Mark Adams Email & Phone Number

Reading, Gb

Reading, England, United Kingdom

Undertwok is a social media TikTok content studio set in a retail shop unit - we promote "live life under 2 kWh per day" and sell portable solar panels and batteries from www.jackery.com

Beijing City, China

London, United Kingdom

Honey comprises a number of specialist social creative communications, marketing and branding agencies in the UK, US, Europe and China.

London

The PR industry's two trade bodies, the Institute of Public Relations and the Public Relations Consultants Association established a team of people to look at the impact of the internet under the direction of David Philips.

London, United Kingdom

London

The Conversation Group consults global organisations on the business cases and commercial models for multichannel engagement which improve sales and cross-sell revenue, uncover cost efficiencies by integrating channels and improving customer brand preference. Established in 2007 in the USA and now headquartered in the UK.

Reading, United Kingdom

At TCG, I consult with listed companies in the USA in motor, hotel and B2B sectors on elements of social strategy such as business case development, process development and organisation design. My personal clients have included Avis, AVG, Canon, CyberSource (Visa), Hershey, Hyatt, Iron Mountain, Merck and North Face. I have worked for a number of clients in China, including the digital division of a state broadcaster, working on global social strategies. Work in China continues to play a large role in TCG's services.

Reading, United Kingdom

I provided advice and strategy development for HN Clients.

Reading, United Kingdom

I provided advice and strategy development for Berkeley clients.

London

Seeker-Industries is the maker of the Seeker product, a web monitoring tool. Seeker aims to remove the pain of data collection problems to improve the quality and trust in web data.

Manchester

Founded in 2010 and based in Manchester, Moment.Us is an intelligent streaming radio and music discovery application that automatically generates the most relevant playlist for an individual, at any moment, in any location. Users can visualize their playlist and how they are connected to others through each song; capturing, sharing and reliving their most significant music moments together.

Manchester

WhichSocial.com, is a vendor of social media ROI analytics software focusing on quantifying the impact on ROI conversions driven by social media content from Facebook, Twitter & Pinterest

London

Collider is the startup accelerator set up by Pembridge. By the end of 2013 when I left, it had invested £1.9m: in 9 startups in 2012 and a further 10 in 2013. The Collider format is to hook up brands with startups. The startups are coached through business planning, sales and marketing, investment presentations, fundraising, tech development and recruitment. Participating brands include Bauer Media, BBC Wordwide, Betfred, Diageo, Haymarket Publishing, Late Rooms, The National Lottery, Reevoo, Unruly Media, Unilever and William Hill. In addition to acting as mentor and Board Director, I was involved with fundraising and all transactions, legal agreements and investor agreements.

London, United Kingdom

Non-Executive Director, Strategic Reviews, Alliances and Partnerships, Mergers and Acquisitions.

London

Pembridge provides finance and growth advice for creative / internet / media Firms. Since we formed in 2001, we have provided advice to over 350 firms and invested in 12.

Dublin, Ireland

Betapond is the company behind StitcherAds, a suite of Facebook performance marketing tools for online retailers. Betapond initially became Europe’s most established provider of Facebook technology solutions for global brands in retail, consumer goods and tourism. It raised €2 million in 2013 in a round led by The Ulster Bank Diageo Venture Fund, managed by Investec Ventures. Delta Partners and Irrus Investments also participated in the round. It raised €1.15m in 2011 from the Bank of Ireland Start-up and Emerging Sectors Equity Fund, managed by Delta Partners, Irrus Investments and Enterprise Ireland.Betapond is headquartered in Waterford, Ireland with offices in London, Dublin and San Jose.

London

Web Liquid was a digital agency with offices in London and New York, which combined analytics and advertising agency expertise. I served as adviser and Chair helping the firm with strategy and valuation, corporate finance and M&A activity most notably through merging its own and its subsidiary operations with the US firm NetX to form House of Kaizen. “Kaizen” means "continual improvement". HoK focuses on multi-channel digital performance marketing. It has offices in London, New York & Lagos. It provides media and creative services and strategic data driven consulting.

London

Trillium is an independent, corporate finance advisory firm headquartered in London. I joined the Board as Pembridge invested in 2008. Trillium advises domestic and international companies and private equity firms operating in the digital media, information and communications sectors on mergers, acquisitions, disposals, partnerships and fundraisings with notable deals being the sale of Hodder Education’s Heath Sciences and Higher Education portfolios, Centaur’s acquisitions of Econsultancy and Profile Group, and the sales of ChannelFlip Media to Shine and Continuum to Bloomsbury.

Cambridge

Omobono is a UK-based B2B digital agency concentrating on digital brand engagement for large corporates and government. I was honoured to have assisted Omobono progress in their deserved potential over five years. Also led global Social Media Strategy Development projects for their clients, Accenture, Swiss Re, Bird & Bird and Syngenta, with Business Case, Governance and Compliance specialisms.

London

The Pembridge Fund was a Private Investment Club, bringing together high net worth individuals and sophisticated investors to review investment opportunities in the creative, digital and media sector. The Fund comprised the Extreme Service Fund, the Agency Growth Fund and the Pembridge No 1 Fund and each specialism reviews 6 firms each quarter for investment.

Swindon, Uk

Citizens Online was set up with John Fisher as CEO as a charitable organisation to bridge the looming "digital divide", to help secure access for deprived communities to the net, to new technology and the skills and confidence to put them to good use. The organisation grew to a staff of 20, raised over £5m, and ran over 30 projects through the UK and directly assisted 130,000 individuals in one-to-one workshops, support sessions and other interventions. I stepped down as Chair and Trustee in March 2012.

Developer Relations, Developer Engagement Services

London, United Kingdom

Loewy Group was a UK-based design-led marketing and communications consultancy representing global clients, comprising some of the UK's most respected design companies: Seymour Powell, Williams Murray Hamm and Epoch, as well as the PR firms Rainier, Mantra and BMH in addition to strategy consultancies Branded and Brandpool and the amazing communications firm, "The Team". Built by Bryan Wilsher and the amazing Charlie Hoult, I joined as Chair following Luke Johnson's departure in 2006, overseeing a £16m fundraise, major organisational restructure and acquisitions, ending with a new CEO, Iain Johnston taking the reins in 2008 and a further £20m equity raise in December 2009.

The company was set up to support business enterprise within Denefield School, a 1,200-student state secondary school in Reading. Through Denefield Enterprises, we created Inschool Media Ltd (selling commercial sponsorship), Inschool Shop Ltd (a small retail outlet chain in 5 schools) and schooltrip.com (an online trip booking system). Each enterprise attracted some astonishing leaders (Layla Rea, Pete Doyle, Britt Bjørø West and Karen Lewis) and achieved some astonishing successes, but in general terms we were unable to achieve sustainability and folded the enterprises back into their schools. We raised £1m for schooltrip.com which was then sold to EduMan Ltd.

Reading

As part of a Government initiative to promote enterprise in schools, I was asked to act as "Entrepreneur in Residence" at Denefield School in Reading. I was asked also to act as Governor at the school, promoting enterprise. I was member of the Finance Committee, the Personnel Committee and the Premises Committee during my 7-year tenure. The Governors formed "Denefield Enterprises" as a trading company to pursue various ideas.

London, United Kingdom

Northbank Communications was a marketing consultancy specialising in life sciences, biotech and pharma. It came about by the merger of Charles Consulting, headed by Sue Charles, and SMTP, headed by Peter Colley. Pembridge had actively sought out an investment in this area and invested. I chaired the firm from investment until the sales process began in 2007, ending with a sale of the firm to College Hill in October of that year to become College Hill Life Sciences, subsequently renamed as Instinctif Partners.

Milton Keynes, United Kingdom

A UK-based media evaluation and measurement Firm, combining social media with offline media analysis using a rigorous academic methodology.

Bill Jones, one of the two founders of UK PR agency, Lexis, asked me to chair the board in 2001 as the Board considered future directions. Within a year, the founders had sold the firm to an MBO management team lead by Hugh Birley and inspired in no small way by the ambitious young Margot Raggett, who went on to become CEO. Pembridge invested at the time of the MBO and worked with the management team through to a trade sale some four years later.

The xprl.org organisation was set up to provide a forum for PR companies, their clients, news organisations and others to discuss and agree standards for tagging so that simple XML schemas could be used to facilitate Web 2.0 data exchange. We pushed uphill for years with many deaf ears and raised eyebrows. I think the number of afficionados is still less than 100. But we were right to start this - someone needs to finish the job, but standard-setting is not for the faint hearted. Mike Granatt took the Chairman's role in 2007.

Corsham was a TV / film production company formed in the UK by Oscar-winning Gary Kurtz (producer of American Graffiti, Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Dark Crystal, among many others), Richard Bazley (lead animator on Disney’s Hercules and Pocahontas, as well as Osmosis Jones and The Iron Giant), and Alastair Swinnerton (co-creator of The Baskervilles and Lego’s Bionicles). We managed not only to get the childrens' animated film "The Tale of Jack Frost" on to BBC at Christmas 2004, but also to the No 1 slot in the children's ratings and on to a BAFTA nomination.

Reading

The company read newspapers and wrote summaries of tech stories for clients - we pioneered scanning and optical character recognition, did lots of work using software to impute sense from text and had visions of spewing selected content out to corporate clients through Twitter. Consulted to Microsoft, OpenWave, Global Crossing, IBM and others on measurement and evaluation. Ahead of its time in this, and other aspirations. Huge investment in technology and personnel and a commercial failure until sold in an MBO, which then sold on to UK firm Precise.

.EXE Magazine was the UK software developers' magazine, inspired by Dr Dobbs, PC Tech Journal and the C Users Group Newsletter. Blessed with loyal readers, some great design (thanks Kate) and some great (now even legendary) editors and writers - Schifreen, Watts, O'Brien, Mery and Saran, and the deceased and sadly missed Hobbit Coward who got his first ever job with the mag. Sold to Centaur in 1992 and then on to Dr Dobbs itself in 2000.

London, United Kingdom

Next 15 Group plc is the £500m growth consultancy, which I co-founded with Tom Lewis in 1981 as Text 100. Listed on the UK's Ofex stock market in 1997, then the UK's main market in 1999, Next 15 was created to look after new companies we launched such as Bite, August.One, Joe Public Relations, Evus and others. Next 15 owns the communications brands Savanta, Plinc, elvis, M Booth, Bynd, MHP Group, House 337, Publitek, Nectar, Outcast, activate, Agent3, encore, SMG, Mach 49, Archetype, The Blueshirt Group and Palladium, among others.

Tom Lewis and I met at Interco in 1980 and left there in 1981 to form Text 100 - I was 21 and he was 26. Tom brought in early clients and I refined my appalling writing skills. In 1982 Steve Ballmer and his two UK Microsoft staffers hired us and we launched Microsoft in Europe that year. I advised many global tech firms since then at Text 100: DEC, Micro Focus, Intel, Cisco, Dell, Gateway, Amazon, 3Com, Xerox, HP to name but some.

I moved out with my family to Lenggries in Bavaria, Germany, and established operations for Text 100 in Munich. From there, we opened offices in The Netherlands (Corien Niezing), Italy (Daniele Ianotti), Spain (Sue Smith), Sweden (Viv Wilson) and managed the office in France (Patrick Frison-Roche).

Interco was my first job after Uni. It was a "technology marketing agency" when there wasn't yet much tech at all. The firm was a genuine pioneer in helping tech firms communicate to their markets and I was lucky enough to start as a geek/technical writer churning out technical articles on semiconductors, computers and software working for Interco's clients NatSemi, Texas Instruments, Modata, LSI Data, Eurocom, Data General and other firms which no longer exist. A young Tom Lewis interviewed me for the job - and was not too impressed - and left the firm with me less than a year later to set up Text 100. All this a year before Interco sold to Hill+Knowlton.

Hemel Hempstead, United Kingdom

I set LIMA up because I thought my Dad's IBM business cards were great, I loved aeroplanes and I wanted my own business cards. I hand-drew a dynamic logo in 8 rectangles on A4 paper and duplicated using carbon paper before cutting out with scissors and distributing to, most notably, Miss Mulkerrins, my second-year comprehensive school English teacher. I never got beyond the business cards, but achieved the goal of making me feel cool at age 12 and, as a by-product, everyone else thinking I wasn't.

Msc, Masters In Finance

Activities and Societies: Of all the corporate finance disciplines, got the best grades in the Foundations of Finance, Enterprise.

Bsc, Physics

Activities and Societies: Last year specialism in Semiconductors, Quantum Mechanics and Laser Optics. Final year project Frequency.