John was born in 1969, at the base of an extinct volcano in southern Australia. As a child he excelled at drawing and making excuses for not doing his homework. In 1986 John commenced a 4 year Bachelor of Design degree, with the objective of becoming a graphic designer. His father thought graphic designers were the people who spray painted ‘Season’s Greetings’ on suburban butcher shop windows at Christmas time. 

John moved to Melbourne in 1990 to work as a junior designer with Australia’s largest design studio, Cato. In 1994 he was made Group Managing Director. He left in 1996, to consult in the new and exciting world of branding, and was approached in 1998 by Interbrand, to set up their business in Australia. Which he did. The business flourished, thanks in large part to the quality of people he employed. The dotcom boom didn’t hurt either.

In 2003 he was transferred to London, Interbrand’s spiritual home, to help turn around the business and put some sparkle back into the place. He joined the global board in 2004 and was appointed CEO in 2005. Then in 2007 he did what so many consultants before him had done – he jumped the fence and joined one of his clients – McLaren – in the newly created role of Group Brand Director. 

At which point everything went wrong. McLaren received a $100 million fine for being in possession of Ferrari intellectual property. John then learned a fair bit about crisis management and Formula One politics. In 2008 he shared in the magic moment of Lewis Hamilton being crowned World Champion in Brazil. In 2009 he commenced a refreshment of the team’s personality, which will be rolled out progressively in 2010.

John gets particularly irritated by people who describe themselves as ‘passionate about branding’. 

He has a wonderful wife, Ros, and two gorgeous daughters, Lily - 16 and Rose - 13. He also has a fabulous son, Hugo - 11, who excels at drawing and making excuses for not doing his homework.

Luc is a Group Vice President since 2002 and Group Chief Sales & Marketing Officer, BP plc.

He is responsible for BP’s sales & marketing strategies and capabilities, group brand management, group paid & social media and main sponsorships e.g. London 2012 Olympics. He also founded and continues as CEO of BP’s strategic partnerships Division.

For over 30 years and as Company or Divisional CEO, Luc has had continuous accountability for large scale customer facing global businesses with complex value chains: BP strategic partnerships (2003-12); BP business marketing (2001-3); Castrol Europe (1997-2001); Castrol France (1994-97). 

Luc joined BP from Castrol and previously ran businesses with Hoechst and Pechiney.

Luc holds an MBA from INSEAD (1983) and graduated in Engineering at the Ecole Centrale Lille (1980), Political Science at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques, Paris (1981) and Finance at the High Finance Institute, Paris (1993).

Luc is father of four children and his interests are his family and rugby.

John, on the marketing faculty at the Lundquist College of Business at the University of Oregon, is the top-selling author of several books on business and marketing. His latest is the 2nd edition of The Olympic Games Effect-How Sports Marketing Builds Strong Brands, re¬leased in 2012 (2012 John Wiley & Sons; the 1st edition was released in 2008). His other books include:  Competitive Success: How Branding Adds Value was published in 2010; Magic Numbers for Sales Management (2007 John Wiley & Sons); Measuring Marketing: 103 Key Metrics Every Marketer Needs (2nd edition coming in 2012; 1st edition 2006 John Wiley & Sons); Magic Numbers for Consumer Marketing (2005 John Wiley & Sons). John is currently completing Sports Marketing: Creating Long Term Value (Edward Elgar Publishing, exp.2013).  He is also a contributing author to Fast Track to Success-Marketing  (FT Prentice Hall 2009).

He was honored as the 'Best Professor of Marketing' of 2010 by the CMO Council and Asia's Best B-School Awards. He was formerly Dean-Global MBA at SP Jain School of Global Management, where he helped lead it to #68 in the Financial Times rankings of the world’s top business schools. 

Peter specialises in tax structuring for professional sportspeople and deals with the tax affairs of many Premiership footballers. Peter acts on behalf of several professional sports clubs advising them on remuneration and image rights planning for their players. He also deals with tax planning for non-UK domiciled and high net worth individuals and is experienced in dealing with investigation and tax enquiry work.

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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Nathan has a long background in sport as a hockey player, PE teacher and coach.  Through playing student sport he became involved in both the British University Sports Association, acting as their Vice Chair, and also World University Sport. Over the past 10 years he has led diverse businesses across Western Europe for Procter & Gamble in their Household goods and Beauty divisions, most recently returning to the UK to lead the Gillette business. He has been responsible for many aspects of the company’s sports marketing including some of the Gillette brand’s long running partnerships with global and local ambassadors and NGB’s such as the Rugby Football League. Since 2010 he has been the Project Director for P&G’s Olympic program leading all activations across communications, retailer programs, employee engagement and goods and service provision with LOCOG.

Chris is a leading international creative director and founded Whitestone International to specialise in building brands through a unique process of integrating strategic and creative thinking. 

Formerly Creative Director of Interbrand, having developed numerous national and international brand programmes for Volvo, BiC, British Airways, Oxfam and Coca Cola amongst others, he adapted his approach initially to sports brands (including The FA, RFU, ECB, FIFA, ATP, Adidas, Budweiser and many others), by developing a process based on a knowledge of how to build and revenue the emotive bonds consumers develop with a sport and club. This approach has since been expanded to non-sports brands and businesses that aim to leverage the emotive connections their brands have and can form with consumer audiences.

Chris is the Commercial Director of London 2012 with the key responsibility of raising £2billon to fund the operational costs of the London 2012 Olympic & Paralympics games.  His responsibility includes recruiting all Domestic Sponsors, Marketing, Merchandising, Ticketing and all other IOC revenue sources including world wide sponsors and broadcasting rights.

Prior to London 2012, Chris joined Transport for London (TfL) in 2003 as Group Marketing Director with a team of 500 staff.  He was responsible for a number of high profile award winning advertising campaigns including the “Sarah Rivers” road safety campaign.  He also launched and managed the marketing of the Oyster card which now has 6m active users.  He re-negotiated the London Underground advertising contract with Viacom worth over £1bn and implemented a range of innovative customer service and travel information initiatives.  TfL is now the largest public transport organisation in the world and managing 10m passengers per day.