NatWest Group

Research Consultant

Noggin The Brain People

🧠 Noggin The Brain People 🧠

Sainsbury's Bank

Head of Research, Planning & Brand

Head of Propositions & Innovation

Head of Customer Insight & Innovation

The Marketing Society Scotland

Chair Of Marketing Society Scotland

Heineken UK

Head Of CMI (Consumer & Market Intelligence)

Category Insights Controller

PepsiCo Intl

Consumer Insights For All PepsiCo Portfolio Of Beverage Brands across Western & Eastern Europe

European Consumer & Market Insights Director

PepsiCo

Worked on creating new International Trademarks for PepsiCo to play in exciting growing Asian beverage categories e.g. Healthy Whites (RTD Soymilk/Drinking Yoghurts) in China, India, Vietnam & Thailand.

Asia Regional Innovation Insights Manager

Quorn Foods

Consumer & market insights for the Quorn brand.

Consumer Insight Manager

Procter & Gamble

Consumer & Product Researcher Working In Skin Beauty Care (Oil Of Olay).

Products Research

🧠 Noggin - helping improve the cognitive health of the nation 🧠 | P&G | PepsiCo | Heineken | Sainsbury's |

I have over 25 years of insight, marketing, and innovation leadership experience in FMCG and FS sectors, I know, I don't look THAT old.

I've enjoyed working for some of the world's leading brands in various categories (health & beauty, food & beverages & financial services) and regions, delivering impactful consumer and market intelligence, brand strategy, and product innovation. My time spent working on Oil Of Olay made me my mum's favourite son.

Currently, I'm a research consultant at NatWest Group, where I'm supporting the bank's customer, technology and data-driven approach to enhancing its products and services. 

I'm a co-founder at Noggin The Brain People, on a mission to improve the cognitive health of the nation & founding investor in Gutzy Organic which makes having a healthy, happy gut, fun and easy. Active investor in the technology & health & wellness arena.

I'm a former chair and current fellow of the Marketing Society in Scotland.

Mick Doran

AI will not make everyone smarter.

It will make intelligence abundant though.

And there is a difference.

We already live in a world where knowledge is effectively unlimited if you think about it.

Every book ever written, every lecture, every research paper is potentially a few keystrokes away.

But has it improved our curiosity, our discipline or our creativity?
 
The bottleneck is not access to intelligence. The bottleneck is what you do with it.

I'm loving this book The Next Renaissance by Zack Kass. 

Finally a book that acknowledges the risks but ultimately lands on an optimistic conclusion, that AI is expanding human capability in ways we are only beginning to understand.

It's packed full of wisdom & a must read.

The Marketing Society Scotland Graeme Atha Joanne Lynn will look to summarise for next week

Megan Hastings Lindsay Jamie Mcfarlane Mungo Kilgour 👀

Watch this space. (Yes, I’m keeping the pun.)

Our now 12 year old son Michael is putting the finishing touches to Things I Taught My Parents About SPACE 3, his latest charity book where he's going to share facts about what’s going on above our heads.

This time we’re backing MS Society Scotland and we’ve set ourselves a big target to raise £10,000.

He’s grown up since book one (below) but still happy to share the limelight with other authors.

If you can help us hit the target, the ask is simple:
 👉 share this,
 👉 tell anyone who's interested in space, who isn't
 👉 and check the website (I’ll drop it in the comments).

Launch soon. And yes, we’ll need all hands on deck. 🚀

Dr. Clara Doran MBBS MRCGP

Aldi UK he may have taken creative inspiration from you folks 👀 

#ThingsITaughtMyParents #charity #MSSociety

🚀 COMING SOON 

During lockdown, our son Michael started teaching Dr. Clara Doran MBBS MRCGP & I things about space.

We helped him write his space facts down and produced a book.

We raised over £3,000 for Fairy Bricks & Scottish Book Trust & €10,000 for the Alzheimer Society of Ireland

This time, we're aiming higher.

"Things I Taught My Parents About Space 3" is coming. 

We want to raise £10,000 for the MS Society Scotland.

1 in 500 people live with MS in the UK but that no. is 1 in 300 in Scotland.
Dr. Clara Doran MBBS MRCGP is one of these.

We need help.

We're looking for: 
✅ Sponsors and partners who want to back something genuinely special 
✅ People willing to share this with their networks & generate some interest
✅ Anyone who loves space or wants to support a cause that matters

Over the last number of years we found proof that curiosity + kindness = something extraordinary.

If this lands with you tag someone who loves space, or drop a comment below. Even a share can help as we finish this book and get it out in the world.

👉 Find out more at our website details in the comments section: 

#MSSociety #SpaceBooks #CharityChallenge #ThingsITaughtMyParents #Scotland #Fundraising

When I get stuck, I read.
So I read a lot.
Good books in my mind do one thing really well, they help adjust my thinking.

Three on my list

1. Design Thinking and Innovation is about testing early, learning as quick & cheaply as possible and the benefits of staying curious.

2. The Rules That Make Us is about about recognising early changes in behaviour and meaning, before they become obvious to everyone else. And benefitting from this insight.

3. Runnin’ Down a Dream about how compounding works both ways. So we all (including organisations) need to be more deliberate about where we place our time, energy and attention.

What’s on your bedside table at the moment?

#books #usingyournoggin #learning

A thought for a friday ....

'Moments of wild uncertainty are often hiding the seeds of transformation'
Zack Kass

It's true what Steve Jobs said, when he talked about only being able to join the dots backwards.

Happy Friday

Have you read Stripes' annual letter released today.?

always a fascinating read and three things I think worth re-iterating from it ...

1. the winners are compounding faster, the gap between the best and the good is widening.

2. compute is the real economy (like electricity or even the internet was)

3. the interface to commerce is changing FAST, agents, protocols, new rails and permissions & new gatekeepers

and just as most things underneath you are changing there is a suggestion that speed is becoming a survival trait

See letter below. I must admit I also love ALL their Stripe Press Books, well worth checking out also.

#speed #useyournoggin #stablecoins #powerofcompounding #stripe

stripe annual letter 2025

A Monday morning thought ...

...if more of us actually looked after our noggins, would the outcomes would be more noticeable everywhere?

(yes they would)

Better thinking.
Better decisions.
Better emotional control.
Better relationships.
Less burnout.
Less reactivity.

Our brains fuel everything we do.

When we fuel it properly, life tends to work better.

So today and every day, look after your noggin

so it can better look after you  🧠

ps it's Brain Awareness Week this week.

#brainawarenessweek #useyournoggin #oomph

Everyone’s an entrepreneur now.


A quick scroll of LinkedIn and it’s like ...
 
Founder ... of vibes probably

CEO ... of a side hustle that hasn’t started yet but they're raising ESIS

“Building in public” ... posting instead of building me thinks
 
And who could forget ....

... a course on how to do all of the above

It sometimes appears that we've created an ecosystem of people who haven’t built anything…teaching people how to build something…using frameworks from people who also haven’t built anything.

And now I get to use my Jay Z lyrics  ....

“Everybody can talk, but ask them what they’ve done.”

This line should be printed at the top of LinkedIn.

Because the truth is, building something is extremely squiggly ....
 
Most days “CEO energy" is replying to emails no one asked for or fixing a problem you caused yesterday and celebrating a £47 sale like you’ve just exited for £47 million 😛 

So here’s a thought before you follow the guru or buy the course…

Ask yourself .... What have they actually built?” .... like really built.

Not what they say. Not what they post. What they’ve actually done.

Because it seems that being an “entrepreneur” is easy these days.

But actually building something ..... that's still annoyingly hard.

And if you're in the messy bit, by the way… hats off to you. Keep going 👏 

ps love this from bomsthefirst over on IG. She knows it. Wild CEO energy 😛 

#entrepreneur #vinted #useyournoggin 
Dr. Clara Doran MBBS MRCGP Noggin The Brain People ❤️ 🧠 ❤️

"I'm constantly trying to rebuild and understand how I will get better and learn" (e.g. on sustainability)

Thirty minutes well spent this weekend listening to Mark Given's first ever podcast with Russell Parsons on Marketing Week.

Mark's career arc is fascinating. Civil engineering at Glasgow, P&G in 1998, Scottish & Newcastle/Heineken, O2, and now several years shaping the growth at Sainsbury's. But the key takeout for me isn't Mark's CV, it's his mindset behind it.

Three things to note:

🧠 His genuine hunger to keep developing, not just himself, but also his teams. ("careers are long").
 🧠 His humility to know he doesn't have all the answers ... yet. But works hard to invest in proper understanding.
🧠 And his obsession with the customer. Always asking "so what does this mean for them?" 

If you're looking for a self-development 30mins this week, this is it. Link in the comments.

You'll have been very happy with that 🏉 result yesterday Mark - AMAZING GAME

#selfdevelopment #useyournoggin #learning #humility

War is dominating our news & AI is dominating our conversations.

But strategic minerals will dominate the future.

Sad but crazy eh.

#strategicminerals #war #ai #tungsten #gallium

(image sourced from robert_ivanhoe on X)

“When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.”


Love this from the 16th century scholar Erasmus via Ryan Holiday.

What's on your shopping list?

#reading #useyournoggin #books

📚 Mick's Recommended Reading: What I underlined

"Rather than the usual narrative of disruption and job loss, Mick reflects on a more optimistic view: that AI could expand, not replace, what makes us human. The real shift isn’t just technological - it’s cultural. As machines take on more of the measurable work, skills like curiosity, judgment, creativity and leadership become even more valuable.
It’s a thought-provoking read that asks a bigger question: if everything could be automated, what would you choose to keep?"

Read Mick Doran's full blog post - link in the comments

#RenAIssance #AI #imagination

China’s latest 5 year plan has been discussed in the news this week.

While a lot of discussions in the West regarding China focuses on 'chips' there is seemingly few mentions of this in their plan.

There is, however, a lot of focus on artificial intelligence; compute power, digital infrastructure & applications.

There is a new phrase that appears in the plan for the first time & it means model : chip : cloud : application. We're told to think of it as a technology stack.

So chips are only one layer of four & above them sit the AI models, the cloud infrastructure, and the applications that can actually transform industries.

China’s strategy appears to be building the whole stack. It's not just about invention but deployment, embedding AI into factories, logistics, robotics & supply chains.

They are looking to apply intelligence across the entire economy & aligning universities, capital, infrastructure and industrial policy around strategic technologies.

Their new measure of success appears to be the digital economy reaching 12.5% of GDP by 2030.

Maybe the 'strategic' part of the story now is not who is building the best chips but who is building the most powerful computing ecosystem. (appreciate politics of this)

#ai #ecosystems #chips #china
image source visual capitalist

Unity Enterprise

Marketing Coordinator

Marketing and Engagement Officer

Andy Mitchell Coaching

I show my clients how to achieve rapid and elegant change in their life. This is done using hypnosis and other techniques to simplify change easily and automatically.

Working with me you will discover how to:
•	Lose unnecessary habits, doubts and fears.
•	Put your feelings about the past behind you.
•	Improve performance in your business, personal and social life.
•	Master your emotions and take charge of your life.
•	Be free from stress or anxiety...quickly.

This approach to changing your life is not analytical and does not involve weeks or months of talking about the past. Instead, you establish what you want and use hypnosis to help you get it.

I specialise in a brief, solution-focused approach. That means that together we will focus on problem-solving and your future, rather than counselling, analysis, or exploration.

Hypnotherapist / NLP Practitioner / Coach

IcarusCharity

Working with veterans, serving personnel and their families to provide mental health support and rehabilitation.

Therapist

Grain to Glass

•	Founded independent marketing consultancy with the aim to help small businesses tell their stories, generate value and make an impact.
•	Brand Planning, branding, activation planning and delivery, communications, training

Founder

Linn Products Ltd

Channel Marketing Manager

Cake Decor Ltd

Development of Marketing strategy covering the full marketing mix including ATL, BTL, pack strategy, press & PR, social media and POP strategy.

Marketing Manager

Beauty Kitchen UK Ltd

•	Create and implement overall Marketing plan for UK /IRE/Benelux and other markets making full use of social media, partnership marketing and retail experiential.
•	Develop new content to be used across all channels including print, social and website.
•	Responsible for all customer promotions ensuring that the range and activity mix added value for customer, shoppers and company.
•	Manage Marketing budget to ensure that campaigns all created a postivie ROI. 
•	Recruit, train and develop team.

Head Of Trade Marketing

Caledonian Brewery

Responsible for the creation and delivery of the annual marketing plan, driving category growth through aligning Caledonian category and brand plans with the customer and drinker agenda.
•	End to end ATL and BTL activity and planning for Caledonian Brewery.
•	Integrated Marketing Plan including ATL, BTL, pack strategy, press & PR, social media and POP strategy.
•	Overhauled brand and brewery branding and POP materials to create a recognisable brand and platform with a sense of place for the beers.
•	Trade and consumer communications across all channels including press and social
Winner of two gold medals at the Scottish Beer Awards 2016

•	Developed and delivered a commercially robust portfolio trading and promotional strategy via First Point route to market for Own and 3rd party brands.
•	Redefined and standardised the processes needed to support telemarketing sales campaigns and created new process for Activation sell in to customers to free up capacity for Regional Sales Managers.
•	Creation of on trade promotional plan.
•	Overall editorial control for customer facing publications including all Marketing content for e-commerce site.

Marketing Activation Manager

• Creation and delivery of the integrated annual marketing plan for wholesale channel (Regional & National) driving strategic, brand led activation.
• Interrogated insight in the sector, identifying gaps and developing our right to win
•Lead delivery of category review for major wholesale customer, increasing brand penetration and sales.

Customer Marketing Manager - On Trade

Exploited all consumer, shopper and customer insight, drive the category forward for our customers, allowed HEINEKEN to achieve the objectives laid out in commercial brand and customer plans. 

•Championed the shopper by delivering shopper insight expertise and responsible for delivery of brand budgeted volume through ownership and delivery of a shopper and category marketing agenda.
•Created and delivered the annual marketing plan with customers, driving category growth through aligning HEINEKEN category and brand plans with the customer agenda.
•Provided full direction to the account teams on all marketing/shopper insight, to create and implement a customer specific Point of Purchase strategy

Shopper Marketing Manager

I have delivered and adapted our marketing capability programme for Heineken UK's 90+ marketing team across a range of functional marketing disciplines.

The programme is built on core functional disciplines, in order to provide our team with the skills and knowledge that they require to deliver our business requirements.

Through influencing the senior marketing team and identifying the training requirements, I was involved in designing materials whilst implementing the core programmes to ensure consistency and quality of delivery and share best practice. Via coaching and I have been able to help manager’s and individual’s performance and behaviours.

Involved in setting up an external benchmarking forum for Marketing Capability that includes organisations such as O2, Aviva and News International.  Inclusion of external speakers to Heineken to share best practice.

Marketing Development Coach (Mat.Cover)

Responsible for managing, end-to-end planning, implementation and evaluation of all of Heineken UK’s sampling and face to face campaigns. Delivery of over 2,000,000 shopper and consumer interactions across all major Grocery customers including Tesco, ASDA, Sainsbury and Morrisons.  Campaigns delivered huge sales uplifts, impacted positively on brand health scores and return positive ROI of 1.7 to 4.3

Full management responsibility of all sampling and CRM budgets.  Control and development of agency relationships – driving continuous improvements to campaign as well as day to day operations.  Included contract terms negotiation.

Shared learnings with other Heineken companies and helped to set strategy for their sampling campaigns.

Led CRM agency pitch process on behalf of HUK and successfully appointed and integrated new agency and ways of data working with brand teams, realising greater service and saving HUK over £65,000.
Research into digital marketing, CRM and social media strategy for Heineken UK brands.

Customer Marketing Manager – Trial / CRM

•Responsible for managing, end-to-end planning and implementing of the two largest nationwide consumer trial campaigns in the off-trade, Biggest Round 08 and Foster’s Scuba / Kronenbourg Dynamo Systeme.  Delivery of over 1,200,000 shopper and consumer interactions across all major Grocery customers including Tesco, ASDA, Sainsbury and Morrisons.  
•Working with our Customers to advise them on how to improve their sampling and trial capabilities.
•Full management responsibility of £2,950k budgets.

Customer Marketing Manager - Consumer Trial

Scottish and Newcastle

•  Responsible for managing, end-to-end planning and implementing of the largest, and most successful, consumer sampling campaign ever in the off-trade (Biggest Round 07).  Delivery of over 520,000 shopper and consumer interactions across all major Grocery and Impulse customers including Tesco, ASDA, Sainsbury and Threshers.  Writing and delivering training to over 150 brand ambassadors on brand knowledge, off-trade market and selling.  
•Creation, implementation and management of Below Zero chiller trials to determine the best routes to market for future NPD developments. 
•Leadership role in devising off-trade Ale category strategy including project managing the removal of Newcastle Brown RBs from off-trade and on-trade channels, development of Theakstons Seasonal Ales, management of John Smith’s Grand National BTL campaign for off-trade.
•Management of the Wholesale marketing budget £1.6m annually.
•Development of return on investment (ROI) tool for off-trade.

Customer Marketing Manager

•Bringing together market research, sales data and consumer research and insight to work closely with retailers to provide all areas of Category Management consultancy.  
•Maximising Scottish & Newcastle product range and distribution in customer and trade planograms.
•Other responsibilities include Category planning, SKU development, shopper insights – bespoke and continuous consumer research Market and sales analysis, promotion planning and effectiveness, Last Minute Marketing – trial and test new initiatives, promotional pricing management.
•Advising Tesco on a new beer range and implementing it in all UK stores. This included developing an Ale revitalisation project with Tesco.
•New ranges and merchandising principles for all major convenience chains including Spar, Co-op, Thresher and Bargain Booze.
•Publishing Category Management guide for Convenience Store Magazine.
•Developed new consumer research tool in conjunction with TNS.

Category Development Manager

Are you ready to embrace a life of rapid and elegant transformation? If so, I'm here to guide you on an extraordinary journey of positive change using cutting-edge techniques, including hypnosis.

As a transformational therapist, I specialize in helping clients achieve remarkable results without getting bogged down in lengthy analyses or revisiting past experiences. Instead, we'll focus on your aspirations, enabling you to unlock your true potential and reach your desired outcomes.

When you work with me, you'll experience a powerful solution-focused approach. Together, we'll identify the areas in your life that require enhancement, and I'll show you how to shed unnecessary habits, doubts, and fears. Embracing the future and leaving past emotional baggage behind, you'll gain the confidence to flourish in both your personal and professional life.

Imagine mastering your emotions, gaining control over stress and anxiety, and elevating your performance in every aspect of life. With my proven techniques, we'll streamline the change process, making it effortless and automatic.

I believe in the power of hypnosis to tap into your subconscious mind, facilitating lasting and profound change. As we collaborate, you'll discover how to effortlessly embrace positive behaviours that align with your goals, propelling you toward the life you've always dreamed of.

If you're ready to embark on a transformative journey and experience the joy of accelerated growth, let's connect. Together, we'll build a future of endless possibilities, where you are the architect of your destiny.

Contact me now, and let's start crafting the life you truly deserve! 

Find out more by booking some time with me https://calendly.com/andym-therapies/30-minutes or you can email me on andy@andymitchellcoaching.com

Andy Mitchell

You might notice there wasn’t a Week 7 post last week from my Open Working programme with Third Sector Lab.

Not because nothing happened — quite the opposite. It was one of those weeks where there was simply more to do than there was time or energy to do it.

So something had to give.  LinkedIn lost out.

Marketing Leader and Therapist | 20+ Years Driving Brand Growth, Shopper Activation & Strategic Innovation | Expert in Stress & Anxiety Relief for Professionals

Week 7 of working in the open (a week late) What I worked on You might notice there wasn’t a Week 7 post last week. Not because nothing happened — qui

Open article: When time runs out and choices have to be made by Andy Mitchell • 2 min read

When time runs out and choices have to be made

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The Battle

Mick Doran

Andy Mitchell

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Mick Doran's LinkedIn Performance

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