Marketing consultant, Fractional CMO, brand strategy, energetic speaker, foodie, soccer player, and proud Dad

I’m passionate about marketing and building brands, and that energy is evident from the first moment of interaction. My approach combines curiosity with strategic thinking and creative solutions to help businesses stand out and grow through effective marketing.

With over 20 years of experience, I’ve led transformative projects across diverse industries, including technology, medtech, consumer goods, and professional services—serving both B2C and B2B clients. In 2012, I founded Common Giant, where I helped companies harness branding as a competitive advantage in a crowded marketplace.

Throughout my career, I’ve worked client-side managing retail stores up to $52MM in revenue, served as VP of Brand Strategy on the agency side, launched an agency with global clients, and acted as a fractional CMO for multiple businesses. My experience spans branding, marketing strategy, and creative execution across a variety of business models.

"The guy you want in the room." - Former coworker.

I believe in these four core principles:

1 - Marketing is a business practice. 
It’s not just about promotion. Marketing is a series of levers to pull for higher profits.

2 - Know the customer as much as you know yourself.
Understand what, how, and where your customers buy to serve them best.

3 - Grow the orchard while you sell the fruit.
Focus on long-term brand growth while capitalizing on immediate sales.

4 - Boring is expensive.
Mediocre marketing is forgettable, less effective, and costs more in the long run.

Beyond my work with brands, I'm an enthusiastic keynote speaker, delivering engaging talks on branding, marketing, creative problem-solving in business, and effective marketing strategies to audiences of all sizes.

Phillip Oakley

John Lyons

Human Hatstand Ltd

I’m a practical, hands-on marketer with over 20 years experience helping brands and agencies (two of which I founded and exited) make more money through applying proper commercially-focussed marketing.

As a Fractional CMO I can help scale-ups reach their next stage and funded start-ups understand their opportunities and go to market.

As a Fractional Business Director (what I’ve always considered the CMO of agency land) I can help independent agencies to grow through creating a distinctive proposition and effective inbound and outbound sales strategies, processes and tactics.

My core skills are: 
* brand strategy and proposition development
* sales and marketing strategy and execution
* loyalty and promotional marketing
* digital marketing
* agency business development

I can also offer training, coaching, mentoring, am an experienced public speaker and former Non Executive Director.

Fractional CMO

Fabric

As a Fabric Coach, I provide personalised 1-1 coaching to marketers across various levels, helping them enhance their skills, strategise for success, and achieve their professional goals. I guide learners through tailored training sessions and on-demand mentoring, leveraging Fabric’s comprehensive marketing training platform.

Fabric Coach

...Gasp!

My role was to oversee the sales and marketing function of the agency, developing a strategy based upon empirical research to identify, target and convert new business opportunities and increase billings with existing clients.

Key achievements include:
* Personally closing sales in my first quarter to close record annual billings for the first FY.
* Leading on research to identify our most profitable target markets and align their needs with our perceived strengths.
* Implementing multi-channel prospecting programmes, combining email, LinkedIn, content hooks and direct mail to build a strong new business funnel.
* Building out a CRM, business development training and cross-team support to increase opportunity success.
* Nurturing relationships with existing clients, unlocking more opportunities across their business portfolios.
* Creating a programme of online and physical events, keynotes, panel discussions and podcasts through which I was able to further expand the agency's fame.

Chief Marketing Officer

the LEGO Group

My role was to lead on strategic program growth opportunities, with responsibility for tentpole campaigns and brand partnerships such as Adidas, Apple and Nintendo.

Key achievements include:
* Proposing and leading on the program’s first integration with a third-party retailer, Target, having researched and established significantly higher room for growth outside of owned channels only.
* Launching the program’s first always-on member reward, targeted to acquire more parents of LEGO builders to the program following in-depth customer research to test the proposition.
* Nurturing cross-team relationships, allowing us to secure earlier consideration in creative planning from in-house agency partners and program visibility in-pack with a program, feature page in all adult product instruction booklets.

Senior Loyalty Proposition Manager, Global VIP Program

The NDL Group

As Group Sales & Marketing Director I worked alongside the Managing Directors of each business in the group with the responsibility for planning and implementing distinctive brand and value propositions, developing and overseeing the new business strategies, and overseeing all group marketing plans and operations.

Key achievements include:
* Rationalising inter-group finances to identify where to make efficiencies and where to invest for growth across the business units.
* Defining a new group business structure, leading to Managing Director appointments for each business in the group and hiring dedicated Business Development resources for individual companies.
* Developing and implementing new marketing and sales strategies for NDL and Promotigo, creating a distinctive proposition and set of assets for both and personally implemented a new marketing tech stack.
* Pitched and won campaigns and managed relationships with brands including Brooks, The Edrington Group, Bose and Coca-Cola with Global Media.

Group Sales & Marketing Director

In a transitional role I brought together the client services teams from across the group, helping consolidate and grow clients with the account handlers at Code String, Promotigo and NDL. In this time I oversaw the development of a cohesive to market strategy, allowing each business within the group to focus on its strengths and support growth across the group through cross-selling the clearly defined advantages of our sister companies.

Group Client Services Director

I led the in-house campaign development team, turning client briefs into powerful promotional marketing campaigns. Pooling The NDL Group’s unrivalled Creative, Activation, Technical, Partnership and Rewards, Prizes & Incentives expertise we are able to devise and deliver both tactical and strategic programmes to achieve our client’s business objectives.

Head of Strategy and Creative Solutions

Promotigo

In a secondment role from the NDL Group, I worked alongside the Managing Director to develop a clear proposition to take to market, refining the the product offerings including plug-in, site in a box, managed SaaS and SaaS models. 

I was responsible for pricing and product strategy, brand and both developing and implementing sales & marketing strategies to drive growth.

Group Sales & Marketing Director (Secondment)

Guest Visit (guestvisit.co.uk)

In June 2020 as the Covid pandemic looked to be easing, pubs and restaurants had the opportunity to reopen but only under very specific controls. The Promotigo team evolved the platform to create an end‐to‐end SaaS journey for venues and visitors to meet government requirements. Outlets could register themselves and create their own unique QR code identity so guests could safely and efficiently register themselves via their phones. As the system was virtually self managed it allowed staff to focus on reopening their doors without the risk of hefty fines or complex procedures. It was so successful it was later adopted by the government with the launch of their tracking app in October 2020.

I lead on brand and marketing for this rapid spin-up, assisted directly with sales and developed the go to market proposition.

John Lyons Consulting Limited

Through my consultancy I worked with brand and agency owners to maximise their marketing efforts, focussing on brand positioning, marketing strategies and tactical executin over key channels.

 • I helped agencies such as Halo Promo Risk and Toyas O'Mara understand their market and category set, define target segments, implementing both marketing content calendars and lead gen management through Hub Spot CRM.
 • I worked with niche brands such as Hackney GT to create and optimise digital marketing programs to drive brand awareness, consideration and ultimately sales.

Marketing Consultant

London South Bank University

I sit on the industry advisory board for the school of Arts and Creative Industries.

Arts and Creative Industries, Industry Advisory Board member

Brandmovers

Following the successful acquisition of my own company Egovision by Brandmovers, the US-based global leader in digital promotions, I was appointed MD for UK/EMEA and was responsible for the launch of Brandmovers Europe in 2008, with a focus on business development and the strategic delivery of objectives, focusing on the securing of new deals in the UK and Europe. 

Reporting directly to the CEO, with a local team including Technical Director, Developers, Creatives, Client Services, Business Development Managers, with P&L ownership, I succeeded in doubling turnover during this period, attained YoY growth of 34% (at peak) and a record turnover in 2018. 

 • Shaped the strategic vision for the UK and educated marketplace on the use of digital for promotional campaigns, moulded the value proposition from the creative, technical and commercial standpoints to drive success. 
• Pitched and won contracts with Peppa Pig World, LG Electronics, Deutsche bank and CinemaNX. Supported US office on Hasbro’s Nerf Perks loyalty program, executed an end-to-end digital transformation for celebrity picture agency FameFlynet.
• Successfully drove the pitch to Manchester United Football Club and delivered a Global ECRM Acquisition Campaign, with the concept of ‘United in History’, an email driven reward scheme to entice new followers.
• Succeeded in doubling turnover during this period, attained YoY growth of 34% (at peak).

Managing Director, Europe

Fractional CMO / Business Director

Hi, my name's John and I am obsessed with marketing 🖐️

I'm not going to call it a passion, as I'm so tired of everyone claiming they are passionate about what they do (passionate about recruitment, really though?). But it is more than a job for me, and I bloody love it.

I’m a practical, hands-on marketer with over 20 years experience helping brands and agencies make more money through applying proper commercially-focussed marketing. None of your fluffy nonsense, real hitting the bottom line marketing.

As a Fractional CMO I can help scale-ups reach their next stage and funded start-ups go to market.

As a Fractional Business Director (pretty much the CMO of agency land) I can help independent agencies grow through developing a distinctive market proposition and implementing effective inbound and outbound sales strategies, processes and tactics.

I've worked with small brands you're unlikely to have heard or as well as global brands such as Deutsche Bank, Manchester United, LEGO and LG, and fantastic independent agencies such as ...Gasp! and The NDL Group to help them understand their opportunities and hit their commercial goals.

I have co-founded, established and successfully exited two agencies of my own from the ground up, which taught me a lot about the commercial realities of a business and also that it's not something I fancy doing again.

I can also offer training, coaching, mentoring, am an experienced public speaker, a former Non Executive Director and have taught Marketing and Digital Marketing at the National Film & Television School in the UK, guest lectured at LSBU and mentored through The Alliance of Independent Agencies.

I also have a hat.

taplio

The Battle

Phillip Oakley

John Lyons

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