Iain Dawson
Communications Planning and Insight Director
Iain started his career as a graduate trainee at a small media agency where he learnt the arts of TV, radio, press and outdoor planning and buying. After a number of years here his interest in direct response clients started and he headed up the team responsible for Freemans and Damart catalogues.
In 1988 he joined Evans Hunt Scott as media director. EHS was the first agency that set out to be integrated from the outset with above and below the line creatives and planners. EHS had a charged atmosphere that pushed boundaries and won awards (including a Media Week planning award) by the arm full for clients like The Economist, RAC and BMW. Before moving on, Iain was responsible for the whole planning team of media, account and data planners. It was here that Iain met Andrew Burgess.
Iain left EHS in 1995 to gain European experience, working with Eurotunnel, Ford and American Express at Wunderman. These accounts offered the first opportunity for Iain to marry the data and media planning in an innovative manner.
In 1997 Iain set up his own consultancy to work with clients and agencies. He worked with Mercedes and Volvo across Europe in helping them widen their media usage from direct mail and telemarketing to use a richer, more target audience led, media mix. He enjoyed a short spell working on Madison Avenue working with Bozell on the New York Times, again taking a very data led media approach to rolling out their subscriptions across the US.
As well as his core role of target audience insight, media strategy and planning and return on investment scenario planning, Iain has been involved in training for both agency and client staff. The training programmes that he led at Equimedia allowed Iain to become closer to the team and its clients and to the extent where he finally joined the agency in February 2007 to take over responsibility for communications planning and the building of an insight team.