Stephen King was a genuinely original thinker. He began his career in JWT (J. Walter Thompson) in London in 1959, retired from the agency in 1988 and spent the next 4 yeas at WPP. In addition, he spent 7 years as a director of the Henley Centre and was a Visiting Professor of Marketing at the Cranfield School of Management. During his career, he pioneered an entirely new organizational structure to support his ideas and philosophy – the importance of function called account planning and role of the account planner in creating advertising. It was a structure that was copied by agencies around the world. Stephen died in February 2006, leaving a legacy of articles and books about marketing, advertising, research and brand communications written over a thirty year period, which have influenced advertising people around the world. He is remembered as a leading intellectual figure in the world of communications strategy.

Judie Lannon isa Marketing Communications and Research Consultant. The major part of her career was with JWT London where she was Research and Planning Director for JWT Europe before leaving to set up her own consultancy. In addition to working with clients on branding projects, she is editor of Market Leader, the journal of the Marketing Society and on editorial board of the International Journal of Advertising

Merry Baskin, after several years as one of the industry’s top planning directors (including running the UK’s largest planning department at JWT and America’s coolest at Chiat/Day New York), founded her own strategic planning consultancy, Baskin Shark (where brands move forward or die!) in 2000. She also works with the APG and American Association of Advertising Agencies providing training for the advertising and marketing industry, and account planers in particular. She remains one of the leading lights behind the renaissance and expansion of the Account Planning Group (APG) both in the UK and overseas (UK Chairman 1998-2000).