Phil
Pearson

statement

Hybrid talent melding strong commercial sensibility with first-hand subject matter expertise across marketing & business transformation.

Experienced in both Consultancy and Marketing Agency.

Work spans strategy, creative, business strategy, digital, martech, UX, EX, lead generation and sales funnel, LTV management, CRM, data, optimisation, service design.


work history

2021/05 – now
group account director @ mrm

Joined to lead the digital team servicing BMW account, was promoted within 6 months to lead the team overall. The whole onshore-offshore team (Team Dynamic) of 100+ fulfils a broad scope: brand strategy, campaigns, production, digital UX/UI, martech development, martech adoption, reporting & insights, optimisation, across a wide cross-agency team at Interpublic Group (IPG). Achievements:

  • Finance – lead the deliverables recognition and finance process for an account in the high 7 figures annually

  • Partnership – responsible at the top level for partnership with media agency fellow IPG agency UM, as well as retail marketing agency Hakuhodo

  • Alignment – proposing and driving new management and alignment cadences between client and agency, and across the agency landscape, to improve service quality across the board, through cross-agency collaboration more aligned to actual client business challenges and uncovering efficiencies 

  • Martech / AdTech – working with team to drive proposals and recommendations adopted by client on Adobe Marketing Cloud applications (Adobe Campaign, Adobe Audience Manager, Adobe Target) for owned media, and in combination with DSP, adserver applications on the paid media side

  • Ways of working – introducing and driving adoption of modern project management practices and tooling (Smartsheet) among the account team, ensuring visibility of project progress, single source of truth for structured project data from brief through rounds of proposal and feedback, and enabling more standardised / transferable process insights

  • Collaboration – spearheaded the creation of a collaboration playbook to define the SLAs across each party in the client-agency landscape, and continuously document the agreed collaboration rules and emergent best-practices, with a particular mandate to reduce communication friction in distributed pandemic-era work

2018/07 – 2021/05
account director @ publicis sapient

As primary Client Partner in Japan, I lead world-class interdisciplinary (Design, Technology, Delivery) teams for my clients’ digital business transformations (DBT). Achievements:

  • Japan Airlines – led (5-way) competitive pitch to success & subsequently delivered 7-figures USD of programs delivering digital product across 6 programs in 12 months, incorporating Experience Design, Web Design, Platform Technology (AEM) Development & Implementation, Specialised Solutions, Experience / Tech / Capability Roadmapping.

  • Rakuten Mobile – led (4-way) competitive pitch to success & subsequently delivered 7-figures USD of programs re-imagining Rakuten Mobile’s CX, designing a modular Retail Experience System, Store Technology Consultation, Employee Experience & other design projects.

  • Marui EPOS – built a relationship from the ground up. Our program includes spatial retail design, employee experience, prototype store build, digital touchpoint design, AI-based test result analytics, service blueprint, and migration roadmap.

2015/05 – 2018/07
account manager @ dentsu isobar

Client management for digital marketing (community mgmt, promotions, campaigns, websites) planning, production, tech implementation & activations (event). Achievements:

  • adidas Originals – led team of creatives & delivery to plan & execute a one-night only product activation event at a Tokyo boutique hotel to launch an adidas Originals sneaker, with c100 celebrity guests. Deployed external spatial design & event staffing / ops capabilities.

  • COACH Japan – managed a multi-year relationship including LINE platform community management and LINE Business Connect API-integrated first-party technology enablement.

  • Air France–KLM – led a successful (3-way) competitive pitch for the design & technology implementation of a CRM / personalisation / customer service platform based in LINE.

2013/12 – 2015/03
account manager @ havas media international

Media planning and buying for clients including Credit Suisse, Bench, AXA Insurance. Trained and mentored direct reports in media planning, buying, media reporting.

2011/02 – 2013/11
account executive @ ptarmigan media

Media planning and buying for top-tier financial services clients including Aberdeen Asset Management, Standard Life Investments, Russell Indexes, GFT, CMC Markets.

2010/03 – 2011/01
advertising manager @ verican

Sold CMS (mainly Joomla, Drupal) development services to media companies globally.

2008/09 – 2010/03
analyst @ npea capital

Financial analysis of potential investment targets, producing reports for investment committee. Due diligence on private companies. CN-EN and EN-CN translation.


7 languages

  • Japanese – native

  • English – native

  • Mandarin Chinese – fluent

  • French – conversational

  • Spanish – conversational

  • Italian – basic

  • Cantonese – basic


professional skills

consulting

  • Business case creation

  • Evaluations of technologies and architectures and pros/cons and trade-offs

  • Educating organisations in modern business practises (design thinking, agile & product management)

client handling

  • Opportunity shaping

  • Proposal creation

  • Contracts (drafting, but working with lawyer / legal counsel to finalise)

  • Negotiation

  • Commercial awareness

  • Stakeholder mapping

  • Empathy and interest mapping

product & program management

  • Translating user stories into product features

  • Prioritisation of features by business & consumer value

  • Project managing proposals (within an engagement, program delivery is conducted by dedicated program management, but I manage pitches and proposals within the sales cycle)

martech / cx stack experience

  • Adobe Analytics

  • Adobe Audience Manager

  • Adobe Campaign

  • Adobe Experience Manager

  • Adobe Launch

  • Adobe Target

  • Datorama

  • Google Analytics

  • Google Tag Manager

  • Google Campaign Manager 360

  • Salesforce Commerce Cloud

  • Salesforce Marketing Cloud (Pardot, Interaction Studio)

  • Tableau


certification

  • Scaled Agile: Certified SAFe® 5 Agilist (attained Sep 2020)


education

2004/09 – 2008/06
chinese studies m.a. (hons) @ the university of edinburgh

Attained First Class honours in Chinese studies. Also included 1year of Chinese study in China at the Dalian University of Technology’s (DUT) International Cultural Exchange School.

While studying in China, attained Level 9 (advanced level) on the Chinese Proficiency Test.

Below is a selection of the clients I’ve worked with over the years: