Meet the Speakers

Social marketing is a core part of my professional identify, both in terms of teaching, research, peer-review, conferences and connections with practice. I’m a Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor at the Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow, where I’m currently developing anti-racism interventions in collaboration with students. I have published on several social marketing topics, including theory, ethics and more applied research into alcohol advertising and graphic health warnings on tobacco products. Most recently, I co-authored an article on consumer dominant social marketing in the European Journal of Marketing. I serve as board member and Vice Chair of the European Social Marketing Association.

Fiona is a senior lecturer in marketing at the School of Management, University of Bristol. Here, she teaches Sustainability and Social Impact in Marketing, which is an opportunity to explore social marketing in a sustainability context. Fiona has been a social marketer since she joined the National Social Marketing Centre as a consultant in 2006, working on the national demonstration sites programme in Stockport. She completed her PhD in social marketing at the University of the West of England in 2011 and has been teaching and researching social marketing ever since. Her edited book ‘Beyond Behaviour Change’ scopes out the range of different approaches to behaviour change which have emerged over recent decades, and asks important questions about the role of social marketing alongside other approaches. Fiona often calls for interdisciplinarity in tackling complex societal problems, and for innovative and critical uses of different theoretical perspectives to advance the way social marketers understand their role in meaningful, long term social transition. Fiona’s research tends to focus on understanding how physical activity emerges, or fails to emerge, from the organisation of everyday life for different groups. Increasingly, she is also interested in the role of social media in reframing collective understandings and experiences of physical activity, and the role of social media in consumer activism for sustainability-related social change. She aligns her research to the growing paradigm of critical social marketing, which seeks to question theoretical assumptions underpinning social marketing and use innovative theoretical ideas to work to advance the effectiveness, ethics and equality embedded in social marketing scholarship and practice.

Andreas Andronikidis is the professor of marketing management at the School of Business Administration of the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki, Greece. He served as a visiting professor at King’s Business School, King’s College, London, UK, and the KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business, Leuven, Belgium.

Prior to this, he had completed his doctoral studies and taught on at the Sheffield University Management School. He has worked as senior consultant for small and medium sized businesses in Greece and the UK. Currently most of his research is in the services sector, though previously he conducted research in several public sector and voluntary sector organisations. His research interests are in the areas of marketing management, service quality and management, and consumer psychology. Specifically, (a) Marketing Management focusing on consumer behaviour and analytics, designing segmentation strategy, positioning and marketing mix; (b) Marketing Management with an emphasis on strategy and quality management processes: Control of results using quantitative and qualitative research methods (c) Marketing Management, Behavioral and Business Economics: Using research methodology including applied economic theory and econometrics; and (d) Marketing Management and Consumer Psychology: Examination of moderators or dependent variables that affect the activation of different types of self-image and the implications for the formation of the marketing mix. Currently, his research is primarily into the integration of quality management with strategic service marketing planning, behavioural engineering and analytics, and self-imagebrand- image congruence, and implications of this for policy and strategy.

Previous work has looked at consumer ethnocentricity issues and applied bank segmentation. His published work is recognized by from the international scientific research community. He has published articles in international conference proceedings such as the American Marketing Association (AMA) and the European Marketing Academy Conference (EMAC), and in scientific journals such as Psychology & Marketing, Tourism Management, European Journal of Operational Research, Journal of Travel Research, and Journal of Marketing Management. He is also a regular reviewer in major scientific journals.

Andreas is the director for The laboratory of “Behavioral Engineering & Analytics for Marketing Management” (BEAMM), senior researcher of the Business Excellence Laboratory at the University of Macedonia, and the coordinator for the Psychographic Marketing Research Group (PMRG) at the Sheffield University Management School. He has been involved in several EU funded projects. Andreas is also the vice president of the executive board of trustees of the Greek Marketing Academy, and a member of the European (EMAC), British (AM), and American Academy of Marketing (AMA).

Jeff French is a recognised global leader in the application of behaviour change and social marketing. Jeff has extensive experience of developing leading and evaluating behaviour change projects, social marketing programmes and the development of communication strategies at international, national, regional and local level.

With over 30 years experience at the interface between government, public, private and NGO sectors Jeff has a broad practical and theoretical understanding of national and international health and social development issues.

Jeff and has published over 70 chapters, articles and books in the fields of behaviour change, social marketing, community development, health promotion and communications. Jeff is a visiting professor at Brunel University and Brighton University and a Fellow at Kings College University London and teaches at four other Universities in the UK.

Jeff was the Director of Communication and Policy at the Health Development Agency for five years from 2000 – 2005. In March 2005 From July 2006 through to July 2009 Jeff set up and managed the National Social Marketing Centre for England. In August 2009 Jeff became the Chief Executive of Strategic Social Marketing Ltd.

Strategic Social Marketing works with clients from all over the world in the private, NGO and public sector on the development and evaluation of social behaviour change programmes. Strategic Social Marketing also provides consultancy services to some of the world’s biggest corporate communications and research companies.

Jeff continues to act as the principle adviser to the National Social Marketing Centre and the Department of Health behaviour Change and Social Marketing policy team. Jeff also acts as an advisor to a number of national policy committees, the EUCDC Knowledge and Resource Centre in Health Communication project, and is a member of the organising committee of the Global Social Marketer’s network. Jeff is a member of the editorial Boards of the International Review on Public and Nonprofit Marketing and the Journal of Social Marketing.

Jeff is Conference Chair of the World Social Marketing Conference. His new book ‘Social Marketing and Public Health Theory and Practice’, published by Oxford University Press is now available. Jeff is also the author of the NSMC’s new guide to procuring and managing the delivery of social marketing service.

The idea behind Periplus Workshops is gain first hand knowledge from implementing a project with many contradictions, in areas considered neglected, initially in Greece.

Collaborating with various institutions from all over the world, carefully select groups of strong creative thinkers and doers. Bring them together in location and for short periods. Provide them with information regarding the existing local potential and problems. Ask them to intensively and unhibitedly research and become true change-makers, unearthing new meaningful and appealing solutions. The more unexpected the better.

Demonstrating what meaningful design and creative thinking can do to support a sustainable, inclusive society and economy. Focusing entirely on what the local environment has to offer. During the whole process, encouraging reciprocal collaboration with all sides of local stakeholders. At the end openly sharing all results with the wider local community and it’s network.

Locally spread follow up. Evaluate results. Improve the model and use it again.

Leah graduated from journalism school in 2002. After a running her own business for a number of years, she started her communications career as the marketing manager for a training company servicing regulated industries, construction, rail and utilities.

From there she moved into financial services in 2008 taking on the role of customer communications manager for the insurance division of Lloyds TSB. As the banking crisis hit the UK, Leah became involved in the integration programme that brought Lloyds TSB and HBOS together to form Lloyds Banking Group. Moving from marketing to internal communications and corporate affairs, Leah spent two years working on strategic programmes across the Bank, leading communications workstreams for major change projects. She was instrumental in setting out the Bank’s first Diversity and Inclusion narrative in 2012, and was responsible for delivering colleague communications for divestments and other significant organisational change.

She remained at Lloyds Banking Group for eight years, rising to become Senior Communications Business Partner to the CEO of Lloyds Bank Commercial Bank and later, to the Group COO. In that time she worked on strategy, change, crisis communications, events, internal and external communications, as well as advising the leadership team on communications strategy.

Alongside her professional career, Leah has also been involved in advocacy work, chairing the Maternity Services Liaison Committee for her local health board and later Co-Vice Chair of the Women’s Network of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. Both groups work to ensure the voices of women are central to the health and care pathways provided to them.

With a keen interest in health stemming from her voluntary work, Leah moved into her first public sector role, as Head of Communications and Stakeholder Engagement for Public Health Wales. She has led internal and corporate communications, media relations and public campaigns since 2016. Leah’s team led the communications response to the Covid-19 pandemic in Wales, working seamlessly with partners across the public sector to protect the health and wellbeing of the people of Wales.

Leah holds a Bachelor of Arts from Concordia University in Montreal.
She is a Black Belt Leader in Internal Communications (Melcrum/Gartner) and is a member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations.

Peter Economides is a brand strategist. His work is focussed on change - on the strategic responses to shifting culture, consumer habits and behavior, and the challenges of regional and global expansion. His view is that brand strategy needs to be spherical and all encompassing, touching every aspect of the business organization and process. As he says, “everything communicates” and “strategy is nothing without a universally compelling, and individually enchanting big idea that engages and aligns people inside and outside the corporation.” Economides began his career in his native home of South Africa. Over the years, Economides has lived and worked in Hong Kong, Athens, Mexico City, and New York. His long career includes top brands such as Apple, Audi, Campari, Coca-Cola, Citibank, Gillette, Heineken, Levi’s, Nestlé and Unilever among many others. After a successful career with McCann Erickson Worldwide and TBWAWorldwide, Economides founded his own strategic brand consultancy, Felix BNI, in 2003. Economides, who has a degree in Business, Economics and the Social Sciences from the University of Cape Town, is Chairman of the Board of Directors of leading global charity, Make-A-Wish International.

Christine Domegan, B. Comm, MBS, PhD is Professor of Social Marketing at the National University of Ireland, Galway. Christine is also Adjunct Professor of Marketing at Griffith University in Australia and Honorary Professor at Stirling University, UK. Christine's interests, distinctive skills and leadership lie in three aspects of business and society intersection – in research, teaching and management – all focused on critical issues of sustainability, climate action and systems transformation. Christine is the Research Leader for the Applied Systems Thinking unit within the Whitaker Institute, NUI Galway, investigating Systems-thinking Social Marketing for Systemic Change and Stakeholder Engagement through a multidisciplinary lens with partners in the UK, Europe, Australia and Canada.

Dr. W. Douglas Evans is Professor of Prevention and Community Health & Global Health in the Milken Institute School of Public Health at The George Washington University. Dr. Evans has published some 200 peer-reviewed journal articles, books and book chapters on health education, communication, and social marketing behavior change interventions. Specifically, Dr. Evans’ work focuses on the translation of marketing strategies, including health branding and digital technologies, into intervention strategies to promote adoption of health behaviors and avoidance of health risk behaviors, both in the United States and in LMIC worldwide.

Dr. Evans has had multiple National Institutes of Health and Foundation funded grants involving the design and evaluation of digital health interventions. He is currently principal investigator of the National Cancer Institute grant entitled Digital Media for Cancer Control: Randomized Controlled Trial and Dose-Response Effects (CA253013). This 5-year study (2020-2025) examines digital media exposure and dosage measurement techniques in a series of experimental studies to evaluate the effects of anti-vaping and anti-smoking digital messages on young adult tobacco use behavior. Also, Dr. Evans is PI on a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) to design and evaluate the impact of a COVID-19 vaccination promotion social media campaign among health care workers in Nigeria. This project uses Facebook and other platforms to empower social influencers in Nigeria to promote the benefits of vaccination specifically among health care workers and seeks to overcome vaccine hesitancy in this diverse population. Dr. Evans is leading an impact evaluation that uses a novel social media recruitment and data collection strategy and evaluate the dose-response effects of pro-vaccination social media on vaccine hesitancy and COVID-19 vaccination rates in several large states in Nigeria.

Angela Makris is a PhD Student in Public Health at the University of South Florida. Her research and practice interest involve the application of a systems approach to behavioral theory through the social marketing framework for health behavior change, prevention and wellness for people with disabilities. Her goal is to apply the social marketing framework to decreasing health disparities for people with disabilities through healthy lifestyle initiatives by adapting knowledge, facilitating uptake, and developing strategic partnerships to build community capacity and create sustainability. Her research aim is to create inclusive change for people with intellectual disabilities by integrating disability and health into health promotion activities.

Dr Ariadne Beatrice Kapetanaki is a lecturer in marketing at the University of York, United Kingdom. She has a PhD in social marketing and food policy from City University London, UK. Ariadne's research focuses on food policies and systems that effectively prevent and tackle nutrition-related non-communicable diseases; social marketing for behaviour and social change in relation to healthy eating and alcohol consumption and critical marketing. Her research projects have been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, the British Academy of Management, the Food Standards Agency and the Food Standards Scotland. Ariadne is a fellow of the Lancet Commission on Obesity and section editor of BMC Public Health.

Members Chair, International Social Marketing Association, Founder The Mindspark 

Leonidas is a Social Marketing professional  certified by the University of Brighton with proven experience and strong academic background in Marketing and Communications. Furthermore,  Leonidas is actively involved in the development and promotion of the field in Greece through events as keynote speaker, organizer, trainer and occasionally guest lecturer in Social Marketing, Marketing and entrepreneurship.

He has experience working as a consultant with public, non-profit and private sector organizations in the field of Marketing, Communications and Strategic Planning. He was a U.K. alumni awards finalist in Greece for 2019 and the founder of the Mindspark initiative, an initiative aiming to promote growth mindset in Greece expressed through events focused on marketing and creativity. Closing Leonidas is a Member of the Board of the International Social Marketing Association and National Rep of the European Social Marketing Association for Greece

Rita is a social marketing professional specialising in strategic insight to inform, design and deliver user-centred behavioural change programmes.

A passionate advocate of the benefits of embedding social marketing in social policy, Rita travels into the heart of communities in order to fully engage with people from various target audiences to identify their situations, hopes and aspirations and work with them to create public-centred services that meet their needs.

Rita has been a board member of the European Social Marketing Association since January 2018 and is delighted to be part of the committee for ESMA’s 2020 conference.

Contact brophyr@sms-research.co.uk

Sarah Cork is a Senior Lecturer in Social Marketing, Consumer Psychology and Marketing Ethics and Social Responsibility at Brighton Business School and leads the teaching of social marketing at Undergraduate and Postgraduate level, with research focused on  bringing together the public, private and third sector to make positive lifestyle behaviours more easy, attractive, affordable and socially normal.

She combines this with practical experience as a founder and CEO of leading social marketing consultancy, Brilliant Futures, combining social marketing and behavioural science to encourage and enable positive health, social and environmental behaviours. Projects have included tackling a range of public health issues including mental and emotional wellbeing, healthy eating, physical activity, sunbed usage, binge drinking, smoking in pregnancy and wider issues including road safety, sustainable transport, increasing access to employment and reducing social isolation in older people.
Having started her career in FMCG and retail marketing, Sarah  is particularly interested in bringing together a range of stakeholders to take a whole systems approach to tackling societal and environmental issues, focusing on using structural and policy levers to enable rather than just encourage positive behaviour change.