After business school my education began in Soho at Ogilvy & Mather Direct. Very talented and clever people like Steve Harrison and Rory Sutherland helped me learn the importance of ideas and charm in advertising.

Later, as Head of Advertising at Virgin Money, I learnt new skills to help me understand customers and try to see the world through their eyes. It also convinced me that digital is the centre-of-gravity for modern marketing because it’s the place where a business can be most intimate with its customers.

I’m a marketer, not an engineer. The idea that user experience is primarily a marketing discipline – rather than an IT discipline – was the founding insight for Foolproof. Peter and I have always believed that advertising is only a starting point in the customer’s journey to sale and a satisfying customer experience. Marketing investment is wasted if digital sales and service environments aren’t persuasive and useable.

I see experience design as a creative process: a way of discovering new, more engaging forms of online interaction. While many people still think of UX primarily as a defensive discipline (to test and de-risk interactions during development) I also see it as an offensive tool within the marketing mix: better customer experience is a source of competitive advantage.

In my spare time I’m interested in classical art, football and butchery. Analyse that.

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