About

Introducing our Founder.
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Founder

James Hayhurst.

James started his career agency-side BMP DDB (now Adam&Eve DDB) as a grad trainee. During his time he worked on award-winning campaigns for Volkswagen, Channel 4 and the Teacher Training Agency amongst many other UK and international clients. In 2012 James joined Leagas Delaney as Managing Director running the London office, and managing brands including Glenfiddich, Patek Philippe and Timberland.

James decided to try his hand at client-side marketing by joining Unilever in October 2014 as the Global Brand Equity director for OMO/Persil, Unilever's third biggest brand and sold in 80 countries globally. James was attracted by the brand positioning of Dirt is Good and Unilever's commitment to sustainable living and during his four years James helped position the brand as one of Unilever's fastest growing purposeful brands.

Whilst there James was struck by what he 'didn't know he didn't know' when he'd been an agency MD about client culture and decision making. He also began to appreciate how alien agency culture appeared to many clients, and that they hadn't been given the instruction manual of how to 'operate' their agencies. There was an empathy gap on both sides that needed bridging.

James' 20+ years of Ad Land experience opens you up to a world of rigorously researched cient insight. The sessions help you to better understand your clients' attitudes to agencies, how to build client relationships by asking the right questions and honing your ways of working with them. If you have a taste for that, the Magic Sauce course is for you.

Great course. Ours is a people business and James' focus is human-centric and informed by real experience and pragmatism. He promotes situational awareness and empathy; pre-requisites for establishing and sustaining trust. I think our team finished this course better equipped to do their best work, and more focused on how to build mutually profitable, sustainable relationships with our Clients.

I would recommend this course to anyone working in the client service department of an agency. James's knowledge, experience and insight from both agency and client side is extremely helpful, interesting and revealing! He delivers the course in a very relaxed, informal and conversational manner allowing for open and honest discussion throughout.

'The Magic Sauce' course was impressive in its breadth of content and pragmatic advice but its potency lies in the grounding of its being - better relationships results in better work. James has used his experience of working both sides of the relationship to distil a useful, stimulating and practical course that I would recommend to anyone involved in marketing.