Brand Learning Academy - The Facilitators

Ruth Williams, Marketing Capability Director

Prior to joining BRAND LEARNING, Ruth had an international career in marketing with 16 years experience at Diageo.

Her Diageo career included a variety of senior marketing and innovation roles up to Director level working with teams globally. She launched initiatives on Smirnoff, Guinness, Bailey’s, Jose Cuervo and Bundaberg Rum in UK, US, Spain, Australia, India and Africa.

The last four years with Diageo were spent in Africa where Ruth was Innovation Director with responsibility for the creation, development and delivery of the Innovation Strategic Plan delivering 7% of Diageo Africa profit in 2006. Ruth has a passion for learning and has been responsible for leading marketing capability (brand strategy through to communication and activation) and innovation development (creativity to commercialisation) programmes across Diageo, This has included programmes in the UK, Spain, US, Australia and in many of the key African markets (Nigeria, RSA, Kenya, Uganda, Ghana and Cameroon). 

Since joining BRAND LEARNING, Ruth has worked on diagnosis, development and delivery for ICI, Dairy Crest, Diageo and Shell among others, and has run client events in Europe and Asia.

Ruth graduated in Chemistry, has a PhD in Food Science, and worked as a government scientist before starting her career in marketing. She is married with a small boy.

Rob Hancock, Marketing Capability Director

Rob was inspired to join BRAND LEARNING following his involvement with the Diageo Way of Brand Building, a marketing capability programme that he led around the world of Pillsbury.

His FMCG career began with an eight year stint at United Biscuits, after which he allegedly only just missed making his fortune in a start-up, before joining Diageo. There for 11 years, initially he was responsible for creating the ‘Death by Chocolate’ brand. Later as International Marketing Director, he launched the Green Giant into markets as diverse as China and South Africa, taught the Pillsbury doughboy to speak both Polish and Hindi, the Japanese to try Dulce de Leche Haagen Dazs, and the Australians to embrace fajitas from Old El Paso.

Moving to the service sector, as VP of Brands EMEA, he introduced Brand Management to InterContinental Hotels and established Holiday Inn as the brand leader in the UK. More recently he led Product and Brand alignment at Carlson Wagonlit Travel, as SVP Global Marketing.

At BRAND LEARNING, Rob has led the delivery of Reckitt Benckiser’s Innovation workshops, and both created and rolled out Nokia’s Insight process. He has also inspired marketing teams at workshops for clients such as Barclays, InterContinental Hotels, Kerry Foods, Philips, Pfizer, SAB Miller, Skype and Tesco encompassing topics as diverse as segmentation, strategy planning and activation, brand proposition, and communications.

Rob graduated in business studies, and belongs to both the CIM and the Marketing Society. He is married with three children, spends every weekend on his latest DIY project and loves motorsport.

 

Rob Mitchell, Marketing Capability Director

 Prior to joining BRAND LEARNING Rob had over 8 years Marketing experience with  Diageo and Inbev where he worked on iconic brands such as Smirnoff vodka and Stella Artois.  

Rob has a passion for working with others to understand what makes brands tick. Whether it is the ‘power of story telling’ within the Bell’s drinker or ‘Super Me’ positioning of Smirnoff vodka, Rob is always on the lookout for powerful insights which can help brands and businesses build strong bonds with their consumers.

He has worked on assignments across the marketing mix including an award winning CRM programme for Bell’s whisky, developing and launching the new positioning for Smirnoff vodka and bringing ‘Brasserie Artois’ the next chapter in the Stella Artois story to market.

Rob enjoys any kind of creating- from a song to a French casserole. He loves discovering hidden corners of the country with his wife and friends.  

Rob graduated from Warwick University, with a combined BA honours in Ancient history and Archaeology.

  

Liz Lacovara, Learning Director

 Liz began her marketing career with Procter & Gamble. Her roles included UK and European Brand Management positions, identifying and assessing health care acquisition and JV candidates as part of a Global Team, and defining and managing the UK marketing function within the new Customer Business Development teams.  

After P&G, Liz joined Oxford Strategic Marketing where she led both marketing process development and marketing strategy projects for a leading UK retailer, a global pharmaceutical player, and a major airline. Liz built her learning credentials as a lecturer in Marketing and Management with both private and public sector clients.  

Since joining BRAND LEARNING Liz has managed the production of an intranet enabled Marketing Excellence Toolkit, developed Virtual Classroom sessions across a range of skill areas and developed and delivered numerous Marketing Excellence workshops to build skills and solve live business issues. Liz has also run train the trainer workshops and coached senior Marketers to enable them to deliver various skill development programmes with confidence.  

Liz graduated from Harvard with a degree in History and has an MA in Lifelong Learning from the University of London’s Institute of Education. Her courses included Teaching & Learning for Adults, Learning & Work, and Education for the Professions, and her dissertation examined the role e-learning can play in capability development for marketers.  

Despite nearly 20 years in the UK, Liz’s American accent is still fairly strong. She has 3 children, none of whom sound anything like her. She enjoys running but hasn’t quite found the time (or energy) to do a marathon.