Philip Spencer

A senior marketing strategist with a passion for growth and demand generation through strategy development.  Unconventional thinker, with a talent for idea and concept development, and logical thinking and writing.  Good at recognising the abilities of others and in developing young people in professional firms

 

PHILIP SPENCER — CURRICULUM VITÆ

 

 

PERSONAL

Address:                     Castleton, 2 Warwicks Bench Road, Guildford, Surrey, GU1 3TL
Tel: (01483) 503180 or (01483) 306409 – switchable to fax
e-mail: philip.spencer@dial.pipex.com

Nationality:                British

Status:                         Married, three boys – 15, 13, 11 years old

 

CAREER EXPERIENCE

1998—99                  WPP Group plc, London

                                    Chief Executive of new Consulting Enterprise, reporting directly to the Group Chief Executive (Martin Sorrell)
Main focus was to establish a new Strategic Management Consulting unit for the 30,000 strong world-wide group, which includes J. Walter Thompson and Ogilvy & Mather advertising agencies.

                                    This unit was subsequently disbanded owing to intra-group conflicts.

 

1995—98                  A.T. Kearney Limited, London

                                    Vice President, Head of Consumer Goods and Retail Consulting

Main focus was Strategy, Communications and Marketing Consulting
Main achievements:

§        Establishing CEO and other board-level relationships with major accounts, including Tesco, Kellogg’s Europe, Unigate, Diageo, and the Coca-Cola Retail Research Group, a forum of the leaders of the major European food retailers

§        Hiring and training a strategy and marketing group to make the firm strategy capable and compete with other strategy firms

§        Developing joint prospects with EDS exploiting IT superiority in supply chain efficiency (ECR)

 

Major focus of the work was towards intelligent and cost-effective application of consumer marketing, in a new tougher business environment: branded manufacturers were under pressure to understand the financial returns on marketing, and retailers were taking over as the main owners of relationships with consumers.

 

1990—94                  Gemini Consulting, London and Gemini-related companies

                                    Head of Consumer Products Division, Northern Europe Region

                                    Head of Marketing and Sales Consulting, Northern Europe Region

                                    Vice President


                Main achievements:

                                    Establishing board-level relationships with Reckitt and Colman, leading to an IT-based business transformation programme

1990—92                  Gruber, Titze & Partner Gemini, Bad Homburg, Germany

                                    Founder and Managing Director UK subsidiary

                                    Full Partner, German subsidiary

                                    Main achievements:

§        Setting up first and only successful international subsidiary, optimising potential for take-over

§        Achieving pay-out within the first nine months.  From that time on, we continued to return a dividend to the parent company

§        Entry of the first Strategic marketing consulting firm to offer high value-added services to consumer goods and retail clients.

 

Consulted to the boards of Boots International, Thomas Cook, Peugeot, National Westminster Bank, and a Swiss healthcare company

 

Many clients were recognising that communications strategy was becoming an important part of business strategy, and was becoming a key differentiator between success and failure.

 

1988—1989              S.C. Johnson Wax Consumer Division, Surrey, UK

                                    Commercial (Marketing and Sales) Director

Turned round a share loss trend in the business, through repositioning the core brands using a category management approach, rather than the previous approach, which allowed brands to compete with each other

 

1975—1988              Procter and Gamble, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK and Rotterdam, Netherlands

                                    Associate Advertising Director (General Marketing Director)

European Marketing Director responsible for European co-ordination of laundry brands sold in 9 markets

Main focus was on revitalising tired brands and difficult categories through gaining new insights with consumers and customers, to help reposition them to compete by changing the criteria against which purchases decisions were made

 

EDUCATION, QUALIFICATIONS, AND OTHER INTERESTS

 

1971—75                  Open Scholarship to Trinity College, University of Oxford

                                    University Prize for Organic Chemistry

                                    BA / MA Honours in Chemistry

1964—71                  Open Scholarship to Brentwood School, Essex

                                    GCE A/S-levels in Chemistry (A1), Physics (A1), Mathematics (B)

                                    13 O-levels, mainly at Grade 1

 

1999 —                      Director of Guildford Association of Voluntary Service

1992 — 1995            Bishop’s representative on Guildford Diocesan Board of Finance

 

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