Phil was recently CEO of Bahlsen, the £500m family owned German biscuit company (you may know them for their Choco Leibniz biscuits!)
A marketer by training he has worked across a wide spectrum of organisations from start-ups to multinationals on both the client and agency side.
His early career included roles at Rank Hovis McDougall, Kraft and Whitbread. He was then UK Marketing Director for Inbev (now ABInbev) and part of the team that grew Stella Artois from No.17 to No.2 in the market. Following this he was Marketing Director for Cadbury and was responsible for the drumming ‘Gorilla’ and the Facebook inspired return of Wispa.
Following the acquisition of Cadbury by Kraft he left and co-founded his own advertising agency called 101, which offered “business creativity” to clients such as innocent, Britvic, wagamama, Sainsbury’s, Diageo, GAME, Avios, Costa and digital native brands such as Amazon and Uber. After 7 years this business was successfully sold to Interpublic.
He was then invited to be first non-family CEO of Bahlsen, a £500m international biscuit/cake business based in Germany. As part of a generational change he partnered with the 28 year old great great grand daughter of the founder to modernise and internationalise a traditional German Mittelstand business and led a transformation of the company’s operating model, IT systems, Supply Chain, brands and organisational culture.
He has been a Marketing Academy Board Trustee and Mentor since its launch, and for the last 7 years he has been Chairman of The Marketing Academy.
He is currently acting as an Advisor to small businesses and ‘scale ups’.
Phil is married with 2 grown up children (one an artist the other a research scientist!)
He lives in Buckinghamshire and Tuscany and is a keen cyclist and live music fan.
