The Festival of New Business is a one-of-a-kind event designed exclusively for UK independent agencies and consultants – empowering them to learn, network and thrive.
From data and systems to pitching and client management, this unique 1-day event takes you through every step of the new business journey.
Gain invaluable insights from leading experts, connect with like-minded professionals, and walk away with actionable strategies to elevate your agency’s success.
Unlock Your Business Growth Potential
Whether you’re a founder, CEO, MD, New Business Director, Account Director or Consultant – everyone plays a role in driving new business.
Join us at the Festival of New Business, One Birdcage Walk, London, on Tuesday 7th October, and discover how to transform opportunities into long-term success.
WHY ATTEND?
Hear from the Experts
Gain insights from successful business leaders and agency owners who’ve cracked the new business code.
Learn Proven Techniques
Discover actionable strategies tailored for independent agencies.
Connect with Your Tribe
Build meaningful connections with like-minded peers and collaborators.
Leave with a Game Plan
Walk away with clarity, confidence and a focussed strategy to grow your business.
GREAT VALUE
🎟️ £295 for non-members | £245 for Pimento Members | £195 for Club 30 Members
✔️ Your delegate pass includes breakfast, lunch, all plenary sessions, breakout sessions and recordings (so you won’t miss a thing).
✔️ Includes Ultimate Travel Club membership worth £99, giving you access to travel at trade prices so you can book a hotel if you’re staying overnight along with your train and its valid for a year.
💡 That means for less than the cost of a single day’s consultancy, you’re gaining insights and connections that could unlock many new clients.
It’s designed to be the best ROI day you’ll invest in this year.
OUR SPEAKERS
GEORGE KING
George King, widely recognised as The Shard Climber, is a young pioneer in the world of extreme sports and urban free climbing.
His most talked-about achievement was scaling London’s iconic Shard in 2019 at the age of just 19, a stunt that catapulted him into the global spotlight.
George King BASE jumps from the buildings he climbs, using a parachute to descend safely to the ground. He has also climbed the Lotte Tower in Seoul, South Korea, and the Stratosphere Tower in London, Copenhill, and Copenhagen, Denmark.
With each climb, George King has further confirmed his reputation as a pioneering urban climber.
As a result of his radical feats and likeable, down-to-earth character, George has gained work as a TV presenter for Channel 4, presenting two extreme sports specials. In 2020, George was featured in a Channel 4 documentary called The Boy Who Climbed The Shard. It has currently gained an extraordinary 1.6M views on YouTube.
A popular and engaging speaker, George talks openly on fear management, touching on the theme of neurodiversity, specifically ADHD, with his first-hand knowledge of the subject.
PETER BOUTROS
Peter Boutros is a high-octane global business leader with an energetic personality and an unstoppable drive for results. With over 30 years of global experience, Peter has delivered more than US$15 billion in business growth across five continents – transforming brands, supercharging sales and leading high-impact teams to deliver consistent EBITDA success.
From powerhouse companies such as The Walt Disney Company, Pixar, Nestlé, Kenmore and Craftsman, Peter has held C-suite roles including CEO, President, Chief Commercial Officer and Chief Marketing & Brand Officer. He’s renowned for his bias for action, customer-first mindset, partnerships and collaborations, and ability to spark bold ideas – then execute flawlessly.
From powerhouse names like The Walt Disney Company, Nestlé, Creata and Birds Eye, Peter has held top-tier roles including CEO, President, Chief Commercial Officer and Chief Marketing & Brand Officer. He’s renowned for his bias for action, customer-first mindset and ability to spark bold ideas – and turn them into flawless execution.
AJAZ AHMED
Ajaz Ahmed is the founder of the independent agency Studio.One. He is also the founder of AKQA which grew to 5,500 people and won 83 Agency of the Year Awards with Ajaz as CEO.
Ajaz won the Spears Impact award for his philanthropy through ajaz.org which makes grants to charitable organisations.
He is also the author of the books Velocity and Limitless.
KATIE STREET
Katie Street is a bold, no-BS marketing strategist, speaker and founder of Street Agency, where she helps global brands like Shopify, Stripe and Contentful turn marketing into real sales conversations. As the host of the Marketing in the Madness podcast, she interviews the brightest minds in marketing, tech and innovation – challenging outdated strategies and uncovering what actually works. Katie is a fierce advocate for women in marketing and tech, leading mentorship programmes for women at E.On Next and spearheading the Female Leaders Club and stage at MadFest, ensuring more female voices are heard at the highest levels.
SIMON RHIND-TUTT
Simon Rhind-Tutt, founder of Relationship Audits & Management, will be delivering “Retaining and Growing Existing Clients”. Based on over 32 million data points and decades of frontline client insight, Simon will challenge the status quo of agency thinking. While many continue chasing new business, Simon reveals why your greatest growth opportunities lie not outside your agency, but within your current client roster.
PETE MARTIN
Founding director at B-Corp creative agency Always Be Content, Pete is one of the UK’s most experienced creative strategists. His ESG experience covers working on energy saving with major utilities, on health and social issues with government and on democratic participation for hard-to-reach groups. In 2023 in New York, he won the Gramercy Institute Award for Sustainable Marketing.
JAMIE GRACE JEFFERSON
Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Equator, Scotland’s leading, and a UK top 5, independent Digital Transformation Consultancy. She works hands-on with project and client teams to create remarkable digital experiences that achieve business goals by meeting human needs – creating game-changing websites, national integrated campaigns, start-up brands, and business models and strategies across almost every sector from finance (Vitality, Virgin and AXA), utilities (SSE, OVO and Spark) to travel (Malmaison, Village, Rocco Forte) and consumer goods (Baxters, Macallan, Paul Mitchell) to name a few.
TOM HEAD
Architect of G3NR8 | AI Strategy & Innovation. 20 years in digital. Built multiple 7-figure agencies. Trusted by brands like Samsung, Red Bull Racing, JP Morgan, Tesco, and The Guardian. Now leading G3NR8 – an AI consultancy helping businesses stay ahead with strategy, training, and real-world solutions that actually deliver.
PAUL SQUIRREL
Paul, Founder & Managing Director at MISSION Hubs, is a ‘serial networker’ – a crime for which he has not yet been arrested! His career spans over 25 years working for and with agencies as an account handler, new business director and a consultant. But the thing that gives him a real buzz, is connecting people around the world to work together and make great things happen.
WILL WALSH
Will ran a digital agency (Givergy) for 7 years expanding into US, Canada, Hong Kong and Australia in record time, before co-founding and running Wonderhatch, a creative agency, for last 7 years. While Wonderhatch is yet to set up abroad, it has recently won work in Saudi Arabia and is beginning to look there and to the US; Will has spent time investigating the options and has joined UKAEG.
MARY HARDING
Mary is the Co-CEO of Tangerine Communications, an employee-owned, multi-award-winning communications agency known for its bold and innovative approach to PR and social media.
She is leading Campaign’s Global Independent Agency of the Year in bridging the gap between brand consideration and measurable conversion, expertly uniting earned storytelling and community engagement with paid media effectiveness.
Featuring in PR Week’s Powerbook 2024 and named among the Top 10 PR Leaders Outside London, Mary has led transformative campaigns for national and international Superbrands, building an exceptional client roster of industry giants, including Specsavers, Iceland Foods, Essity, Topcon and PPG. Elevating brands to new levels of impact and visibility.
TIM CLYDE
Tim started out as a drummer before swapping touring vans for boardrooms and launching his ad career at M&C Saatchi. Over eight years there, he led campaigns for a wide range of brands including British Airways and NatWest before joining youth marketing agency Magic Hat as Managing Director, where he met his future business partner, Ed Chilcott.
Together, they founded Kitchen: a proudly independent creative studio built on the belief that brilliant strategy, creativity and execution don’t need big overheads. Twenty years later, Kitchen is still going strong, delivering standout work for brands big and small. Tim’s superpower is building long-term relationships – the average client stays with Kitchen for over eight years, and many have worked with the agency across multiple roles and businesses. He brings a mix of creative thinking, commercial sharpness and a good dose of humour to every relationship.
LEE WARREN
Having built 3 highly-profitable businesses from scratch, Lee Warren is a passionate advocate for the power of networking and sales skills in growing a strong business. Lee has held leadership roles in sales for Eurotunnel, Hertz and News UK, and has also been a professional magician and a commissioned writer at The Royal Opera House and Almeida Theatre. He is a visiting Faculty member at The University of Oxford, specialising in compelling communication. Lee’s background in sales, business growth and theatre gives him unique insight into persuasive communication and informs his keynotes on sales, communication, presenting and networking.
AISHLING CONLON
Aisling is the International Trade Director responsible for the UK Advertising Exports Group. In this role, she leads initiatives that support UK companies in their global growth, offering a platform to showcase creativity, innovation, and industry expertise. Collaborating closely with the Department for Business and Trade (DBT), she contributes to the development of the UK House brand, organising strategic trade missions across the globe to unlock new business opportunities in pivotal markets including the USA, Europe, MENA, and China.
Formerly the Head of New Business at the IPA and as the Business Development Manager at IAPI in Dublin. Her notable achievements encompass the creation of the IPAAccelerator community. Aisling’s has hosted and spoken at prestigious events worldwide, including the SXSW, Athar Festival, The Kinsale Sharks, Cannes Lions, Web Summit, and the Shanghai International Advertising Festival (SHIAF).
LUKE FRIBBENS
As the CEO and Founder of Cold Banana, Luke leads a team dedicated to empowering businesses with innovative web and AI solutions. With over 11 years of experience spanning roles as Technical Director, Head of Development, Front-End Developer, Back-End Developer, and Systems Architect, he has built and planned online experiences that combine technical excellence with strategic vision.
Luke’s passion lies in ensuring every system created is meticulously planned, architected, and executed to the highest standard. This commitment to quality and innovation is the foundation on which he established Cold Banana – a .NET, Umbraco, Kentico, and Sitecore specialist agency delivering integrated online solutions that consistently exceed client expectations.
Luke is deeply committed to driving global growth, fostering collaboration, and helping organisations harness technology to achieve their full potential.
MIKE ADAMS
Mike Adams has been to more than 1,000 networking events in London, and some people call him “The Networking King”, with 30,000 connections on LinkedIn. Mike is a super connector, and loves to introduce relevant people to each other. Mike worked 30 years in technology sales & marketing at 9 companies, including Apple, HP, and Zoom where he was employee number 6 in Europe and built the entire Zoom partner program across Europe, even during Covid! Mike just launched his own startup called introstars, to help millions of people make and receive high-value business introductions, and to monetise every successful referral for high-value deals. Mike has also mentored more than 60 startups founders, and is always happy to share his experience as a networker & connector. As a hobby, Mike is a travel hacker, earning millions of miles to travel for free in first class around the world.
RACHEL WHITE
Rachel White is a Chartered Marketing expert and founder of Studio White Marketing Consultancy, with over 20 years’ experience across agency, in-house and client-side roles. As Director of Pimento Fuse, she partners with Pimento to lead business development and marketing strategy, supporting independent agencies to define their proposition, growth ambitions and overcome market challenges. Working alongside a network of Pimento members, Rachel delivers strategic, practical solutions that accelerate growth, improve performance and open up new revenue opportunities.
OWEN CATTO
Owen is a highly experienced strategic advisor. He partners with business leaders and owners to unlock growth by defining their position and value proposition, comms strategy and future planning. For 20+ years he held a breadth of leadership roles within marketing and brand agencies. He has developed strategies for international SaaS businesses, FMCG portfolios, marketing services, consumer technology, retail, hospitality and food and drink.
PADDY WOODS
Paddy brings over 20 years of expertise – gained from working across client, agency and intermediaries – to help agencies get fresh energy into their new business and marketing activity. He has worked in or supported a wide range of both independents and networked agencies across media, branding, creative, digital, experiential, B2B and shopper marketing so is able to bring a unique perspective to marketing and new business processes and approaches.
PHIL BACON
Phil is a marketing strategist with over 20 years of experience spanning in-house roles, agency collaborations and consultancy. His career has taken him across diverse sectors, including education, food, engineering and manufacturing, and primarily technology, where he has been involved in almost every aspect and channel in marketing, whether that has been hands-on or managing multiple agency and freelance relationships. Over the last 5 years, he’s channelled his experience into building a four-stage marketing process and supporting frameworks that have helped clients achieve measurable success.
JO ROGERS
Jo is a seasoned agency leader with over 20 years’ experience growing independent agencies and building client services functions from the ground up. A champion of client-centric thinking, Jo blends operational rigour with a deeply human approach to relationship-building. Her mission is to help agencies scale without losing what makes them special – creating client experiences that drive retention, spark growth, and stand the test of time.
ADAM GRAHAM
Adam is a creative, commercially focussed new business and marketing specialist, driven by a desire to help marketing agencies stand out and grow by building reputable brands and sustainable pipelines. He has honed his craft over the last seventeen years, having worked in new business consultancies, in-house for global agency networks Omnicom, Dentsu and Havas, and with hundreds of independent agencies. He is experienced in positioning, go-to-market strategies, revenue operations and pitch management.
His vision is to change the perception of sales from a ‘dirty word’ to a rewarding and fulfilling pursuit of happiness by empowering founders and business developers to perfect their sales process through continuous and relentless iteration, providing comprehensive consultancy, in-house training and fractional services.
DAVE PLUNKETT
Dave’s a Nearbound specialist who’s developed hundreds of partnerships and given or received thousands of referrals. Growing his membership organisation to 2000 members almost entirely through referrals and strategic partnerships, before his customer engagement agency provided access to the SME market for global brands such as Regus & Volvo, reaching nearly 1 million business owners along the way.
In 2020 he set up Collaboration Junkie. Helping agencies and b2b brands identify, nurture and scale referral & partnership opportunities through coaching, training and consultancy.
BENJAMIN CHILCOTT
Benj spent 25 years running business development for global consultancies and global marketing agencies. In that time he won many multi year, multi country, multi million pound deals, all through building a trusted network.
Benj now spends his time training others to be better at relationship and consultative selling – especially through developing networking skills.
BETHAN VINCENT
Bethan Vincent is the Founder and Managing Partner of Open Velocity, an expert-led marketing strategy consultancy. With over a decade of experience in senior marketing roles, Bethan has led successful go-to-market strategies, repositioned brands and built high-performing teams across competitive global markets.
JAKE SWEENEY
Jake Sweeney is Managing Director of Let’s Run Marketing, a demand generation agency helping businesses worldwide turn awareness into high-quality opportunities. With nearly two decades of experience across paid social, email marketing, and full-funnel strategy, he specialises in building scalable growth engines. Jake and his team now integrate agentic AI to sharpen targeting, accelerate conversion, and deliver measurable results at every stage of the customer journey.
CHRIS BANTOCK
Chris is a seasoned agency professional which means that he brings a wealth of commercial experience spanning over thirty years. From the corporate world to start up and small business and everything in between. Chris has always been involved in Sales, Marketing, Business development, Strategic partnership and leadership roles in a number of sectors.
After growing a Marketing agency over 12 years and successfully selling the business in 2018 Chris now dedicates his time to coaching and mentoring marketing agency owners to grow and develop their business and themselves as leaders.
Chris is the founder of The Agency Adventure, which provides a range of commercial support services with the aim of creating agencies of the future which are profitable, sustainable and remarkable.
BRIAN JACOBS
Brian Jacobs has spent over 50 years in the advertising business including spells at Leo Burnett (UK, EMEA, International Media Director), Carat International (Managing Director), Universal McCann (EMEA Director) and Millward Brown (EVP, Global Media). He has worked in the UK, EMEA and globally based in the USA. He has lived through shifts from full-service ad agencies to media agencies; from traditional single-commercial-channel TV to multi-faceted digital channels; and from media planning to multi-disciplinary communication planning.
Over his time in agencies Brian was responsible for media activities on several major accounts across multiple geographies – including P&G, The Coca-Cola Company, McDonald’s, Kellogg’s and adidas. He also represented the agency sector on numerous UK and European media industry committees, including the BARB Management Committee.
In 2006 Brian started Brian Jacobs and Associates (www.bjanda.com), a consultancy business that numbers advertisers, start-ups, media agencies, research agencies and trade bodies amongst its clients.
In April 2024 Brian together with Nick Manning founded Advertising: Who Cares? a grassroots movement dedicated to improving all facets of the advertising industry.
Brian has co-authored two books on the media industry. ‘Spending Advertising Money’ with the late Dr Simon Broadbent was published in 1984; ‘Social Media Marketing’ with Jouko Ahvenainen, Alan Moore and Ajit Jaokar appeared in 2009.
REBECCA DANNER
Rebecca Danner is an AI Integration Consultant who helps creative businesses, media teams and agencies navigate the shift from manual processes to intelligent workflows, without losing what makes their work valuable: people, originality and speed.
With more than 20 years of experience in the media industry, Rebecca sits at the intersection of creativity, technology and commercial outcomes. She has seen first-hand the real fears and real opportunities that AI brings to businesses. Her specialty is simplifying complexity whilst turning AI from an overwhelming concept into practical tools that teams can actually use.
As both a strategist and practitioner, Rebecca designs human-first AI strategies and delivers high-performing content and social campaigns, always with a focus on helping clients adapt and thrive in a rapidly changing digital world.
MARCUS ELLIOTT
Having overseen hundreds of pitches for the likes of Saatchi & Saatchi, WPP and Publicis Groupe, Marcus set up The Great Pitch Company in 2019. Since then, the company has rapidly become recognised as the global experts that agencies turn to when looking to achieve profitable business growth, whether they be independent agencies, networks or holding companies. There are two key offerings.
- Great Now: Converting live pitches into wins through pitch consultancy and performance coaching.
- Great Forever: Aligning culture, people and processes to win consistently through consultancy and training programmes.
Driving up win rates and driving down wasted resources, the company has delivered step-change results, transforming businesses, brands and reputations. Last year with their clients, the team secured a 100% win rate.
OFFICIAL TRAVEL PARTNER
Book all your travel for the Festival of New Business with utc.travel and enjoy a 12 month FREE membership, allowing you to book trains, flights, transfers and accommodation at trade prices with the UK’s leading travel subscription club. Subscribe for free here.
Festival of New Business
Tuesday 7th October 2025
Secure Your Spot Today – Advanced tickets on sale until 31st August.
Pimento Member & Club 30 Member discounts available.
LOCATION: One Birdcage Walk, London
DATE: 7th October 2025
DURATION: Full-day conference, 9am-5pm
Refreshments & Lunch provided
WORKING TOGETHER WITH
WOW Group of Companies
Let’s Run Marketing
Where’s Benj
RiskBox
Now Next Why
With Jack
ACC Finance Solutions
Presence
Agency Works
Open Velocity
Milio
Mission HUBS
Creativebrief
Pimento Fuse
