Neil Graham

Brand Activation and Marketing Director with extensive experience driving global brand activation in OMNI retail channel environments.  With a robust B2B/B2C sales and marketing background and a proven track record of optimising brand visibility, market growth and commercial return. A confident strategist with the leadership capability to convert BTL/ATL strategies into reality while successfully uniting diverse agendas to achieve challenging organisational targets and goals.  A natural leader who empowers teams to be aspirational in their approach and to exceed expectations.  Adaptable and resilient, a confident decision-maker who thrives in pressurised environments and is not afraid to challenge the status quo to achieve outstanding results.

• Defining the DTC (Direct to Consumer) brand activation strategy for the Own Retail and Franchise channels across Europe.
• Aligning strategic direction with the wider corporate ecosystem with OMNI channel, digital, media and loyalty programmes.
• Financial accountability for the €38m annual marketing budget including forecasting, monitoring, and ROI reporting.
• Motivational leadership of a team of 60 activation experts supporting 38 European countries covering a network of 500 Own Retail and Franchise locations (Flagship to Clearance Centres).
• Devising the consumer centric annual calendar of marketing activities, new product launches and promotional initiatives.
• Orchestrating new go-to-market planning to align global and local calendar creation requirements.
• Defining the brand voice to resonate with consumers ensuring alignment across all marketing activities and platforms.
• Implementing marketing and brand toolkits covering 2D, 3D, digital and loyalty, with clearly defined consumer touchpoints.
• Collaborating with internal and external stakeholders to cohesively drive market share and brand growth.
• Leveraging market insight and business analytics to monitor ROI/ROM and drive data informed strategic decision making.
• Embedding a positive and proactive team culture to drive cohesive operational approach while encouraging knowledge and idea sharing to optimise team performance.

Achievements and Results:

• Influencing revenue growth from €450m to a projected €760m in 2022.
• Expanded the head office team and global operations going from a team of 4 FTE to 24 FTE supporting 38 countries.
• Integrated retail in the Adidas social and digital systems to drive traffic and sales to retail doors.
• Launched the European Loyalty Scheme, gained 600k consumer sign-ups within 12 months, with a targeted 16m by 2025.
• Instigated vendor renegotiations to deliver a 16% YOY reduction in budget investment.
• Delivered first-class opening activations by securing talents including Run DMC, David Beckham, Leo Messi, KSI and Stormzy to maximise store traffic and PR opportunities.
• Project managed the planning and opening of 3 x 2000sqm Brand Flagship Doors, 5 Originals Flagship Doors and 130+ new and remodelled Commercial doors delivering €300m additional net sales.
• Devised and deployed a new retail door digital infrastructure to enable timely content changes to capture key moments.
• Evolved the budget planning process to a globally accepted model of bottom-up planning vs top down.
• Designed the revised country activation blueprints and change managed to ensure effective local retail and brand integration.
• Built a sustainable tool production model which has been adopted as best-practice across the global landscape.

Diploma in Economics