Gail Anderson-Brown

Owned the marketing strategy for McCain's flagship brands, including Home Chips and Crispy French Fries, ensuring the brands remain relevant, commercially competitive and well positioned for long-term growth.

Lead the strategic review of the chips category, examining how changing family lifestyles, meal occasions and shopping behaviours are reshaping the role of chips within modern mealtimes. Translate consumer, category and commercial insight into clear brand direction, identifying opportunities to strengthen relevance, support innovation and drive sustainable growth.

Key achievements

• Led the development of McCain's long-term category strategy, bringing together consumer insight, retail trends, category performance and commercial priorities to define the future role of chips within British family mealtimes and shape future brand and portfolio decisions.
• Directed a cross-functional revenue growth program in partnership with Circana and Kantar, evaluating promotional performance across the retail market to identify opportunities to improve promotional effectiveness, strengthen category value and maintain McCain's market-leading position.

Owned and delivered the end-to-end marketing strategy across the Valeo Confectionery portfolio, including Barratt, Flumps, Wham, Poppets and Fox's, alongside major retailer-branded accounts spanning more than 150 SKUs. Responsible for a £140m P&L across five UK and two EU manufacturing sites. Set the strategic direction for the portfolio, leading a team of six and navigating a rapidly changing retail landscape to balance brand equity with retailer priorities, securing double-digit distribution gains and incremental revenue growth.

Key Achievements

• Re-engineered the brand architecture and digital ecosystem, launching a paid, owned and earned content framework across the confectionery portfolio.
• Developed a cross-functional performance measurement framework linking audience insight, creative effectiveness and commercial KPIs, later adopted as the group standard.

Led the Just Eat (UK& Global), HSBC, Waitrose, and Pregnant Then Screwed, overarching brand strategy and campaigns, translating insight to action, and strategic plans to delivery. Working collaboratively with multiple teams across the business, I was responsible for turning research into insights and using these insights to create campaigns which delivered against a range of KPI's including, awareness, cut through and bottom line shifts.

Key Achievements

• Led Pregnant Then Screwed 'cry for help' campaign, which created a national conversation about the unaffordable cost of childcare in the UK. The campaign was featured on Good Morning Britain, BBC Breakfast, BBC News at 10, ITV News, The Metro, The Telegraph, The Guardian, and more. As a result of the campaign, the government directed an additional £4 billion in funding for childcare in the March budget.

Managing a team of seven, I was responsible for leading and developing all marketing in the US and Canada. I set the strategic direction for the network as a whole and for specific key sectors (including The Creative Industries, Financial & Professional Business Services and Technology) whilst also reacting to ongoing cultural and political conversations. I owned and delivered the North American marketing plan, including managing external agencies, partnerships, sponsorship's, and marketing budget.

Key Achievements

• Relaunching the GREAT campaign across America. This was the biggest investment the government has made in international marketing, and I managed multiple stakeholders across departments, Ministers, Lords, and partners to deliver a month-long program of events and partnerships with an ROI of 5:1.
• Partnering with Universal Pictures to support the launch of Bond; No Time to Die across the US. This included multiple events across the US and Canada including 5 consulates and the British Embassy in Washington.

Leading Baileys global strategy and Innocent Smoothies European strategy. Owning all creative development work across TV, OOH, Social, and Digital channels ensuring overall identity and tone of voice are consistent and resonate across target audiences. Managing and coordinating cross-agency briefings and responses within media, digital, and PR.

Key Achievements

• Winning an IPA silver for Baileys
• Running European research for Innocent Smoothies across 7 markets to better understand attitudes to food, nutrition and health. I developed all discussion guides and debriefs, then turned the research into actionable insights for creative teams.

Developing consumer and retail strategies for Mars Pet-care (Global and market specific), Samsung (Europe and Global) and Waitrose. Coordinating cross-agency responses to ensure strategic and creative alignment across all channels, including ATL, ECRM, Retail, Social, digital, and .com.

Key Achievement

• Developing a new global strategy for Samsung's premium TV offering, giving direction to all global markets on what should be executed, and ensuring they had the assets to do this effectively across TV, OOH, Press, Digital, Social, .com, and Retail. I also managed the launch with internal stakeholders and external agencies across multiple markets and regions to deliver 7% higher than forecast sales in the first two quarters and above benchmark engagement across social channels.

Working across Google, Unilever, and The Guardian, I developed multi-platform and multi-market strategies, managed creative relationships, and monitored consumer and market trends.

Key Achievements

• Leading the brand repositioning for Surf detergent globally which included managing consumer insight gathering across the Philippines, UK, South Africa, and Singapore. Following this, I worked with the Creative Director to develop a new brand positioning which was implemented across 53 countries and increased sales by over $150 million.