Who is Gary Bembridge, and why is he unleashing thoughts?

I have been the the Marketing Game since 1982. That makes for a rather scary 25 years in the business. It is, though, a game that I love and find constantly stimulating. It seems that everyday I keep learning more and more.

Currently, I am the Vice President Global Strategy for the Johnson & Johnson Beauty Care Business Unit. This means that I am responsible for overall strategy, especially stuff that is cross-brands and cross-regions. I focus mostly on the areas of Marketing Strategy and Competencies, New Business Areas and Platforms, New Channels and Competitive Intelligence.

I travel up to 50% of the time and although I live in London (UK), I will eventually be based about half and half between London and New York.

I started my career at Unilever, and have though been connected with J&J for most of my career, although I did set up my own consultancy called "Gary Bembridge Unleashed" in around 2002 that developed and delivered training and communication programs for brands or regional groups both online and physically. I rejoined J&J from that consultancy as the programs I had been working on for them needed to be implemented and it was a great opportunity to do so.

I set up the Global Marketing Development Group for the Consumer Group that is responsible for identifying marketing competencies needed today and for the future, to develop processes around them and then training programs. The team delivers roughly a training course every 2 weeks and trains hundreds of marketers of all levels. In addition we also established a specific competency and training program around "Beauty Care and Skincare" to ensure people understand how the category operates and how to market successfully in it. This runs all round the world around 9 - 10 times a year, and I deliver that training along with 2 experts in the category.

The Gary Bembridge "Unleashed on Marketing" blog and the podcast as well is to share ideas, trends and thoughts on the world of marketing, advertising and communication. It will focus mostly on building brands than connect with the consumer on both a rational and emotional way and the importance in my view of the brand story and narrative.

As I mentioned, I travel a huge amount. I run a blog and produce podcasts about travel that is called "Tips For Travellers: The Global Travel Destination Blog/ Podcast". Click on the link to see that, and the latest postings are listed on the links on the side of this site. You will also see I run a 3rd blog on another interest of mine which is Cunard called "All About Cunard Blog"