The Agency Growth Forum

Speaker

Rachel Bell

founder, Brand Spanking

Rachel is a serial entrepreneur having started seven multi-award-winning professional services businesses across the marketing spectrum. Her philosophy of promoting and developing talent has won her industry recognition including Sunday Times Best Leader. She is a cross-sector NED and also chairs her family engineering business, CIS. Rachel’s management consultancy, Brand Spanking, supports businesses in establishing best practice, building out their commercial proposition and realising shareholder value. She is currently “entrepreneur in residence” at London Business School inspiring MBA students in entrepreneurship. She is also President of the Business School's Angel Investment Club – Enterprise 100. Her book 'Start-Ups, Pivots and Pop-ups' (available on Amazon) was shortlisted in the 2020 Best Business Book Awards.

Rachel is a co-founder of Mischief, a past chairman of Shine Communications, a co-founder of Aduro, a founder of John Doe and a co-founder at The Academy.

Speaker

Andrew Bloch

lead consultant - PR, Social, Content and Influencer, AAR

Andrew Bloch is the founder of Andrew Bloch & Associates www.andrewbloch.co.uk , a boutique consultancy specialising in the communications and marketing industry.

His portfolio includes non-executive director, board advisory, consultancy and project roles for a range of high growth businesses and agencies. His expertise lies in fostering new business relationships, identifying opportunities, and enhancing overall value. With an extensive portfolio, Andrew has acted as the official spokesperson and PR advisor to Lord Sugar for over 25 years and has handled the PR for all The Apprentice winners and their companies since the show started in 2005.

Recognised globally, Andrew consistently ranks as one of the world’s most influential PR figures, with his consultancy, Andrew Bloch & Associates,being named Boutique Marketing Agency of the Year in 2023 and 2024 and Andrew being named Communications and Marketing Consultant of the Year 2023 at the Global Business Awards.

Andrew started his career in PR at Lynne Franks before moving to Ketchum to head up their Sports and Entertainment division. In 2000, he co-founded Frank, one of the UK’s most respected and award-winning PR agencies. He stepped down from his day-to-day role running the agency in 2020. He remains a shareholder of the business.

Andrew has partnered with AAR www.aargroup.co.uk , a management consultancy specialising in marketing services. He is responsible for leading and expanding their PR, Social, Content and Influencer practises as well as developing new approaches to supporting both brands and agencies. He consults a range of businesses on their marketing and PR requirements including amongst others, Starbucks, Nintendo, Goldman Sachs, Holland & Barrett, Greggs, EDF and Mandarin Oriental Hotels.

Andrew is also a partner at leading M&A firm, PCB Partners www.pcbpartners.co.uk , advising their buy-side clients who are looking to make strategic acquisitions in the marketing services area, and on the sell-side of the business, advising marketing services agencies who are looking for an exit.

Andrew is Non-Executive Chairman of Stakked www.stakked.co.uk , a collective of best-in class ‘boutech’ creative businesses across earned, paid, social and digital media, built by design to transform how client work is planned, delivered and managed.

Andrew helps link celebrities and content creators with brands. In the last year, he has worked with talent including Lady Karren Brady, Steven Bartlett, Peter Jones, James Caan, Kelly Hoppen, Anthony Joshua and Marco Pierre White.

His influence extends to various advisory roles, including serving on the Business Launch Group panel for The Prince’s Trust, founding mentor at the School of Communications Arts, Gen Z mentor at School of Marketing, Counsel Member for Superbrands, Executive Committee Member of Variety, the Children’s Charity, and business committee member at Grief Encounter.

Speaker

Rachael Marshall

founder, Magic Digits

Rachael Marshall is co-founder and managing director at the PR firm accountancy provider Magic Digits.

Rachael has a unique helicopter view of the growing pains of independent PR firms and how they can build a solid financial base that will put them in the best position for future growth.

Speaker

Ngozi Emeagi

director, external communications, data & analytics, London Stock Exchange Group

Ngozi Emeagi is currently a director in corporate communications at the London Stock Exchange and is and responsible for enhancing brand visibility and reputation as well as increasing internal engagement for the business. Through tailored strategic communications plans, Ngozi helps promote the data and analytics narrative, ensuring a deeper understanding of products and solutions.

Prior to joining LSEG, Ngozi Emeagi was a Senior Consultant at Powerscourt Group, a financial communications agency, where she covered Banking and Insurance clients. During her time at Powerscourt, Ngozi was instrumental in building the profile of a number of senior executives through tailored traditional and social media plans, she also supported the launch of new bank ‘The Bank of London.’

She has also previously held roles at insurers Direct Line Group and MS Amlin and financial communication agency Tulchan Communications.

Throughout her career Ngozi has been dedicated to improving the diversity within the organisations she has worked, and was previously Vice President of Women in PR, a not-for-profit group aimed at increasing the number and diversity of senior Women in PR. She is an Advisor for the No turning back programme, aimed to increase diversity and retention of ethnic minorities in Communications and Marketing and is a Trustee for Diabetes UK.

Speaker

Andy West

founder, Westofcenter

Over the last twenty years or more, Andy has run international agencies and held board-level positions, handling the responsibility for sales, marketing, and global partnerships for two highly successful international agencies – Text 100 and Hotwire.

During that time, he has also worked with a host of clients, including IBM, ARM, Xerox, McAfee, BlackBerry, NetApp, and Zoom, helping them to build and manage international agency networks and to run global campaigns.

Most recently, as Chief Development Officer for Hotwire, the multi-award-winning global technology communications consultancy, he was responsible for driving top-line revenue growth and was Corporate Sponsor for several of the firm’s largest global accounts.

Speaker

Jonny Bentwood

global head of data & analytics, Golin

Jonny Bentwood heads data and analytics globally at Golin. Awarded four consecutive back-to-back wins from 2019 to 2022 for AMEC Large Research and Measurement Team of the Year, Jonny has put data at the centre of communications.

In his role, Jonny enables Golin’s clients to be data-driven. A firm believer that when art is combined with science and decisions purely based on instinct are rejected, then clients will have winning programs. A champion of using data to deliver focus through the customer journey, Jonny has challenged historic approaches to measurement to evolve the approach from descriptive to prescriptive to predictive.

Chair

Lucy Linthwaite

director, global communications strategy and activation, IBM

Lucy is a senior communications leader with over two decades of experience in both agency and in-house roles advising UK and Global public companies and private partnerships. She has worked for IBM since 2008.

She has worked on UK, European and global creative campaigns with high-profile B2C and B2B brands to protect and enhance reputations across media, social, with influencers and more. Developing strategies and stories that build profiles, drive organisational change and launch the latest and greatest innovations.

Panellist

Darshna Kamani

director, PR & Communications, International, Dynatrace

Darshna is an experienced communications professional in the technology and cybersecurity sectors.

She believes that communications should be integrated within the sales cycle.

Darshna has spent the last 10 years of her career in in-house roles, working for international firms FireEye, Barracuda, and now Dynatrace. Before that, she worked agency-side for 7 years.

Speaker

Joe Walton

co-founder, Fight or Flight

Joe is the co-founder of Fight or Flight, currently one of the UK's one of the hottest independent PR agencies. Joe has led multi-market programs for blue chips BAE Systems, IBM, LinkedIn, Microsoft, SAP and Symantec, as well as high growth scale-ups Concur, Tableau and Hybris en route to their respective sales.

Fight or Flight won a PRmoment Award for its 50 Shades of Ginger work with Roland DG in 2024.

Speaker

Jim Donaldson

CEO and founder, The Jim Donaldson Partnership

Having spent 15 years as a managing director at Hill & Knowlton, four years as EVP EMEA at Weber Shandwick, and almost 10 years as the CEO of UK and Middle East at Fleishman Hillard, Jim is one of the UK's most experienced and award-winning agency leaders.

He has global experience, particularly in the energy and industrial sectors, and has provided significant strategic counsel to senior Government officials on country positioning, branding, and FDI work.

Speaker

Sharon Bange

joint managing director, Kindred

Sharon has been joint managing director of Kindred since 2018, in which time she’s helped to successfully reposition the agency as a specialist in purpose-led communications. This has involved diversifying Kindred’s client base, building on its original public sector specialism by winning household name brand and charity clients.

Sharon is passionate about running a business that walks the talk on making positive change - for its people, clients, the industry and beyond. This work has been recognised through Kindred’s B Corp certification, three consecutive years as Consultancy of the Year at the ESG Awards. Kindred has won multiple PRmoment Awards.

Speaker

Anna Wilson

chief digital innovation officer, Tangerine

Anna is a digital strategist, technology geek and is never away from her iPhone. She works with the team at Tangerine to create and implement digitally integrated strategies across multiple platforms that achieve real results. She also looks after training and development for The Juice Academy, the UK's first industry-led digital and social media apprenticeship.