Pete Markey

Pete Markey is Chief Marketing Officer at Boots UK. Pete is responsible for all marketing activity across the UK and Ireland, including brand, marketing communications, data and loyalty.

Adopting a results-driven approach, he is a highly experienced marketing leader at both global and regional levels, specialising in data and analytics, and customer experience.

Pete has been the recipient of four “Marketer of the Year” awards, and has worked at companies across various industries, including TSB, Aviva, The Post Office, and British Gas.

As well as being an Executive Sponsor for Boots UK’s Marketing for Change initiative, which helps to foster diversity and inclusion across its marketing activity, Pete is also the Executive Sponsor for Walgreens Boots Alliance’s Pride Alliance (LGBT+) business resource group in the UK.

Karen Dowse

Karen leads the professional services division, customer success and consulting for Mintel’s prestigious portfolio, ranging from the world’s leading consumer brands through to emerging innovative new market entrants.

With almost 30 years marketing, commercial and operational experience within the B2B environment, Karen is passionate about driving customer engagement that creates mutual value and longer-term partnerships.

She’s a (very) amateur triathlete who is desperately trying to swim, cycle and run as fast as her two daughters.

Lucy Reynolds

Lucy Reynolds is Vice President and Director of Communications, CSR and Sustainability at Boots UK.

In her role, Lucy is responsible for overseeing external and internal communications as well as CSR and sustainability, championing Boots UK’s core messages to customers, team members and wider stakeholders.

Lucy has been instrumental in the development of Boots UK’s charity partnerships with The Hygiene Bank, The Princes Trust and Macmillan Cancer Support.

Before joining Boots in January 2020, Lucy was Head of External Communications at Vodafone, focusing on strategic communications and reputation transformation. Prior to this she spent 12 years at Jaguar Land Rover in multiple senior roles.

Gemma Butler

Gemma is the marketing director for CIM where she works closely alongside those in the marketing profession and manages a department which spans a broad range of marketing disciplines.

Experienced in both corporate and not for profit organisations, Gemma specialised in proposition development and buying at Sony and Xerox prior to joining CIM. She believes the marketing function is central to driving business successes and that every marketer should continuously develop themselves and focus on having strong stakeholder management, communication and relationship building skills.

Karen Boswell

Karen is the Chief Transformation Officer at The Pharm. She drives the creation of world-class consumer engagement experiences and platforms at the intersection of technology, creativity, and culture to create connected brands.

Karen previously held roles as Head of Innovation at Adam&EveDDB and Global Client Lead at AKQA. She is also the founder of tech start-up THEI.A Cognition. She has worked across some of the industry’s most innovative campaigns including Waitrose’s ‘Live from the Farm’, Marmite’s ‘Gene Kit’ and the ‘Social Collection’ for M&S.

She was one of the 2016 IPA’s Women of Tomorrow and one of Google’s ‘Top 10 Female Creatives to Watch’ in 2017 and 2018.

James Farmer, The Pitch 2022 Host

James is Head of Brand & Marketing Communications at CIM, leading the Content, Marcomms and Creative departments. He joined CIM from Sky where he was Brand Controller across a range of their leading TV Products, driving brand strategies and delivering ATL campaigns.

Prior to that he spent over 15 years agency-side working on a range of Entertainment and Telco clients. He’s passionate about customer-centric marketing that draws on juicy audience insights to create compelling comms.

He has a Graphic Design degree, a strategic mind and a strong commercial focus, so enjoys working with pictures, words and numbers.

Thomas Cooper and Adam Dickson (Winners of The Pitch 2020)

“While we might not be able to celebrate in person, we are so pleased to have been awarded this year’s title. Both of us jumped at the chance to put into practice many of the theories and marketing techniques that we’ve been studying since starting University. And now to be recognised for our thinking by a panel of respected marketing professionals is the confidence boost we needed, as we start to apply for graduate jobs.”

Evie Johnson (Winner of the Pitch 2017)

“Graduates can’t afford to take a back seat in marketing and as placements become more and more common, they need to find other ways to have an edge. I think The Pitch is a great start and it’s good fun. The money has come in really handy for my relocation too”.

Sam Willian (Marketing Manager, StudentUniverse)

"Partnering with the CIM for The Pitch, as sponsors in 2017 and as a judge in 2018 has been a hugely valuable experience for StudentUniverse. Hearing fresh, innovative ideas from talented young marketers, who are also right in our target demographic allowed us to gain unique brand insights, that continue to inform our marketing strategy and campaigns. Be prepared for an honest critique of your brand's shortcomings but with twice as many ideas on how to overcome them. 

It also allowed us to develop some great collaborative working relationships with students who had been part of the campaign. Siobhan Glover, who was runner up in 2017, and her partner went on to set up and run an Instagram account @backpacksandbeyond. We recently worked with as part of a partnership campaign with Visit Victoria, who approached to help position the state as a student backpacker destination. We knew Siobhan and Andy were perfect candidates for the job, to get off the beaten track and show us everything the state had to offer through Instagram stories and their own authentic approach to influencer marketing. We had the added bonus of them already knowing the StudentUniverse brand through The Pitch - it certainly won't be the last time we work with them. 

Being a part of this initiative has also led to us reviewing our hiring policy, and as a business will be looking to bring in marketing staff at a graduate level for the first time. The future of marketing is in safe hands!" 

Sarah Wood (Marketing Director, Wilkinson Sword)

“It’s been a revelatory day for me. According to the returning judges, the standard of the pitches was higher than ever before. For me, the level of professionalism was there – some of the ideas were better than we might expect from an agency. The pitches that really worked well were insightful and used targeted market research, with considerations of our audience, to go the extra mile. Those were the concepts I can see us using in the future”.