Career & more
As part of my Masters’ degree, I carried out a market on behalf od Diags Software to evaluate the feasibility of tapping into the British market for workforce optimisation.
At Lyon’s Chamber of Commerce, I was assisting the Head of Communications with press releases and conferences.

I arrived in London with one suitcase and an interview with a small company that acted as an agent for French furniture manufacturers.
It was busy and I enjoyed it – I helped run the office by processing orders and looking after important customers, designed a website (sadly, not live anymore – it would’ve been funny to see it over 10 years later), organised email campaigns and attendance at the Furniture Show for all our French partners.

I also met one of my best friends at Inex, introduced him to my flatmate and – who would’ve thought? – ten years later I’m in a Dublin church renouncing Satan to become godmother to their first child!
I did a one-year contract at Debenhams as assistant to a team of International Business Managers.
The role was varied and included general support, but I was mainly in charge of helping out with marketing collaterals for foreign markets (ensuring campaigns were delivered to UK standards, but that all imagery worked for the countries’ culture. So no nude pictures for Barhain, then.)
I liked the brand and people, but it’s probably good that they only had positions open in Merchandising and I wanted to pursue a career in marketing, so I left (despite the joy of sample sales).
First proper advertising experience in Destination Marketing – I was in charge of a wide range of marketing activities for Southeastern, from ATL to online, CRM and POS.
I delivered a range of successful through-the-line campaigns, from Leisure (to drive traffic to London) to Business (to influence commuters’ satisfaction ahead of the annual national survey).
I gained a thorough understanding of the main above-the-line channels (TV, OOH, radio and press) whilst flexing my digital muscles with online and email campaigns.

I launched for ATOC a very successful and quirky TV campaign, created by WCRS.
It delivered amazing ROI, especially considering the tight budget we had – for big aspirations.
I still have some gnome soft toys somewhere at home, that I produced for my first ever social media campaign.
Surely they must be collector by now?
I did a stint at Canon’s headquarters in the consumer imaging department (DSLR and compact cameras). I delivered POS campaigns across 17 countries, managing not only managing the creative development, but also the translation, localisation and production of collaterals.
I absolutely loved the products (still loyal to my Canon DSLR to this day) and I’m very grateful for the experience, but it was not the best cultural fit for me and so I decided to leave at the end of my contract.
I started at Carphone Warehouse in November 2010 as European Brand Manager and from the start I liked the dynamism and fast pace of this organisation.
I worked on the European brand and advertising across 9 markets, and got promoted a year later to also manage the UK advertising budget (£20M) and team (7 talented individuals, 4 agencies).
During my time there, I delivered countless holistic campaigns and BAU activities, worked on many ad-hoc projects (including but not limited to an own brand of smartphone and a live tariff checker), and also landed the new brand identity for the whole of Carphone Europe.
Three years on, I had a lot of great experience under my belt and had met some great people – but it was time to go.
I got this awad for the best performing campaign of all recorded Carphone Warehouse times!
The absolute claim (‘UK’s lowest price’) proved hard to get ClearCast-approved, but made me a bit of a substantiation expert (if I say so myself) and contributed to a fantastic Christmas trading period.

I work in the business development department where I am in charge of launching products and services to build new revenue streams.
My role morphed from marketing manager for the existing brands, to a more strategic role of identifying sizeable opportunities (in all industries worth looking at) and bringing the most promising and relevant ones to market.
I launched Times Currency Services as one of my first projects at News UK, an international money transfer product not dissimilar to TransferWise. It’s performing incredibly well, up 45% on this year’s targets.
Canto the JRT has been elected cutest pup ever by a jury of two. Spurred by his arrival in October last year, I decided to start a canine psychology course to get to understand him better. I blog about it and more doggy stuff on ftload.co.uk.
Demand was high amongst Sun readers for a health and fitness solution – not faddy, not another celeb diet. I launched New Me in time for the seasonal peak in January, and we have thousands of happy members to date.
Twilert lets companies get real-time alerts via email when their brand names, keywords or hashtags are mentioned on Twitter.
I was helping this start-up on a part-time basis to put in place the building blocks to drive growth and retention, in order to achieve world domination! Or at least a nice profit margin.

Pronto delivers healthy hot meals in the City.
In my short time there I implemented a CRM strategy, trackers to analyse ROI and built a team of in-house street marketers to drive brand awareness at low cost.

Need a multilingual Head of Marketing with strong commercial acumen and experience in online and offline channels, capable to manage a team of any size? Then we should talk! You can contact me here or just email [email protected].
Speak soon, and thanks for the visit 🙂
All the bases are belong to ©Gaelle Comte 2013