Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity is partnering with ESA, as we continue to raise standards and celebrate creativity across the industry.
As part of this exciting new partnership, ESA is supporting Cannes Lions’ newly announced Entertainment Lions for Sport awards, encouraging ESA members to enter the award and to attend Cannes Lions International Festival of Marketing.
Read the full press release.
Alongside Cannes Lions’ newly launched Entertainment Lions for Sport in 2019, ESA hosts a Round Table to discuss the issue of Creativity in Sport.
Watch the clips:
Round Table Guests
Melissa Brown
Mel is VP of Commercial Partnerships at the NFL in London, responsible for the commercial performance and sponsorship delivery of the sport in the UK. She joined in 2016 from Syco Entertainment where she was Commercial Director, driving brand partnerships, licencing and other commercial value from some of the biggest entertainment properties in the UK.
Mark Bullingham
Mark joined The FA in August 2016 and leads the commercial, marketing, digital and participation functions at the organisation. These include responsibility for all revenue streams across the FA and Wembley, such as broadcast, sponsorship, licensing, hospitality, and diversified revenue streams. In his time, annual revenue at the FA has risen by over £100m.
He previously held the position of CEO EMEA for Fuse Sports & Entertainment, responsible for running one of the fastest growing businesses in the sector. The team had grown quickly over five years to 245 across 17 offices with an annual fee income of over €28m. The client portfolio included 10 of the top 30 global brands. Mark joined Fuse in 2011 from his position as Director of Marketing, for the America’s Cup Event Authority in San Francisco where he helped transform the global event.
Mark has negotiated over $2bn of partnerships across a variety of platforms in sports, arts and music and is a qualified Level One coach involved in grassroots football.
Jackie Fast
Arriving from Canada in 2007 with the intent to backpack Europe, Jackie ended up staying in London and launching her career. Her first business – Slingshot Sponsorship – was started in her bedroom in 2010 with just a laptop and £2,000. A relentless 6 years later with offices worldwide, Jackie sold Slingshot for millions, having worked with notable international clients including Sir Richard Branson, the Rolling Stones, Shell, Red Bull and many more. Jackie continues to travel the world presenting on the future of business and entrepreneurship with her best-selling business book PINPOINT.
Jackie is also a Non-Executive Board Director of the European Sponsorship Association, one of the youngest Board Directors in the association’s history.
James Kirkham
James Kirkham is Chief Business Officer for COPA90 – the leading youth media football brand with over 650 million views per month. James’ focus is on disrupting the sports media model around the world by continuing to develop innovations in mobile and social, creating partnerships with emerging platforms and building new and existing brand partnerships with advertisers.
Tove Okunniwa
Tove is CEO of London Sport, a non-profit organisation dedicated to making London the most active city in the world, supported by Sport England and the Mayor of London. She has a background in strategic marketing and content creation, with extensive experience in both commercial and non-profit sectors.
Previously she led two successful sport and entertainment marketing agencies – WPP owned MEC Access and Havas Sports & Entertainment – advising clients such as Barclays, Coca-Cola, Visa, Danone, Lloyds Bank, Marriott, Specsavers, Nintendo and Morrisons among many others. Prior to this Tove spent 10 years at the BBC in senior brand marketing roles, including Head of Marketing at BBC Sport where she led a successful repositioning of the brand. She is Deputy Chairwoman of England Boxing and a Trustee of Catch 22, a leading social business.
Mark Osikoya
Mark started his career with adidas, managing sponsorship properties across football, rugby and basketball before moving on to work for The FA where he led the sponsorship programme and
successfully secured multi-million pound sponsorships across The FA Cup and the English national football team. The FA role was followed by a spell working in the commercial team for The London 2012 Olympic Games Organising Committee, before moving on to Coca-Cola GB, where Mark headed up the Sponsorship function across sport, music and fashion, which included The Olympic and Paralympic Games, Wayne Rooney, The Football League, Jessica Ennis and Team GB.
After Coca-Cola, Mark worked as a consultant for Barclays on the activation of their global sponsorship properties and launched their new global activation strategy for The Barclays Premier League. Mark currently works for the NBA and since joining in 2014 has been responsible for leading the team that manages the global, regional and national partnerships that the NBA has with their commercial partners across the EME region. He is also a judge for the BT Sport Industry Awards and a trustee for The Palace for Life Foundation charity.
Viviane Paxinos
As Vice President Advertising and Partnerships at Discovery International Networks, Viviane is responsible for driving the commercial value of the joint Eurosport and Discovery portfolio, the home of the Olympic Games, across all platforms including digital, social and programmatic. She is also spearheading the development of new social content partnerships.
With fifteen years’ experience as a brand and consumer innovator, Viviane previously held senior commercial roles at Viacom, Comcast, BBC Worldwide and most recently at A+E Networks UK, where she shaped the company’s strategy for growth, both in the UK and across international territories.
Keith Perry (moderator)
Keith Perry was the sports editor of The Daily Telegraph before becoming managing director (sport) and masterminding The Telegraph’s sport sponsorship activity, including a very successful London 2012 Olympic Games.
Stuart Wareman
An ESA Board Director, Stuart leads European-based partnerships for Marriott International, the world’s largest hotel company, supporting brand, loyalty and business objectives. Prior to this, Stuart spent ten years at MEC Access (now Wavemaker) creating and activating some of the biggest and most successful sports sponsorships. Marriott won a Cannes Lions in 2017 for its real time global social media approach – MLive – and Stuart collected a Cannes Lions in 2003 for Specsavers’ sponsorship of the Scottish Football referees.
Andy Westlake
Andy has worked in the business of sponsorship and sports marketing for nearly 30 years, working for media owners and agencies on major sales, consultancy and activation projects around the world. He started his career in commercial radio and then moved to the agency world in 2008 setting up a specialist sponsorship business within the global media buying business MEC.
From 2002 until 2015, Andy was a key part of the leadership team at Fast Track, rising to CEO. Fast Track was a market leading, international sports marketing agency headquartered in London, now established as an integrated part of the Sport and Entertainment Group CSM. The agency established a reputation as one of the best in the industry. Fast Track were Marketing Magazine’s Agency of the Year in 2011, had a place in the Sunday Times Best Small Companies to work for and a reputation for award winning work with some of the world’s leading brands. The agency had offices around the world and worked with clients including Emirates, Land Rover, HSBC, Gazprom, AIA and Subway.
He set up Westlake Consulting in 2015, is a board member at British Universities and Colleges Sport, Chairman of Chesham United Ladies FC and Chairman of the European Sponsorship Association, Europe’s trade body that seeks to inspire, unite and grow the sponsorship industry for the benefit of its members.
For further reading visit: Our Correspondent from Cannes Lions 2018
Stay tuned for Our Correspondent from Cannes Lions 2019
