Tom Evans Email & Phone Number

Twickenham, United Kingdom

I am syndication manager for What Car? and Autocar at Haymarket Automotive, and also oversee syndication at Classic & Sports Car. I take our brands' content and direct it to third party websites, apps and other services including MSN and the wider Microsoft Start ecosystem.

London, United Kingdom

I have leadership team responsibility for MSN, one of the UK's biggest websites with around 16m monthly users. In addition to wider team management, I have day-to-day responsibility for running MSN Money, one of the UK’s most popular personal finance websites. With a deep interest in business and finance, my role is to bring interesting, useful content to help our user’s solve their money challenges, combined with powerful tools including portfolio and currency management. Partners include FT, Business Insider, Motley Fool, and Money Advice Service.I also run MSN Cars, one of the UK’s most popular motoring websites. Building on my long experience in the category, we aim to supply an entertaining website that also informs and educates, supported by powerful research tools and classifieds from Auto Trader. Content partners include Auto Express, Autocar, CAR, and Car Buyer, with more to come.I also run MSN Tech, a technology vertical that brings together content from market leading websites like The Verge, Pocket Lint, and Engadget. The site aims to bring the sector to life, highlighting the technology people can buy today, as well as news tech that will change their lives in the future.In addition, I am also Global Media Lead for automotive content on MSN worldwide. Building on my award-winning experience running MSN Cars, in this role, I coordinate a virtual team of people who operate MSN Autos websites in 50+ markets across multiple languages. My role involves identifying common successful themes that will work anywhere using the same content (with translation), achieving economies of scale.I also manage MSN UK's newsletters, which are sent to millions of users every week, optimising for open and click rates and other key metrics.I am highly commercially-minded. I am highly proficient in Omniture, Chartbeat, Comscore and other tools, in order to optimise traffic and revenue, and ensure that every page-view we sell is delivered. PS: I love SEO!

London

In this role I was responsible for all the content channels of MSN UK. These included MSN Entertainment, MSN News, MSN Sport, MSN Cars, and MSN Lifestyle (comprising MSN Money, MSN Her, MSN Him, MSN Wellbeing, MSN Food, MSN Tech, MSN Travel, MSN Innovation).My job was to entertain, inform and delight our 17 million unique users a month with high quality content that is relevant, interesting and accessible to large groups of people.I led a team of around 25 digital journalists & producers who produced and curated content across our platforms including PC, mobile, tablet, and Xbox. My direct reports comprise four content managers who managed the various channels directly day-to-day, and two interns in support roles.I was responsible for content strategy and staffing issues and managed a budget of several million dollars a year. Additionally, I worked with other MSN markets, and I operated all our successful SEO efforts, with high rankings on key search terms consistently obtained.I championed and managed our ‘open access programme’, whereby reliable freelancer journalists contribute directly to our CMS, yielding efficiency and cost savings. I recruited many excellent team members and freelancers, and many of them have gone onto great careers. In 2012, following Skype’s acquisition by Microsoft, I led the project to onboard promotion of Skype onto MSN Tech, and this template was used by other MSN markets around the world. I also championed Skype-driven fan chats on our Entertainment channel.MSN UK won the 2013 Online Media Award for Best Lifestyle Leisure News Site. I worked closely with sales colleagues on new advertising and sponsorship opportunities. I visited agencies regularly, and worked on new channels that can be sponsored. I am a proficient project manager and have managed the project to manage, sell, produce and launch MSN Innovation, a future-tech website sponsored by Nissan, which launched in August 2013.

London, United Kingdom

I became responsible for two more websites. MSN Tech is a popular UK technology website, focusing on today’s technology and how it fits into our users’ lifestyles. I relaunched its content, re-designed its sections, renamed it, and sharply boosted its SEO performance. Later when Head of Channels I recruited a successful new editor who took the site to great success.I also became responsible for MSN Money. This popular personal finance website receives around 550,000 UUs per month. I also redesigned its structure based around key SEO principles and focused the site on key popular areas including property and money-saving. I also brought aboard a key content partner, Love Money.During this period I won the Guild of Motoring Writers award for Editor of the Year for running MSN Cars in 2011.

While running MSN Cars, I had championed the idea of MSN launching a men’s lifestyle for some time. When a launch sponsor was secured (Warner Brothers) in February 2010 I managed the build and launch of MSN Him in 14 days, in order to coincide with the premier of a new Warner Bros film, Clash of the Titans.Aiming to cover lifestyle issues (including relationships, technology, fashion and culture) from a male perspective, MSN Him quickly became one of the most popular men's lifestyle websites in the UK, with monthly unique users of around 500,000.

Though I had no previous professional involvement in the automotive industry, I did have a lot of digital experience and also, usefully, a deep love of cars! MSN Cars had been directionless for some time, and I quickly tuned up the offering into an a consumer motoring site that sought to inform and entertain in equal measures. My lack of previous experience was in a sense an advantage: I knew what I as a fan would enjoy, and we set out to deliver it day after day, driven along by Microsoft's target-driven culture: page-views, unique users and of course $$$s.The site quickly established a niche in the market for itself away from the seriousness of much of the established motoring press, delivering to a market that was definitely inspired by the success of Top Gear. And we obsessed all-things Top Gear, despite it being someone else's brand, something the rest of the non-TG related motoring press never did.Not wanting to run a roadtest operation from central London, I built up an existing relationship with agency Motoring Research which delivered enticing, exciting content to a wide, MSN-sized audience, together with a lucrative partnership with Auto Trader for classifieds listings. Within a year of starting MSN Cars became one of the UK's most popular car websites, with unique users of around 2m per month and 7-figure revenues and very healthy profits. After being a one-man-band for a while, I showed our potential and eventually recruited an in-house team of three including two editors and a technical producer, all of whom I'm pleased to say have gone onto great careers in the digital motoring press.MSN Cars won the inaugural Headline Auto Motoring Website of the Year in 2009, a great honour for a website to win which is not part of the long-established motoring press world.

London

I worked for myself as a consultant and completed numerous projects for clients including working on a campaign microsite for the charity Médecins Sans Frontières and building a marketing website for the insurer CJ Davis. I also completed a Post Graduate diploma in Journalism at the University of Westminster, between September 2003 and June 2004, and then joined MSN.

London, United Kingdom

I wanted to build on my skills and experience in the media industry by moving into a more commercial role by working for this small but innovative digital agency which had some key publishing clients.I helped conceive, pitch, sell and direct important projects for some key clients, which included Oxford University Press (OUP), Wood Mackenzie, and the COI. For OUP I presented our vision for a prestigious new consumer website, AskOxford.com. We won the business and beat several rivals in the process. Later, I won a lucrative consultancy and support contract with oil research giant Wood Mackenzie, and frequently travelled to that company's headquarters in Edinburgh to build and nurture that key relationship. This recurring revenue helped Object1 greatly during what was a very difficult environment for small digital companies in the wake of the dotcom meltdown. Object1 was acquired by LBi in 2004; LBi in turn was acquired by Publicis.

London, United Kingdom

NTL at the time was the only company to have a fast digital cable network capable of running effective interactive television. Enthused by my work with programming at Pearson Television, I wanted to build on this, and my previous FT TV experience, with the chance to build an interactive TV service for financial services.Working closely with key partners including Abbey National and Halifax, we built a system that enabled consumers to transact online and engage in e-commerce. Having successfully launched the service, and having enjoyed my work presenting to senior executives in the banking world, I decided to broaden my experience and go in a more commercial direction for my next role at Object1.

London, United Kingdom

Recruiting a team from scratch, I established and operated all of the company's internet activities, including websites for its leading TV shows like The Bill, Neighbours, Baywatch, and Wish You Were Here? I worked closely with the production teams, nurtured our relationship, and helped a sometimes sceptical audience to understand how the internet was going to dramatically change just about everything, including television. We established fan sites for our key shows, notably The Bill, and showed producers how their audiences were going online to learn more about their favourite shows, and get closer to them. I worked with the Wish You Were Here? team to build an interactive TV experience with BT, which was then rolling out ADSL. This matched destination information with clips of Judith Chalmers and co reviewing the actual locations. I told the (slightly incredulous) producer of that show that one day, everyone would buy their holidays online. In 2011 I ran into him and he very kindly remembered this, and agreed that I may have been on to something after all.There was a successful fan website for The Sweeney, produced by the company 20 years earlier, which was being rebroadcast on Channel 5. Instead of suing the website which some wanted, I encouraged Pearson to buy the site for a nominal fee, and we drove viewers to it after the broadcast and sold them DVDs.A colleague and I travelled to Hawaii in July 1999 to build a new website for Baywatch, which was by then being filmed there; gruelling stuff but someone had to do it.I also conceived and produced the build of the company's first corporate website, and our first intranet, and I managed to buy the domain name neighbours.com for £10. I was greatly helped in all of this work by the far-sighted support of Nick Humby (then finance director of Pearson TV, later of Manchester United plc) and Greg Dyke (then CEO).Pearson Television has since been renamed FremantleMedia, and is now part of the RTL Group.

Teddington, Middx

I started as a runner on £50-a-week, running scripts around this TV studio, made a vast amount of tea and coffee, and destroyed several forests with photocopying. My technology interest led to me being offered a role setting up the FT TV website, which I worked on for over a year. The WWW in effect had just started and it was an extremely exciting time to be working in an industry that was clearly going to be huge - and so it was...

Bachelor'S Degree, History, 2:1

I studied modern & medieval history. I love history, and came to appreciate the analytical skills it gave me which I use every day.

Post Graduate Diploma, Journalism, Passed With Merit

I always wanted to firm up my skills, experience and qualifications in publishing and journalism, so embarked on this highly-regarded.

Education record