Experience for days
Over the course of his varied career, Mark has been lucky enough to have worked in depth on a very large number of brands across many markets and sectors in both Europe and North America.
Before coming to Canada, he led the planning group at Leo Burnett London, then one of the largest strategy teams in the UK. On moving to Toronto in early 2013, Mark first worked for three years as CSO of the TAXI network and then three years as the CSO at Juniper Park\TBWA. In both roles, he built a new strategy team from scratch and worked on brands and businesses across Canada and the US.
Since starting Thinking Unstuck in 2019, Mark has worked on a variety of interesting and challenging B2C and B2B projects – both directly with clients as well as in partnership with agencies. These include:
• The repositioning and naming of a leading industrial cybersecurity company (US)
• The positioning of a globally important provider of expertise and training in international financial regulation (Canada)
• Helping a major international consultancy firm bring their approach to ESG to life (US/Global)
• The positioning and naming of an important new player in the private charitable foundation market (Canada)
• The development of the first-ever positioning and purpose for a major construction company (Canada).
• The development of a creative platform for a new brand in the fast-emerging adult non-alcoholic drink sector (US)
• The re-positioning of a leading brand of toothpaste (US)
• A high-level strategic view of the future challenges facing a tax-filing brand (Canada)
Mark is a keen proponent of marketing science as advances in fields such as behavioural economics, neuroscience and psychology continue to inform our understanding of the world of brands and the people who use them. We now know more than we ever have about how and why people use brands as a way to navigate the world, and he believes that we need to understand the implications of this if we are to develop resilient brands for the 21st Century.
He is a particular advocate of the pioneering work of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute (e.g. Byron Sharp, How Brands Grow 1 & 2) as well as that of Les Binet and Peter Field with the IPA Databank (The Long And The Short Of It, Effectiveness in Context et al).