Our People

Simon is the longest-standing employee, outside the co-founders, having joined the business to look after its client-facing operations.

Running the Tesco relationship for seven years, up to 2001, as client services director gave Simon a broad range of responsibilities as this key client represented the bulk of the company’s activities during much of this time.

Having also handled various short-term projects outside the UK, Simon took up the challenge to lead dunnhumby’s move into the US through a partnership with major grocery retailer Kroger.

The aim was to replicate what the company achieved for Tesco in the UK with the US-based business and a great amount has been achieved under Simon’s leadership with dunnhumby USA growing from an initial team of only four to the several hundreds we have today.

Simon is driven by the constant challenge at dunnhumby of gaining ever-more insight from clients’ data that can then be applied to their businesses. It was this model that initially attracted him to dunnhumby as it enabled him to develop the skills he was using at market analysis company CACI. He had joined the company as a graduate trainee in 1985 to work on the analysis of catchment areas of towns and the modelling of patterns of retailing.

Olivier is ideally suited to head up the dunnhumby business in France having previously held senior positions at the company’s key client, Groupe Casino, and it is this experience that is helping him to build a significant operation in France.

His latter years at Casino involved a spell in charge of marketing services and loyalty, with responsibility for loyalty schemes and the supermarket’s various consumer services. This was followed by five years as vice president of marketing, involving him overseeing two major projects related to loyalty and private label.

With his experience in customer-facing operations Olivier was given responsibility for the dunnhumby trial within the Casino business that ran from November 2005 to June 2006. Following its success he handled the joint-venture agreement between the two groups in October 2006.

Shortly afterwards, and looking for a new challenge, Olivier decided to make the move from Casino and join the fledgling dunnhumby France business in March 2007 as managing director. His own passion for customers combined with the opportunity of joining a rapidly growing international business proved attractive to Olivier. His focus to date has been on building the team in France for both the Retail division and the newly-formed CPG arm.

After graduating from Durham University in 1996 Nicky regarded marketing as an appealing potential career but felt her ideal job would be more scientific, so joining dunnhumby provided the perfect solution as this offered her a unique mix of the two skill sets.

Nicky quickly progressed from account executive on the Tesco team to running the Tesco insight team, which involved working with the supermarket’s senior people to highlight how they could best benefit from dunnhumby’s analysis. After taking-up the opportunity to help dunnhumby achieve its international ambitions, through a project in Rotterdam, Nicky then moved on to develop the global support team in the UK as well as playing a major part in building up the French operation.

Nicky’s willingness to take on challenges has opened up many opportunities for her in dunnhumby. She says the ability of the strong team around her has been a great enabler in helping her shoulder an increasing level of responsibility during her relatively short time at dunnhumby.

Having recognised that she relished the challenge of working in an intense and fast-changing environment Nicky was asked to set up dunnhumby India, which supports the markets globally and will be integral to delivering dunnhumby’s core capabilities as the company grows. She says the move has enabled her to work with a pool of highly talented people who will be working closely with the various dunnhumby offices around the world.

Martin joined dunnhumby in 2004 as Director of Strategy & Futures.

Martin is hugely excited about the growing potential to ‘Connect the Dots’ of marketing, bringing dunnhumby’s world leading analyses of hundreds of millions of consumer’s purchasing habits to provide faster and more granular insight than has ever been possible. These insights are driving truly actionable segmentations and communications for both retailers and their suppliers across the globe. Combining such rich behavioural data with attitudinal and media overlays is further revolutionising companies’ abilities to truly understand cause and effect in marketing.

Martin’s previous position was as Executive Chairman of The Henley Centre, WPP’s leading Strategic Marketing Consultancy, where he worked with many of the world’s leading organisations to help them to better understand how their environment and consumers are changing around the world.

Prior to joining The Henley Centre in 2002, Martin was the founding Managing Director of BBH Futures, the strategic consultancy arm of the Bartle Bogle Hegarty Group. He also was Head of the Marketing Services Department for Mercury Communications, during which time Mercury was voted Brand of the Year. Martin began his career in Account Planning at Ogilvy & Mather.

Renowned as a leading commentator on future business and marketing issues, Martin appears frequently in the media and speaks at many corporate events. Martin is also responsible for dunnhumby’s public relations activities.