Kate Howe

Kate has 30 years of extensive agency and client-side experience with British, European and global clients. She has experience working at senior management and C-Suite levels with clients such as Cola-Cola, Sony, McDonald’s, Heinz, Post Office, Kellogg’s, John West, Beiersdorf, Vodafone and Santander.

Kate was seconded to Burger King as UK Marketing Director in 1996 and took on her first agency leadership role in 2001 as Managing Director at Leo Burnett London.

In 2004 she joined private-equity backed Gala Group as board-level Marketing Director, becoming Group Marketing Director when the company merged to form the £4.2bn Gala Coral Group a year later. 2008 brought her back to agency life for a senior role as President of Draftfcb London where she worked closely with clients such as Post Office, NIVEA and TD Waterhouse before being appointed CEO of Draftfcb Europe in 2012. Whilst there she successfully led the pitch for the global £40m Beiersdorf account, secured the pan-European Celesio business and led the acquisitions of Blue Barracuda and Inferno.

Kate then led the UK re-launch of gyro Communications, a PE backed global micro network dedicated to B2B marketing which was sold to Dentsu Aegis Network (DAN) 3 years later and Kate subsequently joined the DAN UK board until most recently joining PE-backed MSQ Partners as a Director and also becoming a member of the Board of Trustees of Macmillan Cancer Care.

Kate relishes a challenge and has significant experience in both the restructuring of troubled agencies to turn around their trajectory by redefining their focus and infusing them with new life, and in the relaunching of major brands. She is Honorary Secretary of the IPA and a member of several key industry bodies such as Marketing Society and Marketing Group of Great Britain and is a regular contributor to The Drum.