Global CMO, KPMG
Describing herself as a “creative strategic thinker” focused on delivering strong ROI and real business outcomes, Samantha Burns held the UK CMO role at KPMG for eight years before taking on the global position in October 2021. Having previously spent over a decade at rival EY, Burns knows a thing or two about leading marketing across global professional services networks.
That experience shows. KPMG was the fastest growing ‘big four’ accounting firm in 2024, with global revenues up 5.4% to $38.4bn. The UK business alone achieved record revenue of just under £3bn, despite challenging market conditions.
Part of the brand’s strength comes from its consistency. Maintaining this consistency can be difficult across complex matrix organisations, but Burns considers it “really important”. KPMG hasn’t changed its logo in 150 years, and its marketers undergo training to ensure a consistent tone of voice.
The daughter of a miner, Burns has been a driving force behind the business’s commitment to social mobility. Last year, KPMG UK maintained fourth position in the Social Mobility Foundation’s ranking of the top 75 employers.
Managing director, British Gas, Centrica
Insight-led and results-focused, Gary Booker joined energy giant Centrica in June last year. With overall responsibility for everything from customer and commercial strategy to CSR, he was tasked with helping to transform all of Centrica’s businesses through deep customer understanding.
One of the first major shifts to occur under Booker’s watch was the launch of British Gas’s new brand platform, featuring brand characters, ‘the Things’. The goal is to bring British Gas’s “reliability” to life in an emotional way.
Centrica delivered strong financial results in 2024 against a more normalised market backdrop, with adjusted EBITDA of £2.3bn. Customer satisfaction improved in the retail division, with reduced complaints and higher NPS compared to 2023.
The business has hinted at big ambitions for the future, with group CEO Chris O’Shea saying: “That’s why we’ve got Gary Booker… to increase the pace of change across the business, [and] to make us more customer focused and more entrepreneurial.” His impact at the business was confirmed in September when he was promoted to managing director for Centrica Home, in charge of P&L for its British Gas brand.
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Global marketing director, Bupa
For Pardeep Duggal, 2024 was a “year of transformation”. As Bupa pursues an ambitious five-year growth plan, Duggal and her global marketing team delivered what she calls “extraordinary results”, including “unprecedented” ROI from media spend and sponsorships.
Bupa launched its first major brand campaign targeting SMEs last year, after identifying that only 10% currently offer private healthcare to employees. Later in the autumn, the brand staged a takeover of London St Pancras International’s underground tunnel to coincide with the Paralympic Games. Featuring para-athletes Emmanuel Oyinbo-Coker and Hannah Cockroft, the ‘Health Is’ campaign challenged traditional representations of disability under Bupa’s broader ‘This is Health’ platform. This contributed to Bupa’s global customer base growing by more than 10 million people to 60.5 million in 2024, with pre-tax profits rising over 70% to nearly £1bn.
Duggal joined Bupa in January 2023, following senior roles at E.ON, CVS, and Lloyds Pharmacy. She champions digital innovation and team empowerment, mentoring future marketing leaders through WACL. She also sits on the board of Creative UK, to help champion the creative sector.
Chief product & marketing officer, Octopus Energy
With a desire to be as close to the product and the customer as possible, Rebecca Dibb-Simkin joined Octopus Energy in 2017, just two years after the business was founded.
Octopus has enjoyed rapid growth ever since, this year officially overtaking British Gas as the UK’s largest household energy supplier. It’s the first time the top spot has changed hands since the 1990s. The business also achieved its second year of profitability, with post-tax profits of £159m.
CEO and founder Greg Jackson credits the brand’s success to good marketing, recently arguing that marketing “is the greatest value driver for a business”. Speaking alongside him, Dibb-Simkin emphasised how close her team stays to the customer at all times. “Everyday I will go into our systems and look into an email from a customer,” she said.
Evidently, customers appreciate the effort. Octopus’s latest Which? report saw consumers award the business five stars across most categories, including overall customer service and ease of contact. The brand was named a ‘Recommended Provider’ for the eighth consecutive year, the only energy company to ever achieve this feat.
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Pardeep Duggal
Global brand, marketing & communications leader, EY
After 18 years working in major B2C organisations, including Coca-Cola, Rebecca Hirst was hesitant when approached by B2B professional services firm EY. But won over by the company’s growth plans, she joined as UK CMO in January 2021, before taking on her current global role in July.
She has transformed EY’s approach to marketing over the past five years, realigning the team and building more storytelling into the brand. Three years later, Brand Finance ranked EY as the UK’s strongest brand and its second most valuable, with brand value up 16% year-on-year to £24.7bn.
It’s Hirst’s opinion that her job title should be chief clarity officer, given her knack for simplifying complexity into actionable strategy. She volunteers with the EY Foundation to support young people, and last year oversaw the development of a poignant TV campaign to mark 10 years since the foundation’s launch. The spot was named ad of the week by effectiveness firm System1, significantly outperforming the charity sector’s average star rating (1.7) with a score of 3.3.
EY UK’s net revenues grew 3% in the year to June 2024, against challenging market conditions.
Marketing director UK&I, ServiceNow
Every brand is looking to stand out with its gen AI products. Few will have been as successful in showcasing the value of them as ServiceNow. The software business launched its brand platform ‘Put AI To Work’ in 2024, leading to big growth in its customer base and authority on the subject matter.
Helping to build its reputation in the UK is marketing director Kathryn Finch, who is working to ensure its marketing efforts are creative, colourful and have authentic, human connection at their heart. Just look at its campaign with British actor Idris Elba, which adds a welcome dollop of personality and humour to a category that is often accused of being boring. The brand has also revamped its visual identity to freshen up how it approaches the marketplace and bring it in line with a modern B2B business.
The impact has been clear on its financial results, with ServiceNow posting total revenue of $10.27bn (£7.50bn) for 2024, representing 19% year-on-year growth. The company now has over 2,000 customers with more than $1m in annual contract value, representing 12% year-on-year growth in customers, and nearly 500 customers with more than $5m in ACV, representing 21% year-over-year growth.
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Chief marketing & communications officer UK & Ireland, IBM
Charles Smith joined IBM in January 2024, bringing with him a solid blend of digital, brand and customer experience expertise. He was chief digital officer at Aviva for two years, after earning his marketing chops at brands including Brand Scotland, OVO Energy, AXA and NatWest Group.
A marketer who prides himself on using technology to drive sustainable growth, Smith stepped into his role at a pivotal moment for IBM. The global tech giant is doubling down on AI to fuel its own growth, posting its strongest software gains in five years in Q4 of 2024 as demand for AI solutions soars.
IBM also deploys AI in its own marketing, using it both to understand where potential customers are in the buying cycle and to create standout work, like its surreal fish-filled Las Vegas Sphere activation at Adobe Summit last year. Elsewhere, IBM is leading the way in the growing B2B influencer marketing space.
As a leader, Smith brings a collaborative mindset, promising to build “committed and loyal teams that enjoy performing”.
Vice-president of strategy & marketing, Cytiva
After a career in communications, Conor McKechnie took on his first job in marketing in 2016 when he was promoted to CMO of GE Life Sciences. Four years later, after GE Healthcare sold its life sciences division to Danaher Corporation, McKechnie led the business’s rebrand to Cytiva and took on his new role as vice-president of marketing and strategy. Now, he is responsible for tackling complex problems, boosting innovation and raising the profile of the Cytiva brand.
Under McKechnie’s leadership, Cytiva has published a wealth of thought leadership on everything from AI in biotech to the industry’s digital transformation. But first and foremost, McKechnie says he leads and grows “high-performance teams” and helps to build a company culture that allows ideas to flow freely, thus attracting and retaining top talent.
After finishing 2024 on revenues of $23.9bn (£17.7bn), parent company Danaher reported revenue, earnings and cash flow that “exceeded [its] expectations” in the first quarter of 2025. Reports indicate encouraging sales growth in its life sciences division, where Cytiva sits.
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Global CMO, PwC
Antonia Wade joined PwC as global CMO in 2021, bringing a proven track record of successful B2B marketing transformations at Capita, Thomson Reuters and Accenture. Since then, she’s helped lead the firm’s global strategy, pushed brand awareness, and introduced account-based marketing capabilities to the organisation.
Most recently, Wade spearheaded PwC’s first rebrand in over a decade. Unveiled in April, the new brand positioning – including a modernised visual identity and a new global platform, ‘Catalyst for Momentum’ – reflects PwC’s growing focus on technology and AI. The global ad campaign ‘So You Can’ subsequently rolled out across digital, print, connected TV and major transport hubs to signal the firm’s evolution.
PwC reported record global revenues of $55.4bn (£42.9bn) in the year to 30 June 2024, despite a tough market. Wade was named 2024’s Marketer of the Year by Marketing Week, recognised not only for her impact at PwC but for championing B2B marketing more broadly. She is also the author of ‘Transforming the B2B Buyer Journey’, a call to arms for modern B2B marketers.
Director of marketing & brand, OVO
With a creative flair and commercial focus, Alice Tendler is bringing fresh energy to the low-interest world of utilities. She joined OVO as director of brand and marketing in March 2023, following a six-year stint at BT and a decade agency side.
Since joining, she’s helped the UK’s fourth-largest household energy supplier – with £8.7bn in revenue and 4 million customers – dial up its relevance. Last year the business launched OVO Beyond, a first-of-its-kind customer rewards programme. The scheme, which includes perks like free EV miles, bill credits, smart tech and VIP music rewards, has already attracted over 600,000 sign-ups.
In May, OVO returned to TV with bold creative platform, ‘Do Energy Differently’. The spot borrows horror movie tropes to dramatise energy anxiety and “inject some emotion” into its advertising. Elsewhere, the brand has leaned into experimental media, from a James Norton–voiced Alexa Skill to dynamic OOH triggered only when the grid is powered by renewables.
Tendler is also an active member of WACL, helping to tackle gender equality in the ad industry.
Alice Tendler
Antonia Wade
Professional services, utilities, health & life sciences
Maria Novell
Teresa Parker
Claire Sadler
Nick
Wright
new
re-entry
new
new
new
Sian Hartstill
Anthony
Newman
Philip Almond
Simon Beresford
Warren Fiveash
Rosalind Goates
new
TRAVEL, LEISURE & sport
PROFESSIONAL SERVICES, UTILITIES, HEALTH & LIFE SCIENCES
Media, telecoms & entertainment
GENERAL RETAIL
FOOD & DRINK RETAIL
Food & drink
FMCG
FINANCIAL SERVICES
Consumer tech, property & automotive
Charities & not-for-profit
analysis
methodology
judges
