Hamish Pringle is an expert in the development and stewardship of corporate, product and service brands. After ten years in the role from 2001, he stepped down as Director General of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) in July 2011. The IPA is the UK’s leading trade and professional... Read More
Hamish Pringle is an expert in the development and stewardship of corporate, product and service brands. After ten years in the role from 2001, he stepped down as Director General of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) in July 2011.
The IPA is the UK’s leading trade and professional body for advertising, media and marketing communications agencies. With over 260 of the UK’s agencies in membership, from a broad range of disciplines, they handle an estimated 85 per cent of all UK advertising spend. As Director General, Hamish has represented the IPA many times as an interviewee on television and radio, been used as a source and featured in numerous articles and TV programmes, and spoken often at conferences.
During his 26-year agency career Hamish worked at ten UK agencies for more than thirty companies on over fifty brands, and so there are very few market sectors of which he does not have direct personal experience. Thus he is able to respond to a speaker brief from a position well up the ‘learning curve’.
He is also the inventor of the Diagonal Thinking concept, which tests the hypothesis that the most successful individuals working in the advertising and marketing communications agency business are both Linear and Lateral Thinkers, i.e. they think ‘diagonally’. This has been validated by a five-year research programme and resulted in the free online self-assessment at www.diagonalthinking.co.uk. It has been found that only 10% of the UK population are Diagonal Thinkers.
Hamish is the co-author / author of five successful business books and can address with authority a wide range of topics such as marketing to build business, maximising brand strategy and how to spend advertising money in the digital age. Some of his books include: ‘Brand Immortality – How Brands Can Live Long and Prosper’ (2008), ‘Celebrity Sells’ (2004) and ‘Brand Manners: How to Create the Self-confident Organisation to Live the Brand’ (2001). His most recent book, due to publish in November 2011, is called ‘Spending Advertising Money in the Digital Age – How to Navigate the Media Flow’.