As Richmond Herald, Clive Cheesman is one of the crown-appointed officers responsible for the granting and regulation of coats of arms in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Commonwealth. He studied classics and ancient history at Oxford and in Italy, was called to the Bar at Middle Temple in 1996, and has written on law, heraldry, history and cultural property. At the College of Arms he has a professional practice assisting a wide range of clients in applying for, using and protecting coats of arms as assets; on the corporate side these range from prominent businesses to educational bodies and local authorities including, most recently, the town of Royal Wootton Bassett.

Mary-Ellen qualified with a BA Dip (Art) Ed from Alexander Mackie College, NSW, Australia and is a member of the Licensing Executives Society, the International Trademark Association, The Luxury Marketing Council and the Cosmetic Executive Women’s Network. She is also a Certified Licensing Professional.

Mary-Ellen has 25 years blue chip experience in intellectual property management, protection and exploitation. Prior to joining Brand Finance she was Head of Intellectual Property and Director of Chiltern plc’s wealth management group.

She has carried out numerous projects involving licensing and royalty rate analysis across a variety of sectors including; food and beverages, fashion and luxury brands, petrochemicals and consumer goods.

David is the CEO and founder of Brand Finance plc, the leading independent brand valuation consultancy. David qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Price Waterhouse in London. He has worked in the area of branded business, brand and intangible asset valuation since 1991 and since January 1995 has specialised entirely in this area. David has represented the British Standards institute on the International Standards Committee working party on the standardisation of brand valuation methods and practices, whose standard (ISO 10668) is due to be published in early 2010.

David is a passionate writer and has written many articles for the marketing and financial press on branded businesses and brand valuation and is the author of numerous publications. He also lectures on the subject of branded business, brand and intangible asset valuation at many of the leading business schools around the world.

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Tim has extensive experience of intangible asset valuation, intellectual property transactions and value-based brand strategy. He has an MBA and is a Chartered Accountant, Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and Fellow of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. Tim advises the Australian Taxation Office on cases involving intangible assets. Other clients include leading brand owners, intellectual property lawyers and private equity firms in Australia, Asia, Europe and Japan.

He is a visiting lecturer at the University of Sydney, presenting a course on ‘Evaluation Marketing Performance’ for the Master of Marketing. Tim chairs the ICAA’s NSW Business Valuation Special Interest Group and is a judge on the AFA’s Advertising Effectiveness Awards and the AMSRS’s Market Research Effectiveness Award. Prior to joining Brand Finance’s UK office in 1998, Tim worked for the BBC, KPMG and founded an award winning media company in South Africa.

Colin has wide experience in managing and building brand reputations, having had responsibilities for communications and public affairs spanning public and private institutions across Europe, America and Asia.

Colin brings a broad and deep experience of all elements of corporate communications and public affairs. He is very experienced at working at a European level, interfacing and working with all of the European institutions.

He was General Manager for Corporate Affairs at Toyota Motor Europe, where he led them through the media storm that surrounded the 2010 Toyota recalls, developing original social media strategies to augment the full range of traditional PR and advertising communications. He personally represented the company during interactions with themedia and with external organisations including ACEA, the OECD, WEF, EP and the EC.

David is marketer and strategist with over thirty years of strategy, marketing and consulting experience. After working with McKinsey & Company he has held senior roles in leading global brand consultancies FutureBrand, Vivaldi Partners, and Lippincott.

David has extensive branding experience around the world, having worked with global clients such as Alitalia, Allianz, BP, BT, DBS, Deutsche Telekom, GITI MTN and Nestle. His work in telecoms has included brand architecture, brand strategy, naming, brand launches, brand identity design, and brand communications.

David has worked with clients in many sectors across Europe, North America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific.

Salim Kadıbeşegil has vast aggregation experience, particularly in strategic communications management. He has led the introduction of the concept ‘Reputation Management’ in Turkish business life. He has consulted to “Turkey’s Most Admired Companies” research project of Capital Magazine since it has started.

He is one of the founders of PRNET (The first media measurement company in Turkey) as well as being one of the pioneers on improving the international standards in public relations and communications consultancy professions. In favor of this idea, he has led the establishment of ICCO Turkey and represented Turkey five years at the international Board of ICCO (International Communications Consultancy Organization). 

He has six books published in line with him 30 years of experience in communications and has conducted many studies regarding corporate brand management, media measurement. 

Rupert is a Valuation Consultant with Brand Finance South Africa. Prior to his role in South Africa, Rupert was employed with Brand Finance plc for 2 years at the company’s head office in London. Previously, Rupert was an Account Manager at Synovate responsible for Client account management of various market research projects, specifically projects using advanced technology for data collection, analysing and reporting.

Rupert specialises in the creation of financial models for Value-Based Marketing and Brand Investment Scorecards, developing models and scorecards used for scenario planning to assist with portfolio management, resource allocation and brand performance tracking. He has also worked as a brand valuation analyst on brand and business valuations for marketing strategy and tax planning purposes.
He is responsible for the analysis and construction of National and Sector specific brand valuation league tables.

Rupert’s clients include the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, Manulife, Microsoft, Standard Chartered Bank and Vodafone. Rupert holds a BSocSci in Media and Anthropology at University of Cape Town and is certified in Market Research by the Market Research Society.

Professor Malcolm McDonald until recently was Professor of Marketing and Deputy Director, Cranfield University School of Management, with special responsibility for e-business, and is now an Emeritus Professor at the University as well as being an Honorary Professor at Warwick Business School. He has written over 40 books, including the best seller ‘Marketing Plans: How to prepare them, how to use them’, and more than one hundred articles and papers. Coming from a background in business which included a number of years as Marketing Director of Canada Dry, Malcolm has successfully maintained a close link between academic rigour and commercial application. He has consulted to many major companies from the UK, Europe, USA, Far East, South-East Asia, Australasia and Africa, in the areas of strategic marketing and marketing planning, market segmentation, key account management, international marketing and marketing accountability.

Markus Renner is lecturer in Reputation Management at the University of Applied Sciences, Lucerne. After his graduation in Political Science he started his career in 1996 as a PR consultant at Burson-Marsteller. In 1999, Markus became PR manager at Bayer's global headquarters in Leverkusen. In 2004, he was appointed by the pharmaceutical giant Novartis to Head of Corporate Brand & Reputation Management.

At the Novartis global headquarters in Basel, he was responsible for the development and implementation of the global company brand as well as to further strengthen its reputation among key stakeholders worldwide. Since 2008, Markus is Managing Partner of Branding-Institute CRM AG in Basel, consulting global corporations in the field of brand and reputation management and marketing.

Markus holds a Ph.D. in business psychology from the University of Basel, Switzerland. His new book “Generating Trust via Corporate Reputation” will be published with WVB-Verlag this year.

Prof.dr. Cees B.M. van Riel is professor in corporate communication at the Rotterdam School of Management of Erasmus University Rotterdam. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Corporate Reputation Review and Managing Director of the Reputation Institute. Van Riel has created the Reputation forum The Netherlands (RfN) a platform of the directors of corporate communication of the 20 largest Dutch companies.

Cees van Riel has published a large amount of articles including the Corporate Reputation Review as well as ten books including Principles of Corporate Communication (1996), Essentials of Corporate Communication (2006) and Fame & Fortune (2004).

Cees van Riel has been active as a consultant in the area of corporate branding, reputation management and employee alignment for more than two decades, working for companies like Rabobank, ING, Philips, TNT, AkzoNobel, FedEx, Petrobras, Vale, Coca Cola, Master Card, Baker & McKenzie, etc.).

At Vodafone, Clare Sheikh (formerly Salmon) is responsible for the group’s brand framework, creative strategy and brand identity and she reports to group chief commercial officer Morten Lundal.

Clare is a high-profile figure within the marketing community. She stepped down from her most recent role as group strategy, marketing and customer director at RSA in May after four years at the insurance giant. Previously, Sheikh held senior strategic and marketing roles with Prudential, Centrica, ITV and British Gas.