IPA announces 2020 New Year Honours list

Each individual has raised the reputation of the industry at large throughout their stellar careers and will be honoured with FIPA (Fellow of the IPA) status and celebrated at the IPA’s President’s Reception.

The 2020 IPA New Year’s Honours List

• Jenny Biggam, Owner, the7stars
• Helen Calcraft, Founding Partner, Lucky Generals
• Johnny Hornby, Chairman & CEO, The&Partnership
• Carl Johnson, CEO, Anomaly
• Charles Vallance, Founder & Chairman, VCCP

Says Paul Bainsfair, Director General, IPA: "To say that Jenny, Helen, Johnny, Carl and Charles have made their mark on adland is an understatement. Their wisdom, insight and intellect have transformed our business and will continue to shape it in the years to come. My heartfelt thanks and congratulations go to these five industry exemplars."

In addition to announcing the New Year Honours’ List, the IPA will also be releasing a Summer Honours’ List, celebrating outstanding individuals for their services to the IPA. These individuals will be awarded at the annual Members’ Lunch, on 29 April.

Jenny Biggam

Jenny set up the7stars in 2005 after a career in media agencies including Zenith and Carat. In the last 14 years the7stars has grown to be the UK’s largest media independent agency with billings of over £350Million and over 200 people. The agency has been named Agency of the Year by Campaign Magazine (2015 and 2017), Media Week (2015), The Drum (2018) and Mediatel (2018). They have won numerous awards including golds at Media Week and an IPA Effectiveness Award. Jenny is particularly passionate about workplace culture and personally leads a number of diversity and inclusion initiatives at the agency. She is particularly proud that the agency has been listed in the Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For consistently for the last eight years.
In 2016 Jenny launched a Foundation to support under-privileged under-16 year olds in the UK and the7stars donates 5% of profits to good causes via the Foundation. Jenny is a member of the IPA Media Futures Group, the IPA/ISBA Sustainable Working Relationships Group, the ASA’s Industry Advisory Panel and the British Heart Foundation’s Marketing Committee.

Helen Calcraft

Helen spent her first decade in advertising at AMV BBDO, and loved every minute. She went on to London Business School’s Executive MBA programme, where she graduated with distinction in 1999 before co-founding ad agency MCBD. Ten wonderful years later, MCBD was a top 25 agency, serving some great brands such as Waitrose, Virgin, the Department of Health and Premier Foods (for whom the iconic Hovis spot “Go on Lad” was voted the British public’s ad of the decade).
After a brief stint as Chairman of Dare, Helen opted for start-up life all over again, with Danny Brooke-Taylor and Andy Nairn. Lucky Generals, founded in 2013, is a creative company for people on a mission. The agency is currently working on some fantastic missions for clients such as Amazon, Co-op, Yorkshire Tea and Zoopla. And the partners are finding that the harder they work, the luckier they seem to get.

Johnny Hornby

Johnny began his career at agencies including Ogilvy, CDP and TBWA before setting up Clemmow Hornby Inge in 2001, along with co-founders Simon Clemmow and Charles Inge.
In 2013 Johnny re-branded the agency and launched The&Partnership, a new model, WPP-backed, integrated agency network built for today’s complex industry landscape. Today, The&Partnership is the UK’s largest and Europe’s fastest-growing independent agency network. It attributes this rapid expansion to the success of its in-sourced ‘&Model’ agencies, with multi-disciplined, on-site teams working alongside clients’ marketing departments in new, nimble ways, to a single bottom line; delivering innovative work to fit new marketing agendas.

Through championing The&Partnership’s innovative agency model, Johnny has become a go-to industry commentator for BBC and Sky News. He is a regular voice on industry panels, and has chaired the Marketing Group of Great Britain.
Johnny is currently Chairman for Prince Harry’s HIV/AIDS charity Sentebale. When not working Johnny enjoys spending time with his family, horse-riding, skiing, sailing and watching his beloved Arsenal.

Carl Johnson

Carl has spent the better part of his entire career running his own agency – launching one - Simons Palmer Denton Clemmow & Johnson- in London, and one – the much simpler named, Anomaly - years later in New York.

Since launching Anomaly with his Partners in 2004, he has been responsible for the guardianship and evolution of Anomaly's 'new-model' proposition in an ever-changing, sometimes turbulent but always stimulating, industry. Core to the model is a more entrepreneurial, value-based, approach to agency compensation as referenced in a media quote by Carl at the time of Anomaly's launch, "We’re interested in being more commercial, not simply making more commercials." Hence the agency’s belief in also developing its’ own IP including innovating, designing and co-owning dosist (then named Hmbldt) -voted one of Time Magazine’s Top 25 Inventions of 2016

With Anomaly bucking the industry pressures and growing year after year in the U.S. and overseas, Carl’s focus is on reinforcing the core principles, beliefs and values that underpin the seven offices and 750 people – from LA to London to Shanghai.

Prior to launching Anomaly, Carl spent four years with TBWA as the Worldwide COO and CEO of its New York office- TBWA Chiat/Day. Whilst there, he drove both growth and change, and, even more pertinently, looked ahead at the ideal model for ‘the network of the future'.

His experience in New York was a consequence of him selling his first successful agency start up in London to Omnicom/TBWA and re-locating to the States.

As part of his interest in helping advance the entire industry, he also spent six years on the Board of Effie Worldwide, with four years as Chairman, championing the practice and practitioners of effective marketing.

Carl calls himself Founding Partner & Executive Chairman.

Charles Vallance

Charles is a brand strategist who began his advertising apprenticeship at Burkitt’s, working subsequently at BBH and WCRS. In 2002 he decided to start working for himself and, along with his three partners (Rooney Carruthers, Adrian Coleman and Ian Priest), set up VCCP. Their founding client was O2, to whom they are eternally grateful. Over the last two decades, Charles has worked on and, in some cases, helped launch a diverse range of brands including O2, ING, Hiscox, easyJet, Canon, Cadbury, Domino's, Dyson, Nationwide, and Vitality.

Outside of work Charles doggedly pursues a variety of sports including cricket, tennis, football, golf, shooting and snooker, all at a consistently low standard. Charles is a Trustee for both The Change Foundation and The Fred Foundation, is co-author of a book called The Branded Gentry, and has been a regular columnist for Campaign Magazine for a number of years.