Alexander Kidonakis Email & Phone Number

Greece

Athens, Attiki, Greece

He develops research and analysis tools aiming to diagnose what goes wrong when a large company tries to become customer centric (CC). Why the Customer eXperience (CX) starts with the best intentions and ends up in colossal disasters which cannot be fixed simply because the higher lever management does not believe they are happening. A significant part of his research work is how you tell management. What are the simple most catastrophic mistakes that distance a large company from its goals? Why management does not want to listen? Why management does not want to even look at the problem? Why they never appreciate the problem? Why a bunch of well educated, hard working, visionary high caliber people, manage to build monsters. Why while they are trying to build exceptional client service the build inflexible, rigid, beraucratic, heavily depatmentalized structures which do not provide the customer with what he wants ending up to destroy the organizations image and relations with its customers. Why misinterpretation of the GDPR requirements lead to absolutely surrealistic scenaria where in the name of security you can't even talk to higher management. Why they end up operating in a vacuum, in a bubble where their beleifs are reinforced through continuous reinforcement from their peers, their colleagues. The more they are reinforced the more they distance theslves from their objective, the more they find themslves to operate in conflict situtation with their emloyees/people, the more the customer finds out that their service deteriorates. Before long they are caugt in a death spiral.Fixing all this is childishly simple. All it takes is to see the issue and reframe their view. Retrain to change their priorities. Top priority can only be to serve the human customer to get what HE/SHE wants. Period. NO OTHER PRIORITY CAN COME FIRST. If security comes first then this is the recipe for disaster. All this is very easy and extremely dificult. We will show you the way out.

Greece

Set up and coordination of a a high caliber Business consultancy Network. Participating consultants share values and commitment to deliver, while they own very high level competencies in their areas of specialization. The Network does not have fixed costs and therefore is able to offer realistic fees while delivering high performace results. Centers around Management Consulting in Strategy, Communication Delivery and Implementation. The key aim of the Network is the delivery of the agreed business objective. Recognizes the role of the human factor as central in the 21st century. The final aim is to deliver high resolution understanding of the issues and designs that deliver high performance results. We see the new technology enabled social networking tools playing a central part in delivering the promise. We focus on the target audiences (clients/ stakeholders) not the toos. We see technology as an enabler of building the social network with the stakeholders. Nevertheless social networking tools can be equally on line and off line, depending on the relation and involvement of the stakeholders with technology. We have developed our "Social Media Mirror" research tool to help us chart the relation of shareholders to each social medium and technology and help us locate internal or external partners and set a meaningful and actionable course. Even our definition of social media differs substantially from the current industry 'hype'. We focus on clients and stakeholders and use the appropriate tools not the other way round. We answer difficult questions like "should I use facebook and other social media, what communication goal can each social medium serve for each target audience and how much should be spent on each. This type of questions is very rarely asked and more rarely answered.

He founded and run a small and reputable management consulting company specializing in the effective and efficient use of Media for communication, both commercial and non commercial.Commercial Clients served (with multi years contracts): Friesland Foods, Toyota, Henkel, Schvartzkopf- Rilken, Diageo, Warner Lambert, Pfizer, Cadbury, Johnson & Johnson, National Bank of Greece, Bank of Cyprus, Sarantis, Estee Lauder, Pilsbury, General Mills... etc.Some clients hired the company to overlook their media operations in many countries including but not limited to France, Italy, Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, FYROM, Romania, Czech Repubilc, Slovakia, Hungary, Russia, MENA area (Middle East, North Africa), South Africa. Johnson & Johnson assigned a contract to overlook their media operations in 11 countries from Russia to Eastern European countries, to Middle East, North Africa, to South Africa. Sarantis assigned us their Eastern Europe Media Operations in 7 coutries. Chipita entrusted us to examine their operations in western Europe with emphasis to Italy.

Member of the first management team who set up the first private television channel in Greece. Organised a full Marketing and Sales Departement in very short time (50 days) and managed to drive Mega Channel to market leadership in less than one year.He set the market standards for the marketing and sales operations of private television in Greece.He tried to set some negotiation principles with media agencies during the start of the deregulation of the media market. Some of his principles still apply today.

Responsible for delivering the communication strategy to commercial companies for their products and services.He developed and/or applied the necessary research tools.In more detail the pesearch tools developed are:3B's a multidimensional tracking survey of brands run by Mrs Athina Psylla of MRC research Company.Photosort (Visual Perception Tool), Market Structure Audit (Market Structure as perceived by consumers), Problem Detection

Lecturer. Run an annual 8 week course in Media Planning for Marketing and Advertising Professionals.Repeated that annualy for 6 years.

Media Director.Working with the late Dr Sotiris Karpathopoulos he set up the company's competition media analysis sofware (still operational today after 20 years!)Working with Mr Theodore Cotionis and the late Dr. Sotiris Karpathopoulos he contributed to the 3D survey, the first of its kind in Greece. It combined media measurement, product usage and tracking, and it included a first attempt to life style-psychographic clasifications on Greece.Working with Mr. Theodore Kotionis, Dr Sotiris Karpathopoulos, Mrs Lena Lambropoulou (CEO Research International Hellas) he highly contributed in the set up of BA.RI (at the time stood to signify Bold Advertising- Research International) wich was a proprietary Televisison Audience Measurement Service, through 500 daily personal interviews measuring the audiences of the 2 TV channels which existed at the time. The questionnaire was designed with the help of Tony Twyman (Research International, Internationally aknowledged expert on TAM).

Media Director, responsible for the Central Media Buying (CMB) of Unilever in Greece. At that time LINTAS was No1 agency in Greece and was fully owned by Unilever.He developed a fully computerised Media Department with very limited computer resources. He built upon the heritage of his predecessor (Mr Stelios Fourlis, now President of INITIATIVES MEDIA Athens) who started this along with Vincent Negre (former General Manager, now...).His learnings from this position beyond the technical were in the area of Unilever's Business Ethics and he was taught how to be an Ethical Buyer in a not so ethical industry (media industry). He worked closely with the Marketing and sales directors of Unilever Greece, Namely Messrs George Vamvouris, Aris Zografos, Antonis Gortzis, Spyros Dessylas It is worth mentioning that the first three served as Presidents of the GREEK ADVERTISERS ASSOCIATION at that or at later times. Mr Spyros Dessylas served as President of Unilever in Greece.

Lecturer in Media Planning and Media Research in the professional advertising course of the CAM foundation in Greece.

Lecturer in Marketing Research in the context of the training courses of the British Institute of Marketing in Greece.

Media Director. Alector was No. 1 agency at the time, under the leadership of the late George Theophilopoulos. Responsible for Planning and Buying Media for the key accounts of the company. Alector was No. 1 agency at the time.Clients served were Procter and Gamble ( was under the leadership of Helge Gagnum, Peter Theodoulou), Johnson and Johnson, Bayer, etc. From his collaboration with Procter and Gamble (P&G) he was taugh how to be precise and concise regarding management information. He was also taught that good decisions stem when all the available information from all the disciplines involved in a project are creatively combined. A very valuable lesson that guided him throughout his carrer.

Hired at ADEL by the late Chrysostomos Papadopoulos, one of the fathers of Greek Advertsing and Management.Media Executive. Served Procter and Gamble and British Aiways accounts.Built the first ever computerized media evaluation program in Greece.

Humanity And The Human Dimension In Life And Work

Systemic Consulting And Leadership In Organisations

Activities and Societies: Participated in a study group where we had to discover how we learned what we learned. Inspiring colleagues.

Negotiation Skills

Attended the negotiation skills course (John Winkler) designed for top media executives in anticipation of the Eurpean media markets.

Operational Research

Activities and Societies: The Hellenic Society at the University of Sussex What I learned there. All problems are about the optimal.

Diploma In Mathematics, Mathematics

Activities and Societies: Elected member of the first two, post dictatorship, student councils of the Mathematics Department. Participated.

High School Degree

At the time Varvakio was an experimental school attracting the best educators and experimented in practice with education methods..

Education record

Attended first year of the Greek High School 'Averofeion Gymnasion' in Alexandria. The school was run by the Hellenic Community.