The Global Agency Awards have been judged by digital marketing industry leaders and experts.
Current Judges
Previous Judges include:
Head judges
Laura Bartlett | House of CoCo
Laura Bartlett is the award winning founding editor and publisher of global magazine House of Coco, sold all over the world as well as in store at Harrods and Selfridges. Having built this business in her tweeties with zero investment from the ground up, Laura is a leading voice for young female entrepreneurs and a larger than life example of failure breeding strength. Laura is a #girlboss with a passion for speaking, inspiring and motivating others to be the best possible versions of themselves. Laura is passionate about encouraging all readers, but especially millennials to live their best lives, to take risks to follow their dreams and be in control of living on their terms.
Juliette Van Rooyen | Head of SEO | VR Squared
Juliette is an SEO Specialist with more than 14 years experience in both client-side and agency environments in London & Cape Town. Starting as a developer, she was lured to the dark side of SEO with the promise of being more creative. After getting a taste for SEO, she moved to London and spent 6 years working for various agencies. Her clients included Nintendo, Samsung, COI & Shell. She returned to Cape Town where she worked on the gambling industry on the client-side, spearheading multi-region and multi-language strategies for global casino brands. After 6 years of working in that arena, Juliette returned to London in 2018 to lead UK SEO for a multinational ecommerce brand.Judges
Tracy Archer | Pure Cottages
Tracy is Sales and Marketing Director for the Pure Cottages Group- A holiday cottage agency with 6 leading brands across the UK, that has welcomed over 150k holiday makers over the last year. Her remit is to transform the group into a digital driven business, maximising revenue and delighting the customer at every opportunity in their journey. She has over 30 years of marketing experience working in both local and global agencies in London, Leeds and Manchester.
Brent Csutoras | Managing Partner | Search Engine Journal
Managing Partner at Search Engine Journal, one of the top Digital Marketing publications online. Speaker at many of the top marketing conferences, such as Pubcon, Affiliate Summit, SMX, SMX Advanced, State of Search, SES, and more. Over 14 years experience in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Marketing, and an avid Futurist, focusing on the implications of future technology on society and societal growth.
Sarah Erridge | Aon plc
Sarah began her career at a leading strategic communications and events agency delivering change communication programmes for the likes of KPMG, Transport for London and Coca-Cola. Now working in-house for a leading global professional services firm Aon plc., Sarah leads external and internal marketing communications campaigns ranging from the rollout of a new brand identity to 50,000 colleagues globally, to co-ordinating industry conferences in Europe, Asia and the USA. Outside of work, Sarah is a school governor, mentor to a year 12 college student and a member of the prominent St Martin-in-the-Fields Chorus.
Neil Foster | Vice President - Creative Consultancy EMEA APAC | Guinness World Book of Records
Neil Foster has spent the last 25 years working in PR and Integrated Advertising agencies in London, Sydney and Melbourne. He joined Guinness World Records in 2019 to help drive the creative services and records marketing consultancy forward. As well as being a much-loved media brand, Guinness World Records also provides record breaking solutions for brands and agencies running communications campaigns. In addition, the company works with businesses on their employee engagement and development programmes through world-class record-breaking attempts and events. Prior to joining Guinness World Records, Neil led the Brand Marketing team at Burson Marsteller London and headed the agency’s conflict shop, PPR. This followed a five-year stint as Managing Director of a group of PR brands housed within an independent integrated marketing agency and launching the Earned Agency. He helped to develop the Bell Pottinger Group’s digital offering working across group companies to deliver integrated and digital solutions to group companies in consumer, finance, crisis and issues, public affairs and sports marketing. This was preceded by a four-year spell in Australia working for global advertising giant DDB’s integrated PR and experiential agency Mango Communications as their Creative Director and latterly, General Manager of the Melbourne office. During his time in Australia, Neil successfully completed AWARD School being selected as a Super Group winner. Neil cut his teeth at legendary consumer tech agency Bite Communications in London in the early years of the dotcom boom. He holds a Cannes PR Lion, Gold and Platinum Sabre Awards and PRIA Golden Target.
Phil Gripton | Partner | Waypoint Partners
Phil Gripton supports the shareholders and boards of SME businesses across the North of England and Scotland to achieve long term growth and value. Phil has run businesses in the Digital, Technology and Agency spaces as well as spending significant time leading in IT, Telecoms and Software companies. Phil has significant experience in sales and marketing as well as operations and has some really strong case studies where he has turned around the performance in the companies he has worked with. Phil has both bought and sold businesses and hence has a strong focus on how to create value for owners and shareholders alike.
Emily Gudeman | Agency Partner | LinkedIn
With over 20 year in Digital Marketing, Emily has a wide range of experience across sectors, channels and regions to brief a unique point of view on what it means to be success in our industry. Emily has worked in martech and analytics at companies like Adobe, IBM and Marin software where she has partners with some of the largest brands in the world. She has also lead strategic marketing teams at Walgreens and Dell in the US before moving to London in 2010. Now a Senior Agency Partner at Linkedin EMEAL based in London, she is excited to see this year’s nominees.
Adam Guerguis | Digital Marketing Manager | Airbnb
Based in Montreal, Adam has more than 10 years in search marketing and growth hacking experience. His latest job was Head Operations for airbnb organic growth. He also has been working with very exciting brands in several industries, markets, and sizes like Yahoo!, MSN, Groupon, UNHCR, Skrill, Paysafe card, and others. Adam is also a digital marketing trainer, guest speaker, mentor, digital marketing blogger since 2010, and a MSc. marketing candidate. In his free time, Adam likes coding and reading about marketing,
Samuel Hall | EMEA Communications Director | ServiceNow
With 20 years experience within the brand, media, content and communications world, across both corporate, consumer and employee leadership communication roles, I am a true believer in the value that strategic communications can bring to any organisation be it in terms of brand value or contribution to the bottom line. I have a proven track record in campaign management, content creation, social media strategy creation and execution, people and agency management at both a Pan EMEA and local market level, supported by solid contacts across both UK and international media and influencers.
Neil Hardy | Head Of Society Ecommerce | Midcounties Coop
Involved in commercial, digital and online since 1993. With vast experience in commercial partnerships, product sourcing, online strategy, large travel operations , project management and digital marketing.
Jennifer Hoffman | VP of Marketing | Banked
Jennifer is an enthusiastic and passionate Marketing Director with over 15 years of experience in brand building and strategic marketing, with an impressive track record of developing key partner relationships and driving business growth. Fascinated by all things impacting the customer journey; brand experience, user experience and customer experience. Hyper curious about new tech, innovation and startup culture!
Liam Howley | Chief Marketing Officer | musicMagpie
As Chief Marketing Officer at musicMagpie, Liam is tasked with the development and direction of the business's strategic marketing plans to maximize brand growth, customer acquisition, conversion and retention through online and offline channels. This includes control and management of internal digital, marketing and design teams & external agencies, with responsibility for planning, analysing and optimising a multi- million pound marketing budget in the UK for musicMagpie.co.uk and in the US for Decluttr.com.
Richard Kenyon | Director of Marketing & Communications | Everton FC
Richard was appointed Director of Marketing and Communications in January 2014 following an interim consultancy role with the Club. He arrived at Everton from Kenyon Fraser which initially as Managing Director and then as Chief Executive he built into one of the leading marketing and communications agencies in the North and one of the fastest-growing in the UK. A lifelong Evertonian, his role is to oversee and drive Marketing, Insight, Corporate Communications, PR and Media functions, Fan Services and the Club’s Fan Centre. Richard previously worked for he PFA and MLS and acted as Interim Head of Marketing and Communications for The Jockey Club in the North West and the Grand National. He has also worked closely with the R&A on golf’s oldest major, the Open Championship. Richard is Chair of the Chartered Institute of Marketing in the North West and aChartered Fellow of the Institute.
Matt McGowan | Director | Snapchat
Matt has worked alongside executives representing some of the world's best known and hundreds of lesser known brands, agencies, and technology companies. Matt is President and a member of the Board of Directors at Adestra, the independent Forrester and Gartner recognized leader in marketing automation and email service provider software. Prior to Adestra Matt was focused on adtech at Google, where he headed up strategy for the team that managed the Big 6 Holding Companies and Named Independent Advertising Agency relationships. Before that Matt served as Global VP of Marketing and then Managing Director at Incisive Media, a recognized global media, marketing services, and data company. Matt has also served in leadership roles at Charles Schwab, Headland Digital Media, Pearson plc company, and the direct-to-consumer retailer PropertyRoom.com. With a strong background in corporate strategy, sales, and marketing, and deep executive relationships Matt is also an active adviser and board member to a variety of companies. Three of which have recently been sold: Reelio was acquired by FullScreen/Disney in May of 2018; SponsorHub.com was acquired by comScore in Sept 2015, and the Online Marketing Institute was acquired by PopExpert.com in March 2015.
Paul Morris | Head of Ecommerce | Havas Media
Paul has 22 years’ experience leading Marketing, Digital & Ecommerce both Agency & Brand side. Paul was previously Director of Digital/ Ecommerce at Marshalls PLC, Head of Marketing at Tesco Bank, global Digital/ Ecommerce Director at PZ Cussons (brands including St Tropez, Imperial Leather & Original Source), led Digital marketing at the Co-op Group (Food > Funeralcare) and have through the line experience of working both client and agency side with brands including Wickes, Laterooms, Intercontinental Hotel Group, Cash Generator, Stagecoach & Silverstone. Paul is now Head of Ecommerce for Havas Media.
Irina Nica | Senior Marketing Manager, Product Awareness | Hubspot
Irina is a driven marketer with over 10 years of experience in content marketing and SEO. As part of HubSpot’s Freemium User Acquisition team, she is responsible for increasing HubSpot’s product awareness across all free features, and her focus is on building buzz, backlinks, and driving signups. Prior to joining HubSpot, Irina was the Marketing Manager of the award-winning SEO tool, SEOmonitor.com.
Chris Nightingale | AO.com
Chris is an experienced Digital Marketing Strategist with a passion to deliver through the ever evolving eCommerce landscape. His passion for digital led him to focus more on Online Retail and the exciting nuances of working for an exclusively online retailer. He is part of the vibrant AO.com Digital marketing and commerce team, on the forefront of the latest trends and technologies in order to bolster AO.com’s presence within a competitive market space
Helena Pearce | Head of Content | Samsung Electronics
Helena is the Head of Content for Samsung Electronics’ Europe Office. After cutting her teeth in journalism, Helena moved into the world of content and creative. She joined Amazon as a Content Editor where she spent 5 years building and managing creative teams. During her stint Helena managed digital and offline content, crafted SEO and social media strategies, and created brand books for various business units. Since joining Samsung Electronics Helena has the pleasure to oversee digital content across Samsung’s European subsidiaries, and regularly travels across the globe to deliver target driven content plans in the B2C and B2B space. A few of her favourite career highlights include travelling to Korea to present in Samsung City; creating videos at The O2 Arena, BST and Kew the Music; and interviewing Sir Michael Gambon at a West End after party.
Kerstin Reichert | SEO Digital Marketing Manager | Tide
Kerstin loves the internet, digital marketing and helping businesses grow. Currently, she's SEO Digital Marketing Manager at fintech Tide, where she's responsible for organic acquisition. Kerstin has over 10 year's experience in digital marketing at companies large and small, both agency-side and in-house in England, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. She's continuously updating her knowledge and loves to pass it on - through co-authoring the 2020 book, 'Mastering in-house SEO' - a Marketing bestseller on Amazon, as an instructor for LinkedIn Learning and as a contributor to the IAB UK's advisory groups for search, content and native advertising.
Ric Rodriguez | Head Of Search | Vashi
Ric Rodriguez is Head Of Search at the fine jewellery brand, Vashi. Ric has sat on every side of the table - agency, client and prior to his current role was the European search evangelist for Yext, the NYSE-listed technology company, on the vendor-side. Ric is a frequent conference speaker, co-author of the Amazon Bestseller - "Mastering In-House SEO" and industry award judge across content, search and performance marketing. Ric is borderline obsessed with the science behind search and you'll often find him talking about networks, machine learning and the impact of knowledge graphs in the search marketing community.
Chris Simmance | Chairman and Founder | Optus Digital
Chris Simmance is a Partner and co-founder of Torque Partnership. He helps enterprise businesses understand their data, build their strategies and transform their presence. Based in London he spends a great deal of time getting cranky at the state of the web and plans to fix it, one business at a time. He solved the BrightonSEO ticketing platform issues, you know, the one that hasn’t gone down on every ticket release day since he changed it. Love the ballot or hate it, it doesn’t fall apart anymore. He’s a big fan of Bill Gates’ quote “I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.” as it’s a really good way of getting away with finding a shortcut. Chris is almost entirely much self taught and started working in SEO from a small local agency through to a multinational before deciding to “go it alone” and set up for himself. 5 years later and 2 regional offices and he’s winning work from some well known established high street brands.
Roxana Stingu | Head of SEO | Alamy
Roxana heads the SEO efforts at Alamy, a stock photography agency with a collection of over 200M images to date. She loves getting into the nitty-gritty of page speed and, besides theorising about the future of Image Search, her favourite past-time is automating anything repetitive. She’s been previously working in the web hosting industry for almost 10 years, leading the technical SEO efforts for brands such as 123 Reg, Host Europe and GoDaddy EMEA. Roxana is also a proud member of the Women in Tech SEO community and a speaker at BrightonSEO, WiTS and ReadingSEO. In her spare time, she plays Minecraft, Scrabble, cycles and tries not to stalk John Mueller so much at every SEO conference.