Kantar Promotes for Top Marketing Effectiveness Role

Kantar has promoted Simon Atherley to head up its yearling marketing effectiveness practice, alongside Kantar Insights UK MD Dom Boyd.

The practice was launched a month into last year, promising to help brands refine their marketing strategy and measure return on investment, and with Boyd and former Head of Media, UK Richard McLeod at the helm. McLeod has since moved to the role of Head of Innovation.

Bringing together expertise and data from Kantar's analytics, media, creative, brand and consulting teams, the practice helps marketers to identify the right balance of long-term brand building and short-term performance marketing to maximise commercial return, incorporating predictive AI to optimise creative and campaign impact across channels.

Atherley graduated in 2009 from the University of Warwick with a BA in History, and joined Millward Brown the following year, rising to Client Director by 2018 when MB was subsumed into the Kantar brand. Most recently he served as a marketing effectiveness consultant leading Kantar's creative development research into Cadbury's IPA Grand Prix-winning 'glass and a half' campaign.

His new role includes drawing on Kantar's AI-driven econometrics and campaign performance tools to advise clients during planning stages and then support them with ongoing monitoring and measurement. Atherley says it's 'an exciting time' for the practice, 'with innovation in AI moving at a rate of knots' and that the team's focus 'will be using technology alongside our people's expertise and data to drive greater returns for brands'.

According to Boyd: 'The outlook for consumer brands is far less bleak than it was one year ago when we launched our marketing effectiveness practice but the challenge of how to make marketing budgets go further and ensure every pound counts remains. The shift to a cookie-less environment offers brands a critical window of opportunity to rewire their effectiveness approach, measuring long and short-term marketing spend and improving their commercial impact. With Simon at the helm, bringing together the full strength of the Kantar toolkit, our effectiveness practice will equip brands to deliver sustained growth'.

The division is online at www.kantar.com/uki/campaigns/the-marketing-effectiveness-hub .