CHARLIE MAKIN

Charlie Makin is founder and chief strategic officer of Havas-owned media planning and buying agency Arena BLM. He has more than 25-years experience working closely with major brands providing them with consumer insight and advising them on their marketing strategies.

His interest is focused on media planning and consumer understanding and making unconventional media strategies payback for clients.

Since 2006 he has been Arena BLM Group’s chief strategy officer and his brief includes advice on everything from football shirt sponsorships through to creative agency selection. Fundamentally Charlie’s role is to help clients maximise their performance from media by insight into their consumers, matching this with their business performance and helping generate media ideas that differentiate them from their competitors.

He is involved specifically on Thomas Cook, Domino’s Pizza, Invesco Perputal plus many of the agency’s other accounts as well as the agency’s new business programme.

In 2002 he wrote the paper on Domino’s Pizza that picked up three prizes at the IPA Effectiveness Awards. He was one of two UK judges at Cannes Media Lions in 2006 and was nominated as one of the UK’s ten top planners last year.

Charlie Makin joined the ad business in 1982. Fresh from a degree in geography and economics at LSE he was hired by Saatchi & Saatchi, rising to board director by 1988.