These are our Oystercatchers...

We are an action-orientated, hardworking team.  We choose our Oystercatchers, not only on their extensive background and expertise but also for their personality and ability to work with clients and agencies with the upmost enthusiasm and charm. 

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THE TEAM

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  Suki Thompson – Managing Partner

  Suki is a founding partner of Oystercatchers. She has extensive experience of agency evaluation, search and selection having set up and run Haystack Group for 6 years. During this time it became the leading agency in this field in the UK, working with clients such as, BA, Harrods, Müller, RCI, Unilever, UKTV, Digital UK, Sainsbury’s, Post Office Weetabix and Camelot.

  Suki has sat in over 1000 pitches and 10,000 credentials presentations, placing on average £500m of communications budgets annually. Prior to Haystack she was an agency director at a number of leading London agencies including Rapp Collins, Impact FCA! and TBWA and also set up the headhunting company, Kendall Tarrant in Asia.

  Suki is regular conference speaker and writer.  She is also Board Director and Fellow of the Marketing Society and a member of WACL; She owns a specialist gin company and has recently taken up triathlons and has two children Jaz and Sam.

   

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  Peter Cowie – Managing Partner

  Peter is the other founding partner of Oystercatchers.  Peter has 28 years experience working in advertising and marketing. He started his career in advertising as a trainee at Ogilvy, spent 7 years at CDP in its creative heyday and was head of account management at WCRS.

  He then went client side and was a founding partner of Two-Way TV, a revolutionary interactive TV service. He then had two years at Brunswick PR and was invited to join the start up team of Sharepeople.com, which was successfully sold to American Express.

  Peter spent the last 5 years with WPP. He was head of new business at JWT and then Managing Director of FITCHLive, a design business specialising in live events.

  Peter is married with three children, all now at University and has recently moved back into central London. His passions are rowing, Morocco and living life to the full.

   

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  Angus Crowther - Senior Consultant

  Angus is our newest recruit to Oystercatchers having joined in June 2009. Previously Angus was the Marketing Director for both EHS Brann and Euro RSCG 4D Digital, helping them double their new business target in 2008. Prior to that Angus headed up British Gas and Barclaycard integrated accounts. In January 2003 Angus relocated to Madrid to help set up EHS Brann Spain helping them grow from 4 to 35 people in less than two years. Angus joined EHS Brann (then known as Evans Hunt Scott) in 1999 working on the world famous Tesco Clubcard and the launch of Tesco.com.
   
  Angus started his career in Hong Kong working for Draft Worldwide working on The Economist, HSBC and Foster’s for three years.  
   
  Recently married, Angus speaks Degree level German and fluent French and Spanish but is nonetheless a firm supporter of English Wine.

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  Josie Jacobs - Consultant

  Josie is a founding consultant of Oystercatchers. She runs the lastminute.com business and has been instrumental in the development of the Oystercatcher client/agency relationship management tool and runs most of our client/agency evaluations.

  Prior to that she was the head of advertising and brand for Europe at Tourism Australia, where she worked across all marketing disciplines and worked with Suki at Haystack to review the advertising and media agencies.

  Prior to that Josie ran client business at a variety of advertising and direct marketing agencies including Rapier and 141 Worldwide, where she led global blue-chip brands such as Allied Domecq, HSBC and NTL.

  Josie is married and has a 2-year old son Olly.

   

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  Helen Owen - Consultant

  Helen is responsible for our strategic marketing consultancy and research programmes. Her remit includes strategic communication work, such as evaluating the effectiveness of marketing communications, as well as conducting qualitative and commissioning quantitative research.

  Helen has worked in marketing communications for over 25 years, delivering marketing strategy and implementation in specialist areas including advertising, graphic design, film and digital media. She was Managing Director of the Lambie-Nairn marketing communications group; Director of The Digital Partners, Associate Director at Corporate Edge, Head of Brands at Michael Peters Ltd; Account Manager at Ogilvy and Mather.

  She is married with three children.

   

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  Fran Cassidy - Consultant

  Fran is a professional marketer specialising in media, most recently as Marketing Director at Carlton Television. Fran also ran their Marketing Research and Design Departments... She also launched Carlton Active - ITV's first interactive television service and was instrumental in the development and integration of all their new media and merchandising activities.

  Fran started her career buying and planning media and then after 2 years at LWT, she ran the marketing of More O'Ferrall Adshel, the UK's largest outdoor advertising company, launching new formats, which changed the planning strategies of the medium to this day. She worked with Suki at Haystack for the past 5 years, joining Oystercatchers in 2007. She is a Fellow and Board member of the Marketing Society, and the UK representative of the European Group of Television Advertising Companies. She is a regular conference speaker and member of Media Research Group, Account Planning Group, and Market Research Society.

   

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  Claudia Collingbourne - Consultant

  With over 22 years marketing experience across sales promotion, direct marketing, PR and digital, Claudia has worked with a number of high profile agencies in the UK and Australia. She started her career at IMP, before moving on to Claydon Heeley, Wunderman Cato Johnson prior to setting up Oxygen Marketing which she ran for 6 years. Now Claudia helps manage the agency selection process at Oystercatchers.

  She is married with two boys.

   

   

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  Victoria Sinclair - Project Manager

  Victoria is Project Manager at Oystercatchers. She is in charge of the day to day running of projects, woking with clients such as McDonald's, Barclays and Electrolux; She also helps with new business and the marketing of Oystercatchers.

  Prior to Oystercatchers she worked alongside Peter Cowie at FITCHLive in New Business and marketing and has also worked at the Trinity Mirror Newspapers.

  Victoria spent over two years living in Mexico City where she worked organising events and promotions, working with clients such as BMW and Corona. Thanks to this experience she is fluent in Spanish.