Judges

Karen Dowse

Karen is SVP, EMEA Commercial Development at Mintel overseeing client services and custom projects for Mintel’s prestigious portfolio ranging from the world’s leading consumer brands through to emerging innovative new market entrants.

Prior to joining Mintel, Karen held marketing posts within the IT industry and more recently Verdict and Corporate Intelligence.  With almost 30 years marketing and commercial experience within the B2B environment, Karen is passionate about driving customer engagement that creates mutual value and longer-term partnerships.

She’s a (very) amateur triathlete who is desperately trying to swim, cycle and run as fast as her two daughters.

Claire Farrant

After completing her degree, a BSc in Food and Nutrition, Claire moved to London to start her career. For several years she worked for food suppliers whom supplied products to the Big 4. In 2003 she joined Woolworths, where she got a real taste for retail both across food and non-food, working across the Big W concepts.

Claire wanted to continue in retail and after a relocation went to join Tesco to help set up the business venture, Tesco Direct. During her ten-year tenure here, she worked in several departments: Buying, trade planning and then Brand & advertising. She also led the new high profile Tesco brand transformation project alongside the property department, which rolled out to the entire Tesco store estate.

After consideration, Claire then left Tesco in 2015 and sought a new adventure with Lidl as an executive consultant for the marketing department. Soon after, she was promoted to Marketing Director and has been in this position for nearly 3 years.

James Farmer

James is Head of Brand and Marketing Communications at CIM, leading the Events, Marcomms and Creative departments. He joined CIM from Sky where he was Brand Controller across a range of their leading TV Products, driving brand strategies and delivering ATL campaigns.

Prior to that he spent over 15 years agency-side working on a range of Entertainment and Telco clients. He’s passionate about customer-centric marketing that draws on juicy audience insights to create compelling comms.

He has a Graphic Design degree, a strategic mind and a strong commercial focus, so enjoys working with pictures, words and numbers.

I come to work every day with the mindset of how digital transformation can help organisations and individuals to achieve more and work with many customers across commercial, public sector, education and the third sector. I have spent the last four and a half years as CMO within Microsoft UK where I was responsible for leading marketing for two go to market areas - Consumer and Commercial. The Consumer and Commercial teams are integrated with the CMO "Marketing Services Centre of Excellence" - Digital and Events.

I now am part of the Microsoft HQ team that is leading the global marketing transformation of Microsoft’s large and fast growing commercial businesses, including AI, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Windows, SQL, Surface, and Visual Studio/Developer Tools. In this global role I am part of the team that ensures our current marketing transformation investments are successfully developed and adopted globally. In addition, I am focused on leading new strategic approaches and programs to further extend our marketing capabilities and their impact.

I can be found on Twitter: @ScottAllenUK

Kevin started his marketing life providing the winning idea (Winston the Churchill Bulldog). Shortly after, Kevin became a very successful DJ/music producer, with 170 productions to date, and has sold over 20 million records for acts such as Usher, Britney Spears, Lionel Richie, Phil Collins and Beyoncé. Kevin was awarded Producer of the Decade by Radio 1. In 2008, Kevin moved into professional services for 5 years before becoming CIM Chartered and then a Fellow in 2012. Kevin then ran a multi-million pound start up, a top 5 creative agency, was the head of music and entertainment for UNILAD (Facebook’s no.1 online video publisher in the world), was Vice President of UNiDAYS and is now CMO for Printt, the largest printing app for students. Kevin is also a marketing advisor to 10 Downing street.

As CSR Manager at Lidl, Mark is developing and driving the businesses sustainability strategy. In this varied and wide ranging role, he is helping improve environmental and social performance across the business, supply chains and communities.

Sustainability has been a passion throughout his career. Having completed a MSc in Environmental Science and Law, he joined E.ON environmental team before spending over 7 years as a consultant at WSP supporting a range of energy, retail and manufacturing clients on technical and strategic sustainability services.

Mark grew his fascination in food retailing through his work as a consultant. Since 2015, Mark has helped Lidl set ambitious plans and programmes to eliminate unnecessary plastic packaging, reduce food waste by 5th by 2020 and source 100% of key raw materials from sustainable sources by 2021.