I have worked with Royal International Philips b.v. since 1989 on a broad variety of assignments. At the core of my engagement has been the design and delivery of a suite of marketing programmes and workshops for marketing professionals from all Product Divisions and Business Units and delivered in locations worldwide. In addition, I have designed and delivered graduate development programmes and undertaken a range of initiatives for non-marketers within the company, including Technology, HRM and Design functions.

I have also provided strategic marketing input to a range of Senior Executive Leadership and Management Development Programmes which Philips has run in-house at Group level.

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The late 1980s and early 1990s were turbulent times for this legendary 'excellent' company. While financially robust they were 'commercially bankrupt', i.e., it seemed that they had simply run out of ideas and were blinkered to a diversity of competitive forces they had never before experienced. Lou Gerstner, an ex McKinsey consultant and famed 'company doctor', was recruited to dispense the same prescriptive medication which had worked so well for R.J.R. Nabisco and American Express.

After an extensive review of all customer facing business processes it was recognised that radical re-structuring was required. The major lesson of earlier business process re-engineering disappointments was that ignoring organisational culture while restructuring was a recipe for failure.

Acknowledging this, the company established the IBM Marketing University with a curriculum designed for delivery to its customer-facing professionals throughout the organisation, including its hardware, software and service divisions.

I was involved from the outset as co-academic director in the design and delivery of this project. The programme was built upon a competencies framework which fed into an educational roadmap leading to the CIM Marketing Diploma and a potential Masters degree.

The programme ran for nine years and was delivered in the USA and worldwide. Over and above the university curriculum, during this period I ran a number of strategic marketing workshops and undertook a variety of speaking engagements for the company.

My first encounter with BP was during my tenure as Lecturer in Marketing and Strategic Management at Warwick University Business School. Recently privatised (1987), BP had identified a cadre of high potential executives who were selected to participate in a 'Consortium MBA' at Warwick. I was marketing projects coordinator for this group.

With the collapse of their joint venture with Mobil in the late 1990s, BP sought a well-known lubricants brand and Castrol was an obvious acquisition. CEO Lord Browne claimed at the time that BP acquired Castrol not only for its brand strength, but also for its marketing competencies, an organisational capability which BP directors felt was lacking in their company.

I was working with Castrol when BP's acquisition of the company was announced. The engagement was the delivery of a series of management development programmes for Castrol marketing professionals, the goal being create a global marketing capability (see below).

I was invited to present to BP Group the background to this work with Castrol. I was also asked to discuss my experience with the IBM Marketing University and the role it played in that company's transformation process.

I subsequently worked closely with BP in establishing the BP Sales and Marketing Academy. I was Principal Consultant, Academic Director and Faculty Manager for the Marketing Excellence Programme, the central platform of the initiative. As with IBM, there was an educational roadmap based upon a competencies framework and leading to advanced studies in marketing. The Programme was delivered world-wide to participants from BP's principal downstream segments: (i) consumer; (ii) business-to-business; (iii) retail.

I have also worked on a series of initiatives with BP's Exploration & Production technology groups and have consulted on a number of projects with both upstream and downstream segments.

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I began working with Castrol's parent company, Burmah Castrol, in 1994, providing strategic marketing input to a Senior Executive Management Development Programme. I subsequently undertook assignments with Burmah subsidiary companies including Foseco, Fosroc and Sericol (see below).

I was commissioned by Castrol Asia-Pacific to design and deliver a regional strategic marketing programme for young sales and marketing professionals selected for their high potential in an increasingly important regional market.

I subsequently designed a five day workshop for Castrol Consumer and delivered this to senior marketing professionals worldwide. This programme was extended to the business-to-business division and the programme continued until the acquisition of Castrol by BP.

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Sericol is a leading supplier of Ink Solutions worldwide and was a subsidiary of Burmah Castrol when I began working with them. The first assignment was with the Leadership Team which led to a series of marketing workshops based upon the theme of ‘Strategic Marketing for Competitive Success’. All members of the Sales and Marketing Team attended this Workshop, as did the Technology Group and other non-marketing personnel. The Workshops were subsequently delivered in the USA, Australia and India and adaptations were made for delivery to invited groups of distribution partners.

In 2005 I contributed to a series of Senior Executive Think Tanks organised by the EMEA region of the Japanese Fasteners company YKK. I subsequently designed a Marketing Excellence Programme for the UK Group composed of two Workshops: (i) Strategic Marketing Essentials, targeted at all customer-facing personnel; (ii) Fast Track Marketing Fundamentals, designed for a cross-functional audience, including technology, HRM, manufacturing and administrative personnel. This Programme was then translated and delivered to the Iberian group in Spanish (in association with Lapia International) and is planned for other European divisions. I am also engaged in a number of consultancy and coaching projects with the company.

I have been associated with the CIM as a Faculty Member since 1989. Following is a sample of the open programmes delivered:

• Fast Track Marketing Masterclass

• Foundations of Strategic Marketing

• A Strategic Perspective on Managing Change

• International Marketing

• Marketing Industrial Products

• International Marketing Strategies

• Marketing Research

• Principles of Marketing Intelligence

Many of these courses have been adapted to provide in-house, bespoke courses and workshops for CIM clients.

My first assignment at Warwick Business School in 1991 was to work with colleagues to ‘sell’, design, manage and contribute to a three week Senior Management Programme for the company, then known as Reed International.

Since then I have continued to work with a number of Reed Elsevier ’s subsidiaries, including:

• IPC Magazines

• MarketForce Logistics

• Butterworth Heinemann

• Ginn

• Heinemann Education

• Reed Exhibitions

• Reed Business Information

I have also consulted with the Education Division on issues such as multi-brand positioning strategies and the impact of internet technologies on the traditional publishing business model.

During the 1990s I worked with the management development team of Coral to design and deliver a series of marketing strategy workshops. These were delivered across the UK to shop managers and customer-facing personnel responsible for ‘delivering’ the Coral brand. I also provided consultancy on the impact of internet technologies on the traditional property-based asset model of retail gambling, the impact of the National Lottery on the business and various brand issues.

I began working with Corus at Warwick Business School in 1991, providing marketing inputs to the Accelerated Management Development Programme (AMDP). This initiative was designed to facilitate the newly privatised British Steel’s transition from a civil service culture into a more commercially astute competitive organisation. The target group was high potential middle management, most of whom went on to achieve the Warwick MBA.

I subsequently worked with Corus corporate HRM, providing input to the Senior Leadership Programme, a foundation course leading to further study at Insead. I was also engaged in the supervision of high-level research and consultancy projects and am currently supervising a study into the merits of Corus building sustainable development as a source of competitive advantage.