who are open plan thinking?
Annabelle Black
Consultant, Excellence in Client Service
Annabelle Black is an award winning advertising client services professional in the advertising and marketing industry.
Beginning her career as a grad; Annabelle was one of five selected out of 700+ applicants for a scheme run by The Marketing Store. Starting off on the account management team for Vodafone, Annabelle quickly rose through the ranks and was recognised as one of IPM's top 30 under 30.
Her career led her to the world of large network agencies. Namely, Ogilvy and McCann - where her work on Nurofen was recognised with a Cannes Nomination and Silver Cables award.
Annabelle went on to then experience the challenging balance between motherhood and work during some of her favourite career moments at VCCP and Saatchi & Saatchi.
In 2022, Annabelle experienced the crippling effects of burnout. Two years later, she candidly shared her story on Linkedin. Not knowing how much of an impact this story would have, Annabelle inadvertently ended up writing for Campaign Magazine. Together they wanted to shine a light on the dangers of burnout in the industry, why it keeps happening, and to raise awareness about how to prevent it.
Annabelle’s honest account of burnout was one of the most read articles on Campaign in 2024.
Since recovering, Annabelle has been consulting for various agencies sharing her knowledge of 16+ years working on brands, campaign challenges, and how to manage tricky client/team situations. All the while keeping one eye on the mental health and workload of the staff she works with.
EICS is Annabelle’s way of proving that you can keep clients in without burning staff out.
James Whatley
Director, Strategy Consulting
With 18 years of marcomms experience working on global brand campaigns for clients such as PlayStation, OREO, Xbox, Converse, and Honda F1 Racing - to name just a few - James Whatley is a multi-Cannes-Lions winning strategy leader who has spent his entire career working at the forefront of brand, digital, and integrated marketing.
In 2009, as a strategy director in social media, James created integrated campaigns for some of Nokia’s largest entertainment tie-ups, activating partnerships with Disney for Tron: Legacy, Paramount for Transformers, and Warner Bros for The Dark Knight Rises.
From there he went on to Ogilvy & Mather Advertising to lead social media for some of the world’s biggest ad campaigns. Seven years later, he left as a global strategy partner having picked up several awards at Clios, DMA, and Cannes.
At Digitas UK, he partnered with Saatchi & Saatchi Dusseldorf to create a European strategy team built to service the partnership needs of their main client, Mondelez. This effort culminated in multiple award-winning activations for OREO with Lady Gaga, Spotify, The Batman, and Xbox. The Xbox Cheat Cookies work is now famous across the region, and went onto win over 100 awards, including Grand Prix at Eurobest and eight Lions at Cannes.
This passion for entertainment - with a specific focus on gaming and film - has led James to work on many other associated client work via many different agencies. James’s work has covered: several title launches for PlayStation, Halo Studios for Microsoft, Modern Warfare and Diablo IV for Activision, Arcane S2 for Netflix, Borderlands 4 for Riot among others.
A former Chief Strategy Officer, he has led departments, built teams, and won numerous pitches - but the thing he is most proud of is the friendships and network he has made along the way.
Today James uses his unique blend of skills to consult, contract, train, and advise clients with any brand, entertainment or gaming-based problem they need to solve.
In his spare time, James is the co-creator of the DICE Charter initiative - a set of regulatory guidelines to ensure diversity and inclusion at conferences and events, as well as a writer of the Five things on Friday newsletter - an infrequent publication that neither arrives on Fridays or contains five things.