Mark Stockdale

Having started life as a professional musician, Mark switched to study Economics & Statistics followed by a Masters in Marketing Science. He trained as a planner at J. Walter Thompson before moving to Leagas Delaney, and then became the Executive Planning Director of Leo Burnett (London) and eventually the Joint Global Head of Planning.

Since leaving the agency world, Mark has worked in a variety of consultancy roles, including alongside Bain as a brand strategist, and is now a partner in The Effectiveness Partnership.

He has worked across almost every imaginable sector globally (B2C, B2B, social, government, etc), including some of the world’s biggest brands, and has earned a reputation for being one of the few planners genuinely able to swim all the way upstream to commercial strategy and all the way downstream to creative development. Indeed, he is unusual in being as fascinated by complex statistics as he is by brilliant creative work, and as comfortable in client Boardrooms as he is in the offices of demanding creatives.

Mark has been the planner behind a huge number of award winning campaigns, and has himself won numerous Effectiveness and Strategy awards (including 3 Golds & 1 Special Prize in IPA Effectiveness Awards, 2 Golds & 1 Special Prize in APG Planning Awards, 2 Golds & 2 Silvers in Cannes Lions). He has also been a judge many times for the IPA, APG and Effies, in the UK and abroad.

He was a founding member of the IPA Value of Advertising Group back in the Nineties, and a former member of the APG National Executive Committee. Over the years he has spoken on a wide range of planning issues around the world, with a particular interest in marketing effectiveness, and published various articles and contributed to a number of marketing text books.