Entitled Loosen Up, this hot topic focused on how consumer interaction with brands and organisations is rapidly changing the way brand owners and marketers need to think, plan and react in the age of consumer empowerment.

Our guest speaker was Martin Thomas, co-author of Crowd Surfing: Surviving and Thriving in the Age of Consumer Empowerment.

Martin Thomas has led award-winning media, PR and sponsorship teams and has been one of the pioneers of communications planning as a specialist marketing discipline

He began his career in public relations and after managing one of the UK’s leading agencies, Cohn & Wolfe, moved into the world of media with Mediaedge:cia (MEC), where he became global head of communications planning.

At MEC Martin was responsible for the global development of communications planning as a core industry discipline for the 5,000 strong media planning and buying agency and ran the agency’s Central Planning Group. He was also directly involved in strategic planning on many of the agency’s multi-national clients, including Lego, Norwich Union, Roche, Visa International and Citibank. True to the company’s “total communications” philosophy, he advised clients across a range of communications disciplines, including advertising, sponsorship, event marketing, media relations, new media and direct marketing. He also launched specialist sponsorship and entertainment marketing units and ran the agency’s new media division.

Martin then went on to co-found Nylon, WPP’s specialist communications planning business, where his clients included Xerox, Morrisons and Sony Ericsson. Nylon was the first communications planning agency to be created within a major marketing services group and was selected by the UK government’s marketing arm, the COI, for its Marketing and Brand Strategy Consultancy roster.

Following Nylon, Martin worked at media agency MPG as UK Head of Strategy, where his clients included Camelot and Bhs. He left MPG in December 2006 to launch his own communications planning consultancy, Snapper Communications.

Martin has a degree in Modern History from Jesus College, Oxford. He was recently appointed to the Board of Sport England and is a member of the Marketing Society and Account Planning Group. Martin can be contacted directly at martin@catchsnapper.co.uk