Martin Thomas

 Martin has led award-winning media, PR and sponsorship teams and has been one of the pioneers of integrated brand and communications planning as a specialist marketing discipline. He has been operating as a freelance marketing consultant, trainer, facilitator and writer for the past three years, working with brand owners and marketing agencies on a broad range of business, brand and communications planning assignments.  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 MEC, where he became global head of communications planning. 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. Following Nylon, Martin worked at media agency MPG as UK Head of Strategy.  His first book, Crowd Surfing – which examines how major corporations and political parties around the world are responding to consumer empowerment- was published in 2008. This has led to him undertaking numerous speaking engagements and workshop programmes, in Europe and North America, on the strategic application of social media. His second book, Loose, will be published in March 2011. Martin is a non executive director of Sport England and the Commonwealth Games Council for England and is also a Fellow of the RSA and a member of the Marketing Society.