Senior marketing leadership built inside real businesses
I have spent more than 20 years leading marketing, digital and communications inside businesses across financial services, investment, mergers and acquisitions, technology, ecommerce, insurance, hospitality and travel.
That has meant more than developing marketing strategies or overseeing campaigns. I have been responsible for teams, budgets, agencies, CRM systems, customer data, digital infrastructure, brand positioning, revenue performance, board reporting and the decisions that determine whether marketing genuinely supports the wider business.
I have built marketing teams from the ground up, taken responsibility for established functions during leadership change, rebuilt CRM and reporting infrastructure, worked across more than ten international markets and led communications in regulated, commercially complex and reputationally sensitive environments.
That experience is what I now bring to businesses through Hiddn Marketing.
I understand marketing from inside the function, including what happens when the strategy looks sensible but the infrastructure cannot support it, when agencies are working independently, when the CRM cannot be trusted, when sales and marketing disagree about the quality of leads, or when senior leadership has lost confidence in what marketing is actually contributing.
Selected results from my career
More than £18 million in direct revenue
Generated through digital and contact centre activity across more than 90,000 transactions within a national hospitality business.
£5.5 million generated in ten weeks
Created and led an integrated January sales campaign spanning digital, email, direct mail and contact centre activity.
£280,000 from a new acquisition channel
Created and scaled an affiliate and community referral programme that generated £280,000 in revenue within its first six months.
35 per cent improvement in lead conversion
Rebuilt CRM processes, audited customer data and introduced improved segmentation, suppression, nurture and re-engagement workflows.
More than £150,000 removed from annual marketing costs
Brought key web, design, paid media and content capabilities into an internal marketing function, reducing external expenditure while improving control and delivery.
Marketing team built from one person to twelve
Built and developed an internal marketing function covering digital, creative, campaign delivery, web, communications and performance activity.
These results come from different organisations and different periods of my career. I do not combine unrelated achievements to create an artificial headline number, and I do not attribute wider business performance solely to marketing where other teams and commercial factors contributed.
Professional marketing leadership experience
International Investment and Financial Services Group
Investment, Real Estate, Aviation and Financial Services
Head of Digital
2023 to 2025
I led marketing and digital for an international group operating across investment, real estate, aviation and financial services, ultimately assuming responsibility for the wider function following a change in senior marketing leadership.
My remit covered marketing strategy, brand, digital performance, CRM, customer data, communications and the technical infrastructure supporting marketing activity across more than ten international markets, including the UK, United States, UAE, Japan, India and African markets.
One of my first priorities was stabilising the function. I introduced clearer responsibilities, a more structured operating rhythm and stronger collaboration between marketing, sales and senior leadership. From there, I led a broader programme of marketing infrastructure improvement.
That included replacing the CRM, rebuilding the supporting data architecture, improving customer segmentation, introducing automation and strengthening reporting so that marketing activity could be connected more effectively with lead management and commercial performance.
I also reviewed significant agency expenditure and brought web, design, paid media and content capability into the internal team. This reduced annual marketing expenditure by more than £150,000 while improving control, quality and delivery speed.
Alongside the operational work, I advised senior leadership on marketing governance, reputation and stakeholder communications within complex and regulated markets, and took direct control of several underperforming agency website projects to bring them through to launch.
Markets: More than ten internationally
Annual marketing cost reduction: More than £150,000
Responsibility: Strategy, brand, digital, CRM, data and marketing infrastructure
Environment: Complex, regulated and reputationally sensitive markets
1st Technologies
Technology and Ecommerce
Head of Digital Marketing
2022 to 2023
I led digital marketing across three B2B and B2C technology brands, with responsibility for acquisition, ecommerce, SEO, paid media, email, content, community engagement, customer journeys and digital experience.
The role involved looking beyond individual marketing channels and improving how acquisition, ecommerce, customer data and retention worked together.
One of the strongest examples was the creation of a new affiliate and community referral programme. I developed the channel from scratch, building relationships with relevant communities and creating a commercially sustainable route for customer acquisition.
The programme generated £280,000 in revenue within six months.
I also designed and built a new B2B ecommerce website, overhauled email segmentation and behavioural automation, introduced psychographic profiling to improve customer messaging and journey design, and led UX and front-end strategy for a Magento ecommerce rebuild.
The combination of commercial performance, technical marketing and direct implementation reflects how I tend to work. I am comfortable setting the strategy, but I also understand enough about the systems beneath it to recognise why something is or is not working.
Brands: Three
New acquisition channel: £280,000 revenue within six months
Scope: Ecommerce, acquisition, email, SEO, content and customer lifecycle
Digital experience: Website strategy, UX and Magento ecommerce
Altius Group
Mergers and Acquisitions
Group Head of Marketing and Communications
2020 to 2022
I led marketing and communications across six brands within a specialist mergers and acquisitions group, reporting directly to the board and managing activity spanning strategy, digital performance, lead generation, CRM, customer data, content, public relations and sales enablement.
The portfolio covered several distinct markets, including healthcare, childcare, hospitality, corporate finance and a national business for sale platform. Each business required its own positioning and commercial priorities, while still benefiting from shared marketing capability, systems, governance and data.
I rebuilt the CRM approach and audited the underlying customer database, introducing stronger segmentation, rolling suppression, targeted reengagement and a structured multi stage nurture programme. These improvements contributed to a 35 per cent increase in lead conversion.
I also redesigned one of the core commercial production processes within the business. Information Memorandums that could previously take three or four weeks to produce were reduced to a typical production time of two to three days.
That represented an improvement of around 90 per cent, increased internal capacity and helped opportunities move towards fee generation considerably faster.
Website ownership across six WordPress sites was brought in house, reducing agency dependency and cutting routine change cycles from weeks to hours. I also introduced improved board reporting, giving senior leadership better visibility of marketing performance, lead flow and commercial contribution.
During the role I also led the marketing launch of Altius Corporate Finance into Dubai, developing the positioning, proposition and go to market activity required to support the international expansion.
Brands: Six
Lead conversion: Improved by 35 per cent
Process improvement: Around 90 per cent
International expansion: Dubai
Responsibility: Strategy, CRM, data, lead generation, digital and board reporting
Britannia Hotels and Pontins
Hospitality, Travel and Leisure
Head of Marketing and Communications
2015 to 2020
I led marketing, communications and digital activity across six Pontins holiday parks alongside work connected to Britannia Hotels and its wider national portfolio of more than 60 properties.
I built the Pontins marketing function from a solo role into a twelve-person internal team, developing capability across digital, campaign delivery, creative, communications, web and performance marketing.
The role operated in an intensely commercial environment. Marketing activity had to translate into bookings, telephone enquiries and revenue, often within relatively short seasonal trading periods.
Across my time in the role, digital and contact centre activity generated more than £18 million in direct revenue through more than 90,000 transactions.
One of the largest individual campaigns was the January sale, which generated £5.5 million within ten weeks through a coordinated programme spanning digital activity, email, direct mail and contact centre support.
My responsibilities also included performance marketing, SEO, website development, customer journeys, email, brand, creative production, events and public relations.
I created and launched the standalone Pontins Events brand and website and developed the first official brand identity for the Pontins Bluecoats, marking 75 years of entertainment heritage.
The role also involved crisis communications and media response during sensitive operational, customer safety and reputational situations. These were circumstances where marketing communications could not operate independently from operations, senior leadership and wider business risk.
Direct revenue: More than £18 million
Transactions: More than 90,000
Major campaign: £5.5 million generated in ten weeks
Team: Built from one person to twelve
Estate: Six holiday parks within a wider national hotel portfolio
JD Concepts
Automotive, Insurance and Financial Services
Design, Print and Marketing Manager
2008 to 2015
I spent seven years leading marketing, creative, digital and documentation activity within an FCA-regulated motor trade insurance business.
The role gave me extensive experience of marketing where commercial messaging, regulatory requirements, product documentation and customer communications had to work together.
My responsibilities included websites, marketing campaigns, policy documentation, point of sale materials, training resources, digital platforms and creative production across both B2B and B2C environments.
I worked on projects involving brands including Motorpoint, AXA, Admiral, Renault, BMW, Nissan, Honda, Harley Davidson, Princess Yachts and Wells Fargo.
One major project involved marketing and documentation work supporting the launch of a GAP insurance product into the United States. This included state-specific terms and conditions, policy documentation, product literature and underwriter training material across 48 states.
That experience shaped an approach to marketing that has stayed with me throughout my career. Marketing needs to be commercially effective, but in regulated and reputationally sensitive environments it also needs to be accurate, properly governed and capable of standing up to scrutiny.
Environment: FCA-regulated financial services
Scope: Marketing, digital, documentation, creative and web
International experience: United States product launch across 48 states
Brand experience: Automotive, finance, insurance and luxury sectors
Advisory and entrepreneurial experience
My consultancy and advisory work overlaps with parts of my employed career, so I keep it separate from the chronology above rather than presenting it as though one replaced the other.
Hiddn Marketing
Fractional CMO and Senior Marketing Leadership
Founder and Fractional CMO
2020 to present
I founded Hiddn Marketing to provide experienced marketing leadership to founders, CEOs and leadership teams that need more senior direction without automatically committing to another permanent executive appointment.
The work typically begins when marketing has become difficult for the leadership team to understand or control.
The business may already have a marketing team and several agencies, but nobody owns the overall outcome. Marketing expenditure may be increasing while confidence in the numbers is falling. CRM and customer data may be unreliable. Sales and marketing may disagree about lead quality. Growth, acquisition or organisational change may have created a level of complexity that the existing marketing structure was never designed to manage.
I work across the whole marketing function rather than approaching those problems through one particular channel.
That can include marketing strategy, team leadership, agency management, budget challenge, CRM, customer data, reporting, recruitment, customer journeys, digital infrastructure and the relationship between marketing and the wider commercial plan.
Where a business does not initially need an ongoing Fractional CMO, I can also independently review the marketing function, advise on a specific strategic decision, assess CRM and customer data, support senior marketing recruitment or lead a defined marketing transformation project.
The objective is not to create more marketing activity for the sake of it. It is to understand what the business actually needs from marketing, establish who owns the outcome and make better decisions about the people, systems, agencies and investment required to deliver it.
Focus: Fractional CMO and senior marketing leadership
Typical buyers: Founders, CEOs, managing directors and boards
Scope: Strategy, people, agencies, CRM, data, reporting and marketing performance
Approach: Senior leadership combined with practical technical capability
Arx Nova
Crisis Management, Reputation and Business Stabilisation
Co Founder
2025 to present
I co founded Arx Nova as an advisory and project based business focused on organisations facing periods of financial, operational, legal or reputational pressure.
My role has included developing the proposition, positioning, brand, digital presence and commercial narrative, alongside work involving crisis communications, reputation management and stakeholder messaging.
Crisis communications requires a different mindset from everyday marketing.
The objective is not simply to create positive coverage or control a narrative. The first priority is understanding what has happened, who is affected, what information can responsibly be communicated and how communications need to work alongside legal, operational and leadership decisions.
Poor communication during a crisis can make an already difficult situation considerably worse.
My approach involves understanding the different stakeholder groups, establishing accurate and defensible messaging, creating a controlled approval process and helping leadership communicate without creating additional legal, commercial or reputational risk.
Through Arx Nova, I have advised on communications and reputation issues involving businesses operating under scrutiny, pressure or disruption. This builds on crisis communications responsibilities from earlier senior marketing roles, including experience around operational disruption, customer safety and reputational issues within hospitality.
I also created Arx Logic, a Python-based early warning concept that uses Companies House data and business distress signals to identify organisations showing potential indicators of financial pressure.
I do not publish confidential crisis engagements simply to create marketing case studies. In crisis and reputation work, discretion is often part of the value of the engagement.
Focus: Crisis communications and reputation management
Environment: Financial, legal, operational and reputational pressure
Responsibility: Stakeholder messaging, communications strategy and advisory
Additional capability: Business distress analysis and early warning concepts
Experience in complex and regulated marketing environments
A significant proportion of my career has been spent in businesses where marketing decisions carry consequences beyond campaign performance.
I have worked across financial services, investment, insurance, mergers and acquisitions and other environments where regulation, legal requirements, customer communications and reputation need to be considered alongside commercial growth.
I have also led marketing during periods of organisational change, senior leadership transition, commercial pressure and reputational scrutiny.
That changes the way I approach marketing leadership.
I am comfortable questioning an ambitious growth target if the infrastructure cannot support it. I will challenge a marketing investment if nobody can explain how success will be measured. I will question whether another agency is really the answer if responsibility is already fragmented. And I will slow down a communication if the legal, customer or reputational consequences have not been properly considered.
Good marketing leadership is not simply about identifying more things the business could do.
Sometimes the most commercially valuable decision is deciding what should stop.
What this experience means for a Hiddn Marketing client
I have spent enough time running marketing functions to know that the visible problem is rarely the whole problem.
A disappointing advertising campaign might actually be a proposition problem.
Poor quality leads might originate from sales and marketing having completely different definitions of a worthwhile opportunity.
Weak reporting might be caused by the way the CRM was configured years earlier rather than the dashboard somebody is now trying to build.
An expensive agency relationship might be compensating for a capability gap that would be better addressed internally.
A struggling Head of Marketing might have been appointed into a role the business never properly defined, without the authority, resources or senior support required to succeed.
These things are connected.
Strategy affects the team. The team affects the agencies. The agencies affect the technology. The technology affects the customer data. The data affects the reporting. The reporting influences where the board puts the next pound of investment.
Treating one of those areas in isolation can simply move the problem somewhere else.
That is why my approach to Fractional CMO work starts with understanding the whole marketing environment.
I want to know what the business is trying to achieve, how marketing is expected to contribute, who owns each part of the function, what the numbers actually show and what is preventing the business from getting where it needs to go.
Only then does it make sense to decide what should change.
Career experience and Hiddn Marketing client work
I make a deliberate distinction between achievements delivered during employed marketing leadership roles and work carried out directly through Hiddn Marketing.
The organisations and results on this page form part of my professional experience. Previous employers are not presented as Hiddn Marketing clients, and their wider business performance is not attributed solely to my involvement or to marketing.
Some organisations may also be anonymised where confidentiality, commercial sensitivity or the nature of the engagement makes that more appropriate.
The same principle applies to consultancy work.
I do not publish client names, testimonials, commercial outcomes or confidential details without permission. Where a client has agreed for its story to be shared, you can find the fuller context within my case studies.
Where confidentiality prevents publication, I can still explain the type of problem, the role I played and the approach taken without disclosing information that belongs to the client.
Need experienced marketing leadership?
If your business is spending significant money on marketing but you cannot clearly see what it is contributing, adding more activity is rarely the best place to start.
The underlying issue could be strategy, leadership, capability, agencies, CRM, customer data, reporting, marketing infrastructure or the way those things have been allowed to develop around one another.
I work with founders, CEOs, managing directors and leadership teams as a Fractional CMO, independent marketing adviser and transformation lead to identify those problems and put stronger marketing leadership around them.
A first conversation is simply an opportunity to understand what is happening inside the business, what you have already tried and what you need marketing to achieve.