James Hay is the Managing Director of the UK & European business of Barrows Global, a Retail Experience design agency. Since joining in 2017, James has led a period of profound change, recalibrating the core service offering, developing new products and ventures resulting in +70% growth and a number of high-profile new clients including Holland & Barrett, William Grant & Sons, Beiersdorf, J&J & Nestle.
His day to day role is to enable ambitious clients to reinvent their retail experience through insight-informed design, incorporating the latest from behavioural economics and shopper science. Recent examples include launching H&B’s ‘Clean & Conscious Beauty’ store & Budweiser’s ‘Light Up the World Cup’ campaign.
James is proud to lead a diverse team of strategists, creatives, designers and developers, building a high-performance people-centric culture that was recently shortlisted for the Best Workplace Culture by Perkbox. He is a strong believer in the power of social capital and the prioritisation of personal growth, introducing development plans and satisfaction surveys to ensure a continued sense of purpose and fulfilment among the team.
Prior to moving ‘agency side,’ James worked in various senior marketing roles at L’Oréal, leading Garnier Skincare and Ambre Solaire to become the fastest growing brands in their respective categories in 2015 & 2016. Before joining L’Oréal, James worked at Mars completing the Management Development graduate programme before running the Snickers “You are not you when you’re hungry” UK launch, leading the Twitter campaign which won a Silver Cyber Cannes Lions in 2012.
James is a mentor for the Prince of Wales Trust & a Trustee of The Ian Williams Foundation which has raised over £30,000 to help prevent cardiac arrest in the young. He is an avid rugby & football fan, a distinctly average athlete & proud husband and father.
