The Progress 1000: London's most influential people 2019 – Media: Digital Advertising & Marketing

Emily Forbes
Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures
Amelia Heathman7 October 2019

Emily Forbes

Founder of Seenit | NEW
London-based start-up Seenit lets companies crowdsource smartphone footage from its employees, empowering the workforce to be the storytellers too.

Jessica Butcher

Founder of Tick | NEW
Butcher wants to make the internet a better place, starting with Tick. The micro-video platform allows you to create stories almost instantaneously, and aspires to be a place for hobbies, hacks and smarts that can inspire people to learn new skills in less than a minute.

Tobi Oredein

Dave Benett/Getty Images for The Wing

Black Ballad | NEW
Based in London, Oredein launched Black Ballad in 2014 as a UK-based lifestyle platform for black women as a way to cement their voices and experiences in the media. As well as running Black Ballad, she is also a freelance writer, covering topics such as race, feminism and popular culture.

Andrey Andreev

Founder of Badoo | NEW
Based in London, Russian entrepreneur Andreev founded the dating app Badoo and runs the network behind other similar apps including Bumble, Lumen and Chappy.

Rankin

Photographer, director, cultural provocateur and founder of RANKIN and Hunger magazine | NEW
As well as leading Hunger magazine and working as a film director and photographer, Rankin also founded RANKIN, a creative and advertising agency that works with many brands including Rolls Royce, Unilever and Samsonite to create the campaigns of tomorrow.

DJ Newman

Founder of Socially | NEW
Around two million people in London experience some form of loneliness which is why Newman launched a new friendship app, Socially, that wants to connect up like-minded people and break the loneliness cycle.

Sara McCorquodale

CEO and founder of CORQ | NEW
McCorquodale founded this marketing platform for influencers in 2017, demystifying which ones you should pour your advertising budget into (the influencers market is estimated to be worth £10 billion by 2020). She also published a book on the subject entitled Influence last month, has two children under five, plus a reputation for helping other women. Respect.

Pip Jamieson

Founder and CEO of The Dots | NEW
Jamieson founded The Dots as the LinkedIn for people in the creative industry back in 2014, and it now has more than 300,000 members and clients including Burberry, Google and Sony Pictures.

Sarah Douglas

CEO of AMV BBDO | NEW
As the UK’s biggest agency, Sarah Douglas has her work cut out for her at AMV BBDO, but she manages to pull it off: the agency was recently crowned the most-awarded UK agency at Cannes Lions this year, winning gold for its work with Guiness.

Ollie Forsyth

Host of the Makers podcast | NEW
Becoming a tech entrepreneur seems like a dazzling career, except when it’s not. The Makers Podcast, hosted by Ollie Forsyth, pulls back the curtain by featuring candid interviews with successful founders, like Tom Blomfield, CEO of Monzo, and Simon Beckerman, founder of Depop, on the times they screwed up along the way.

Timothy Armoo

Matt Writtle

CEO of Fanbytes | NEW
London-based Timothy Armoo is only 23 which makes him well-placed to run Fanbytes, a mobile-focused agency that creates engaging social videos and experiences to connect brands up with millennials and Gen-Zers.

Nafisa Bakkar and Selina Bakkar

Co-founders of Amaliah | NEW
Sisters Nafisa and Selina co-founded Amaliah, an online platform dedicated to showcasing the voices of Muslim women on the internet, covering relationships, fashion, beauty and identity, based in Shoreditch.

Lucy Loveridge

Head of talent at Gleam Futures | NEW
If you want to know what’s next for influencers, look to Loveridge. As head of talent at the UK’s top influencer agency, which manages big names like Tanya Burr and Zoella, she has her finger on the internet’s pulse.

Chris Norman

CEO and founder at GOOD | NEW
For the past 25 years, Chris Norman has been helping brands to realise their positive purpose at the award-winning strategy and creative agency GOOD. It pioneered the concept that people connect more with brands that want to make a difference, something which is crucial in today’s society.

Sam Conniff

Founder, Livity | NEW
This specialist marketing agency uses "youth culture to design the future.” For 18 years Livity has been bringing brands together with next generation talent "to make the world a better place”, running campaigns for the likes of Coca Cola, O2 and Google.

Karen Blackett OBE

WPP UK country manager | NEW
One of the most admired media chiefs in adland. In August Blackett was appointed a trustee of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s new charity foundation, a voluntary position in addition to her duties at WPP where she has established an inclusion board to encourage a more diverse workforce.

Dan Clays

UK CEO, Omnicom Media Group | NEW
Clays, the former CEO of OMD UK, clinched the top job in June this year. In his new role he will assume responsibility for all OMG UK clients and agencies — a reward for overseeing £200 million of new business over the past 18 months.

Kate Rowlinson

UK CEO, MediaCom | NEW
Rowlinson was appointed to her latest position in July this year having spent just over a year as managing director of MediaCom’s Worldwide Hub where she was tasked with developing services across six primary “hubs” — London, New York, Singapore, Latin America (Miami and Colombia), Dusseldorf and Paris. She will now lead the country’s biggest agency, comprised of 1,250 people across five offices.

Sue Frogley

UK CEO Publicis | NEW
Frogley has held this position for two years, taking charge of a £1 billion-a-year UK media-buying operation at a time of turmoil in the global ad sector. Her responsibility includes five agencies: Zenith, Starcom, Blue 449, Spark Foundry and Performic. Frogley was previously global commercial director at Starcom Mediavest Group from 2014.

Tim Pearson

CEO OMD Group UK | NEW
Pearson assumed his current position in June this year. Formerly chief executive at Manning Gottlieb OMD, he reports to Clays in his capacity as leader of both OMD UK and Manning Gottlieb OMD.

Matt Adams

CEO UK&I, Havas | NEW
Adams is known as a hands-on leader, a CEO passionate about both people and products, and someone convinced there’s never been a better time to work with marketing communications. When not at work at Havas, he can be found on his bike whizzing through Surrey.

Tom George

UK CEO, GroupM | NEW
George took over as CEO early last year at a crucial moment for WWP’s GroupM, which had merged his old agency MEC with Maxus to form Wavemaker. Previously he was chairman of MEC in UK and Northern Europe. Challenges lie ahead — last month GroupM, citing “fragile” world economies, expected advertising growth to be “neutral to negative”.

Matthew Platts

Executive director, media and performance, Dentsu Aegis | NEW
Platts joined the business as a TV buyer more than 25 years ago and has played a pivotal role in shaping the commercial direction of the business on both the client and media side. In 2014, he led the launch of media investment division Amplifi, which oversees all client expenditure throughout the UK. He now has more than 450 people trading more than £2 billion worth of advertising.

Maisie Williams

Co-founder of Daisie | NEW
Known by millions as swashbuckling heroine Arya Stark in Game of Thrones, she founded a “safe place” creative collaboration app, which raised nearly £2 million from venture capital. The social network-style talent discovery platform makes it easier for creative people to showcase their work and collaborate together on projects. It has some 100,000 users, mostly London-based.

The Progress 1000, in partnership with the global bank Citi, is the Evening Standard’s celebration of the people changing London’s future for the better. #Progress1000

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