Anna Carloss
Co-Founder
Managing Director, London
Anna Carloss founded Cunning (originally called Cunning Stunts) in
1998. At the time, it was the first agency to offer non-traditional,
newsworthy media consultancy, filling the gap between advertising and
PR.
Now widely regarded as ‘the original and best’, Cunning is now
solution-neutral and continues to create ideas that get talked about
for clients such as Nissan, Capital One, Avon, Esprit, MSN and
Bloomberg.
Following a study period at the Sorbonne in Paris, Anna moved
back to London to start on her career at Chris Ingram Associates in the
media planning and buying department. From here, she moved on to become
Head of Sales and Trade Marketing at Flextech Television, controlling
channels such as Discovery and Bravo. She was the youngest and only
female head-of-sales in TV at the time.
She was headhunted by MTV, where she became European Director, overseeing sales and sponsorship for MTV’s European territories.
In 2003 Anna launched Cunning in New York and continues to run the UK business.
Anna is a regular speaker at conferences around Europe as well as a TV and radio commentator on media and publicity issues.
Married with a son and step daughter, Anna divides her time between the
wilds of Peasmarsh and the not-so-wilds of Primrose Hill.
John Carver
Co-Founder
Executive Creative Director, London
Two years ago, John joined forces with co-founder Anna Carloss to work as Executive Creative Director at Cunning.
In this position, John has created groundbreaking experiential
work for clients as diverse as Nissan, Sun Microsystems, MINI and
British Airways as well as conceiving an entirely new advertising
format – the renowned ‘ForeheADS.’
John has also been instrumental in the expansion of Cunning’s London office and the subsequent opening of Cunning New York.
John Carver’s background is diverse. After studying architecture, he
worked successfully as photographer, shooting myriad artists from James
Brown to Ian Dury and The Stranglers.
In 1984 John went on to form The Leisure Process, the country’s first
youth specialist advertising agency. Offering media planning/buying and
PR services, The Leisure Process worked on an array of clients
including Coca Cola, Virgin, Sony, Ellesse, Kickers and BMG.
In 1998, John formed Harry Monk, a creative shop that allowed him to
indulge his passion for film, art direction and communication. During
this time, he produced a series of commercials and pop promos for the
likes of Carl Cox and Robbie Williams. John also exhibited as a video
installation artist at Tate Britain.
John is a regular speaker at conferences and advertising functions and
has also written for a number of publications including The
Independent.
In his spare time, John travels the world fishing and bidding for things he doesn’t need on eBay.
Mark Voysey
Co-Founder
Head Bloke, Cunning NY
Mark spotted an opportunity in the American market for an
experiential agency in 2003 and co-founded Cunning New York. It¹s here that he
earned himself the enviable title of ‘Head Bloke’. In the 3 office moves
to date he has ingeniously managed to ensure that Cunning’s team has
enjoyed some of the best views in NYC.
Graduating from Bristol Polytechnic with a BA in Business and
Finance, specializing in Advertising and marketing, his career started at
CIA (then MediaNetwork) as a strategic media planner / buyer. Six years later he was pan European Media Director.
He then left for Switzerland to work for UEFA Champions League as Media
Director / Project Manager developing the sponsors rights and ensuring
the smooth running of tournament activities throughout Key European
Markets. This role eventually led him to New York where he started the
North American division of UEFA’s sponsorship suppliers; Sponsorship
Information Services.
Following this, he founded the sports and fitness property; My Personal Best, or MyPB.com before starting Cunning in 2003.
Living in Manhattan with a young family, Mark still manages to find
enough time to watch as much Fox Soccer Channel as humanly possible.
Outside of this passion, it’s taking photo’s, or on the bike, tennis
court, snowboard or fishing boat where you are most likely to find him
during any spare time…
Jerry Judge
Non Executive Chairman
Jerry Judge has worked at some of the Worlds most prestigious
advertising agencies. He trained at Leo Burnett London, was the
eleventh employee of TBWA London and co-founded BBH, being named
Chairman in 1992. And if that’s not enough, Jerry has also been CEO at
Lowe Howard Spink, Lowe Europe, Lowe Asia Pacific and Lowe Worldwide.
During his illustrious career, Jerry has worked on almost
every business category and led winning new business teams on the likes
of Shell, Unilever, Audi-Volkswagen, Ford and American Express.
He’s also lectured on advertising at London Business School and co-written a D&AD commercial with John Hegarty.
Floyd Hayes
Head Creative Bloke, New York
“Head Creative Bloke, Floyd Hayes joined Cunning as employee #1 way back in 1998.”
He was born from an egg on a mountain top.
Described as “one of the finest non-traditional creative minds
of his generation”* Floyd’s first project was the infamous Gail
Porter/FHM projection on Big Ben, followed by floating a football pitch
down the Thames for Docker’s and the first Internet cafe at
Glastonbury.
From there, Floyd lead the creative team on the hugely
successful MINI launch, winning the client a ton of auto awards and
helping to sell a record breaking amount of cars.
Floyd has also developed 5 official Guinness World Records for
clients, garnering huge media coverage and general excitement and
hullabaloo.
Floyd moved to New York 3 years ago to help continue the
Cunning story in the States. Clients have included SCION, Target, SCI
FI Channel, HSBC and Zenith. Notable silliness includes selling his own
voice on eBay for Cadburys resulting in 115 million Americans watching
him shout loudly on Fox News.
Floyd has lectured on non-traditional marketing at
universities across the world including LCP, London and NYU, NYC. He
regularly speaks at conferences and regular media commentator.
Floyd has a blog which you can enjoy here: www.OneInchPunchBlog.com
*Floyd’s Gran, quoted at tea-time, April 2007
Rob Phillips
Associate Creative Director, London
Rob
joined Cunning in the spring of 2007. Rob spent ten years in above the
line agencies, before finally seeing the light at Howell Henry – that
there was more to communication than just TV and print. He then began
to spend more time working in activation, brand experience and with
clients that thought there are better ways to connect brands with
consumers. He feels solution-neutral thinking is a far more rewarding.
With this in mind he helped create a company called the church agency
and then his own agency called Brand Puppy. In early 2006 Rob took on
the project to help launch Ogilvy Action, to work on BAT and Unilever.
The learnings from working with their brands helped him gain a bigger
picture of approaching consumers with far more effective means than
just broadcast. Outside of work Rob’s interest is in making short
films, Vespas and tai-chi. He also makes a great dad.
Paul Hicks
Head of Operations, London
Joining Cunning in 2004, Paul brought to Cunning a solid eight years in international event and account management.
His career began in London, organising tours and sporting events for EF
Language schools, a role, which later took him to glamorous Miami for 2
years for the same organisation.
This was followed by a stretch in the corporate sector
organizing product launches and conferences for PCI Fitch. Pre-Cunning,
Paul spent time at Slice PR as a senior event manager, successfully
producing events for clients such as Xbox, Levi’s, Nike and Channel 5.
Since joining Cunning Paul has worked on almost every activity
that Cunning has implemented, adding his wealth of knowledge of Account
Management, production, planning, budgetary and operational experience
to each project and the business.
Paul has been instrumental in the growth of the business and ensuring it runs effective and efficiently.
A natural team leader, a wizard when it comes to operations,
logistics, planning and finding effective solutions to any dilemma,
Paul enjoys contributing to the success of all projects, the business
and helping colleague’s progress in their careers.
A fan of regular exercise and often gets up in the morning to
go for a pre work run and workout. Paul also has a passion for riding
big sports bikes and owns a Yamaha R6 and FZR, which when not riding to
work, takes them out on the country lanes of boxhill, handlebar tash an
all
John Gillespie
Financial Controller
John has brought a background steeped in shipping and the oil industry.
Know as G-Money for reasons best known to Cunning staff, John’s
role encompasses finance, legal and HR for both the London and New York
offices.
For a chap with such a cheerful disposition he has a remarkably gloomy
taste in music, treating his colleagues to endless renditions of
Depeche Mode, the Smiths and Morrissey.
Alongside his qualification as a Chartered Certified
Accountant John has also completed an MBA focusing on strategy and HR.
As part of his work on the MBA he spent two years in a senior HR role
with Fina plc, now part of the TotalFinaElf group.
