s mission is to connect the world of marketing with the greatest marketing thinkers and most experienced CMOs to help you put theory into practice. Jon himself has been a trailblazing CMO, boasting a wealth of experience that spans great triumphs with award-winning product launches and advertising campaigns. He has also known epic failure and been fired twice, in one year. Jon is Chief Customer Officer for global advertising & innovation effectiveness platform System1. This gives him unparalleled insight into the science behind what drives profitable growth.
Jo Hamilton, Former Sub Postmistress and Justice Campaigner
Jo happily ran the village shop and Post Office in South Warnborough. Then along came Horizon. Since being sacked and charged with theft and dragged through the criminal justice system for nearly 2 years, she has been a tireless campaigner for Post Office victims, keeping the issues front of mind whenever she can, being ever-present at the enquiry, and giving voice to the many.
Patrick Spence, Executive Producer, Mr Bates vs The Post Office, and Managing Director, AC Chapter One
Patrick is a BAFTA and RTS Award winning television producer, and Managing Director of AC Chapter One. Recent productions include the multi-award-winning Mr Bates vs The Post Office for ITV, starring Toby Jones and Monica Dolan, about hundreds of sub-postmasters fighting back against the Post Office in what has now been accepted as the largest miscarriage of justice in British history; A Spy Among Friends for ITV starring Damian Lewis and Guy Pearce; Litvinenko for ITVX starring David Tennant; and the BAFTA-nominated Adult Material for Channel 4.
Lindsey Clay, Chief Executive, Thinkbox
Following a career in advertising, Lindsey's love of telly drew her to Thinkbox, the UK marketing body for commercial TV, where she now leads the brilliant team who make it their mission to help brands get the best out of today’s TV advertising.
She is a former President of WACL (Women in Advertising and Communication Leadership), a former President of the Global TV Group, a Fellow of the Marketing Society, an Honorary Fellow of the IPA and a member of the Marketing Group of Great Britain.
Lindsey is a Trustee of the Rank Foundation and a Non Exec Director of TV production company CTVC.