The IPA is celebrating 11 outstanding individuals for their instrumental work in accelerating the success of the ad agency business in its annual Summer Honours List.
Representing some of adland’s best and brightest, they will be bestowed an IPA Fellowship (FIPA) or Honorary Fellowship (Hon. FIPA) - for individuals not with an IPA member agency - for their outstanding careers, through which they have driven the industry forward, working with the IPA across everything from effectiveness and media to talent and diversity.
Commenting on the awards, IPA Director General Paul Bainsfair said: "One of the best parts of my role is being able to recognise and celebrate those who have worked tirelessly to help make the IPA, and what we do, the best it can possibly be for the benefit of our members, the agency business and the wider industry.
"Across their various areas of expertise, Harjot, Janet, Jon, Lisa, Margaret, Michael, Peter, Rhian, Simon, Tony, and Valerie have epitomised that drive, consistently pushing us to bigger and better things."
Each of them has given a huge amount of time and energy to IPA initiatives over the years, and I want to thank them for their remarkable contributions and congratulate them on their well-deserved Fellowships.
Since 2019, the IPA has awarded Fellowships in their New Year and Summer Honours Lists to luminaries for their services to the advertising industry and to the IPA. Six remarkable individuals were recognised for their contributions to the industry in the 2023 New Year Honours List.
Harjot, Janet, Jon, Lisa, Margaret, Michael, Peter, Rhian, Simon, Tony, and Valerie join 30 other individuals on the Summer Honours List for services to the agency business. The previous honourees are Dan Appleby, Adam Ben-Yousef, Lindsey Clay, Phil Coverdale, Sarah Ellis, Vicky Fox, Neil Godber, Neil Henderson, Sera Holland, Jackie Holt, Kate Howe, Sarah Jenkins, Simon Jones, Tim Jones, Chris Macleod, Dame Carolyn McCall, Sheila Mitchell, Marc Nohr, James Pais, David Payne, Sam Phillips, Andy Reid, Lynne Robinson, Richard Shotton, Amelia Torode, Sue Unerman, Nicky Unsworth, David Wheldon, Steve Wilcox and Orlando Wood.
The previous New Year Honourees, for services to the wider industry are Rosie Arnold, Jenny Biggam, Karen Blackett OBE, Helen Calcraft, Damian Collins, Patrick Collister, Tony Cullingham, Magnus Djaba, Mel Edwards, Jan Gooding, Sarah Golding, Sir John Hegarty, Johnny Hornby, Pip Hulbert, Carl Johnson, Annette King, Vicki Maguire, Patrick Mills, James Murphy, Mark Read, Nishma Robb, Trevor Robinson OBE, Jeremy Sinclair CBE, Dame Cilla Snowball, Philip Thomas, Charles Vallance, Nigel Vaz and Michael Wall.
Michael has long been committed to furthering the diversity, equity and inclusion agenda both within his agency and the industry as a whole. In 2017 he co-created OPEN, IPG Mediabrands’s internal DE&I programme, and within UM he set up All About U, a series of talks and initiatives on key aspects of DE&I.
He has been a member of the IPA Talent Leadership Group since its inception in 2017 and has played a pivotal role in driving forward the group’s entry-level programmes, especially through his work with Debut and his championing of Advertising Unlocked.
In the area of thought leadership, Michael has contributed to the IPA Future of Fairness report, notably through his "Ads for Equality" paper. Furthermore, his research reports, including "Women in Ads," "LGBTQ+ Life Today" and "Invisible Women" on female ageing, have shed light on stereotyping in advertising. He is a very active member of UN Women’s Unstereotype Alliance.
He has also generously donated UM office space to UN Women UK and has collaborated with the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) on the creation of the Home Truths podcast and ‘The Mandate' research project exploring male stereotypes and mental health issues.
Within the LGBTQ+ community, in 2019 he founded MRSpride, which has provided a network and supportive platform for LGBTQ+ individuals and allies.
Pete started his career at Feather Brooksbank (later Carat) in Manchester, where he achieved a distinction in the IPA Foundation Certificate. He then joined MGOMD in London, where he entered the IPA Effectiveness Awards for The Department of Health Stoptober campaign, winning a Gold Award. He was also awarded the APG Gold Award, Effie Gold Award, D&AD Gold and Webby awards in recognition for his work on government campaigns.
Moving to MEC London (now Wavemaker), Pete championed best practice and the IPA qualifications programme within the agency. He completed the Excellence Diploma, achieving a distinction grade and winning the ‘Outstanding Body of Work’ and ‘President’s Prize’ awards. His Excellence Diploma essay was also featured in Nick Kendall’s 2015 publication, What is a 21st Century Brand? New Thinking from the Next Generation of Agency Leaders’.
After eight years at MEC/Wavemaker, Pete joined Facebook (now Meta) but has kept up his involvement with the IPA, participating in various events, webinars, TouchPoints launches and panels, and lecturing twice at Oxford University as part of the Future of Marketing Initiative. An ardent supporter of TouchPoints, he was instrumental in helping to produce the first edition of Making Sense – the Commercial Media Landscape (which now in its fifth iteration). Pete is a great supporter of the industry as a whole and committed to driving best practice and thought leadership.
Rhian is responsible for the media planning rigour and cross-channel expertise of all OMD UK clients. As a key leader of OMD UK’s 30-strong Connections Planning team, Rhian ensures the agency utilises its planning tools and frameworks and data to their maximum to help clients navigate the complex media landscape and deliver truly audience-centric media planning.
Rhian has been a consistent in her support of TouchPoints, presenting extensively at events and contributing significantly to its ongoing development and promotion.
She has a passion for helping both OMD and the industry to future-proof themselves. She regularly sits on and contributes to industry panels and working groups. In 2021 she was elected to IPA Council and has worked with the Advertising Association on ‘Trust in Advertising’. This year she was shortlisted as Media Planner of the Year.
Simon is the Global Performance Director at Billion Dollar Boy, where he spearheads the agency’s growth and maximises campaign effectiveness through the integration of strategy, data, and paid media disciplines.
Simon’s expertise extends beyond his day-to-day responsibilities. For the past eight years, he has contributed significantly to the IPA CPD programme as the author of the IPA Advanced Certificate in Communications Planning module on Creativity in Media, showcasing his commitment to advancing industry knowledge and best practices. He has also co-authored four winning IPA Effectiveness Awards papers.
Simon’s insights and forward-thinking ideas have gained recognition and respect within the industry, earning him publication opportunities on platforms such as WARC, The Drum and Mediatel.
Following various agency roles, Janet was hired as a consultant by the IPA between 1994-1998. In 2005 she joined in a full-time capacity with a focus of marketing effectiveness. During her career, she has worked with many industry greats, including helping to shape the agendas of many IPA Presidents including David Pattison (publishing a 10-year perspective for the future of advertising agencies); Moray MacLennan (reaching out to the C-suite to highlight and drive the value of advertising to the boardroom); Rory Sutherland (helping to put behavioural economics into practice); Nicola Mendelsohn (developing a comprehensive apprenticeship programme); and Ian Priest (working to improve the client/agency relationship).
Janet’s focus has been on furthering the industry’s marketing effectiveness, fuelling marketing investment and finding the talent of tomorrow. In this context her many career highlights have included the founding of the IPA Effectiveness Leadership Group and the EffWorks movement; the production of several high-profile publications including The Long and the Short of it, Effectiveness in Context, and Lemon; the running of the much-heralded pro bono IPA/FT global advertising campaign to promote investment and marketing; and the creation of the Creative Pioneers apprenticeship scheme, which provided over 1,500 jobs between 2012 and 2021.
Outside the IPA Janet has represented the IPA on WACL, The Marketing Society, and The Worshipful Company of Marketors, and has been an IPA advocate on the Creative Industries Council where she developed the CreaTech programme. On behalf of the IPA, she also co-founded with the IPA and APA the UK Advertising Export Group, acting as Chair and leading trade missions to Beijing, Shanghai, Mumbai, and UK/China events at Cannes, and represented the IPA on the Government Apprenticeship Board. In recognition of her services to the creative industries, she was awarded a Queen’s Honour in 2014.
Margaret joined NatWest Group in September 2020 as Group Chief Marketing Officer. She has spent the majority of her marketing career in FMCG, working on some iconic brands such as Lynx, Dove, Radox, Cadbury Dairy Milk, and Birds Eye. At the end of 2014 she left FMCG to join the utilities sector as Director of Marketing at British Gas, one of the most recognised household brands in the UK. At the beginning of 2016 she moved into a global role to develop marketing capability across all the businesses as Group Chief Marketing Officer for Centrica, transforming the firm’s marketing capabilities across all regions.
Some of her key achievements include launching Dove deodorant across Europe; delivering the first ever global Lynx campaign and winning a Cannes Gold Lion for Lynx ‘Getting Dressed’ campaign. Margaret launched the first ever award winning ‘time to be selfish’ brand campaign for Radox, which turned around the performance of the brand.
In September 2020, Margaret was announced as one of Marketing Week’s Top 100 Most Effective Marketers for her work at Centrica. In November 2022 she became Marketing Week’s Marketer of the Year.
She has been a long-time supporter of IPA Effectiveness programmes and a committed member of the IPA Effectiveness Leadership group whilst at Centrica and NatWest. Only work pressures have prevented her from continuing. Nevertheless, she has found a substitute rather than walk away from the programme.
Furthermore, when invited earlier this year to be Chair of our second cycle of IPA Effectiveness Accreditation, despite her workload, she accepted with alacrity. Since then, she has been appointed ISBA President, a position of influence in which there is every chance she will be a strong advocate for our work.
Jon became head of PHD UK’s Manchester office in 2017, having previously been Head of Strategy for Havas Media in London and Strategy Director for Carat.
With over 18 years of experience in media and communications, he is passionate about helping clients use communication effectively to drive commercial success as well as about improving industry best practices generally. In this context, over the past eight years he has contributed significantly to the IPA CPD programme as the author of the Advanced Certificate in Communications Planning module on Effective Communication Strategy.
Valerie Ludlow is an award-winning marketer with over 20 years of experience in strategy development, consulting and execution within social, digital and traditional marketing disciplines for both B2B and B2C audiences. During her career, Valerie has worked both in agency and on the client-side across the UK, Ireland, Europe, and the USA.
Having been involved in the IPA Northern Ireland Group for several years, Valerie took on the role of IPA Chair for Northern Ireland in May 2019 initially for a two-year term. However, with the interruption of the pandemic in 2020, we were grateful that she agreed to extend her term to March 2023.
With advertising effectiveness being one of the key focuses of her agenda, and recognising that the Effectiveness Awards are not always attainable for smaller agencies, it was Valerie and the Northern Ireland Group who kick-started the idea of setting up the Effectiveness Accreditation scheme. Another agenda item for Valerie was to ensure that clients and the industry were better informed of the benefits of using IPA member agencies, to which end the IPA developed a more comprehensive communications toolkit for members in 2022.
During her time as Northern Ireland Chair, Valerie was also an active member of the IPA Council. She is an Accredited MIPA (having qualified in 2018) and her agency are supporters of Advertising Unlocked.
Tony is the highly experienced Head of Strategy at Havas Media Group, with extensive knowledge and expertise in utilising media as a catalyst for business growth.
His passion for sharing his wisdom is evident through his contributions to the IPA Advanced Certificate in Communications Planning. Over the past eight years he has authored the Developing the Communications Strategy model, providing valuable insights to learners. Additionally, he has showcased his expertise by presenting at various IPA events, such as the Media Planning and Strategy Summit, and serving as a judge on media awards panels including the Campaign Media Awards 2023.
Tony also actively works towards promoting sustainability within the agency and the industry as a whole. He has been an instrumental part of the IPA Media Climate Action 7 Group and one of the creators of the IPA Media Climate Charter, demonstrating his commitment to driving positive change.
Harjot is Global Chief Strategy Officer at McCann Worldgroup, prior to which he held various senior agency roles, living and working in six countries across three continents.
Harjot has contributed expertly to the IPA Effectiveness Leadership Group, which he joined in 2020. Most significantly, he was Convenor of Judges for the 2022 IPA Effectiveness Awards, in which capacity he made a historic number of updates to the Awards to reflect the changing marketing landscape. The 2022 Awards saw the assembly of the most globally representative judging panel, as well as the highest ever number of international submissions.
2022 also saw Harjot recognised in the IPA iList for his work within diversity and inclusion, having helped to transform the range and scope of the diversity initiatives within McCann. He is deeply committed to supporting and empowering those around him and to create future leaders.
Lisa, who in 2017 was included in Media Week’s list of ‘30 Under 30’, took part in the IPA Excellence Diploma in Brands in 2020 and won the John Bartle award for her essay, ‘Killing the elephant in the diversity room – social class’. Building on this success, she has become a leading light in the industry by championing the recruitment and inclusion of people from all backgrounds.
Lisa has chaired panels at the All In for the Advertising Association, created a workshop for the IPA at the first Talent Conference in 2022 and written pieces for the IPA on the value of mentoring. She acts as a mentor for Bloom and for the Ideas Foundation in Manchester and is the current President of Bloom North. She co-founded Common People, a network designed to make Common People more common in the creative industries. She was recently a judge on the IPA Excellence Diploma in Brands essays and VIVAs.
In addition, Lisa authored the Social Mobility module in the IPA Diversity and Inclusion qualification and has featured in numerous industry podcasts.