Simon Wakeman - marketing, public relations and digital communications
Medway Council Tinderhouse
Enterprise IG
Egg
Open...
Boots plc
Education and
qualifications

Download my CV

I highly recommend Simon. He is an experienced marketing manager with excellent digital channel skills. He thinks strategically, is exceptionally reliable - always delivering on time and with good quality - and is also a good team player…It was great to have him on the team at Egg. Wendy Schratz, Egg

I highly recommend Simon. He is an experienced marketing manager with excellent digital channel skills. He thinks strategically, is exceptionally reliable - always delivering on time and with good quality - and is also a good team player…It was great to have him on the team at Egg. Wendy Schratz, Egg

Content Partner Marketing Manager - Open

Hello - welcome to my website.

On my blog I write about marketing, public relations and digital communications. To keep up-to-date with my posts you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or sign-up to receive blog posts by email.

Thanks for visiting and I hope you find my site useful.

March 2000 to May 2001

I joined Open in March 2001 as Content Partner Marketing Manager. In this role I managed the marketing relationships with retailers and financial service providers who ran services on the Open platform. I was also responsible for recruiting and developing new Marketing Managers in the Content Partner marketing team.

Working with eleven Content Partners I facilitated the development of joint strategies and activities to drive customer activation and sales via the Open platform. I was responsible for developing marketing activities including TV, press campaigns, interactive television services and adverts, e-commerce marketing and DM.

In this role I had extensive opportunities to develop my operational marketing skills. In particular the role demanded skills in copywriting, proof reading and direct mail/catalogue production. I also briefed and managed agencies who were involved in the development of Open marketing activity.

I also developed systems for evaluating the effectiveness of Open marketing activity. This included managing the development of an integrated campaign management and evaluation tool to handle the extensive promotional media that we developed on the Open platform.

Working at Open gave me a good understanding of the development of a complete business from start-up. It also gave me experience and understanding of a wide range of customer marketing channels both offline and online. I developed strong relationship management skills through managing relationships with eleven Content Partners on the Open platform. I also valued the exposure that I gained to many different client sectors from High Street retailers and financial institutions, through to dotcom start-ups.

Simon Wakeman

I've been on the web since 2001 and have been blogging about marketing and public relations since January 2006.

I'm currently Head of Marketing at Medway Council as well as a freelance marketing and PR consultant.

The content and opinions expressed on this website are not endorsed by nor reflect the views of any company or organisation I work with.

Recent blog posts
Four roles for social media in local government communications »
Read more about the roles that social media can play in local government communications.

Overcoming obstacles on projects at work »
Running a workshop today taught me a few lessons about the value of group work on projects.

Local authorities and social media - the future »
How can UK local government use social media in the future? Part two of a three-part series.

Local authorities and social media - the current picture »
Looking at the use of social media in local government in the UK. Part one of a three-part series.

New CIPR consultation on social media guidelines »
The Chartered Institute of Public Relations is consulting on a revised set of guidelines for practitioners using social media in their public relations work.