Speakers at the upcoming Think!Sponsorship conference include:

Robin Hamman, Director of Digital (London), Edelman

Robin has around 12 years professional experience devising, implementing and managing social media propositions for some of the World's leading brands. Robin joined Edelman as Director of Digital in June 2010. Robin's speciality is finding creative solutions that align business processes and goals with audience, consumer and stakeholder behaviour online through the introduction of meaningful participatory frameworks online.

Prior to that he lead the social media team at Headshift, a social business consultancy, and was an eight year veteran of the BBC, where he played a vital roll in launching a range of social platforms, including message boards, chat, blogs and participation on 3rd party social networking and content sharing sites.

Robin is widely respected as on of the leading social media practitioners in Europe and beyond. He's spoken at industry conferences in Europe, North America, Asia and Australia, and has been interviewed by broadcast and print media in well over a dozen countries. A social scientist before getting into the social media industry, his scholarly articles about life online, social media and online community have appeared in six books, several of which have been translated. Robin holds a BA in Education, MA in Sociology, MPhil in Communication Studies and a PgDip in Law. He is currently a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Journalism at City University and was, until recently, a Non-Residential Fellow at the Stanford Center for Internet and Law.

Jonathan Lee, Music Sponsorship Manager, Virgin Media

Jonathan started has career in event management before moving over to the world of marketing and sponsorship working both agency and client side. Among the projects he’s worked on include the launch of Orange Wednesdays back in 2004, brand partnerships for Inbev including Stellar Artois Tennis and the Becks association with the ICA as well as the Robinsons sponsorship of the Wimbledon Championships. He currently manages the music sponsorship program at Virgin Media including the V Festival which recently celebrated its 15th successful year. Working at the coal face as well as the ivory tower he’s been able to experience at first hand the challenges of working in environments where the key is to turn shades of grey into black and white

Outside of work a young family keeps him away from the golf course.

Liz Matkin, Head of Sponsorship, The Co-operative Group

As Head of Sponsorship for The Co-operative Group, Liz is responsible for brokering, and pro-actively managing The Co-operative Group’s commercial sponsorship agreements; all of which she develops and integrates with The Co-operative’s communication and marketing strategy.

Testament to Liz and her team’s pro-active approach to sponsorship are the awards they have previously won; Sponsor of the Year under $500,00 at the Rugby Business Awards 2008 and Sponsorship of the Year from the Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation 2008.

The impact of The Co-operative’s sponsorship agreements has grown significantly over the past few years and this has been as a result of the positive feedback it has received both from external and internal target audiences. The national appeal of the Pride of Britain Awards, for the first time, gave Liz and her team the opportunity to execute a national campaign to support the sponsorship agreement which demonstrated the force of The Co-operative Group; over 4,000 stores displayed the point of sale encouraging over 20 million customers who visit Co-operative businesses each week to get involved and vote for their Pride of Britain.

The collective strength of The Co-operative businesses under the sponsorship umbrella secured the partnership with the Variety Club, which enabled The Co-operative to bring all the businesses together and raise money for a charity which looks to help children and young people in British communities. Every other year The Co-operative adopts a charity and all fundraising efforts, for twelve months, are made in aid of the chosen charity. Liz saw the opportunity, during a fallow year of this cycle, to partner with the Variety Club and marry the communications plan to engage and support young people with the extensive fundraising abilities that The Co-operative has. The infamous Gold Hearts and the recipients of the fundraising efforts were an ideal fit for The Co-operative allowing a natural retail proposition to enhance the brand’s key messages whilst also working to better the lives of children and young people in local communities.

Further communicating The Co-operative’s healthy living and membership messages is its ties with a number of Championship football clubs and regional football competitions, which altogether take the ‘good for everyone’ campaign to a number of key target audiences.

Liz consciously aims to diversify the mix of sponsorship agreements and with the recent announcement of the British Music Experience partnership it is planned that a new, young and inspirational campaign will unfold; raising The Co-operative’s profile with younger audiences and providing the opportunity to expand its digital communication strategy.

Liz joined The Co-operative fourteen years ago initially in a Corporate HR role, which developed and diversified via Food group HR to the role she holds now.

Having grown up near Glasgow, Liz is an avid St Mirren football supporter and if she’s not enjoying live music of various sorts and tastes, then she’s relaxing at home with her partner Tim, son Connor and pet dog Ollie.

Elton Ollerhead, Digital Media Sales Director, Tesco.com/Tesco Direct

Elton has 12 years of UK online media experience and is dunnhumby’s digital media sales director for the tesco.com portfolio of websites. dunnhumby, a Tesco company is the driving force behind Tesco’s world leading clubcard loyalty program and is responsible for Tesco’s media assets (clubcard media, magazine and instore media, in addition to Tesco’s online offering).

The immediate focus is to incorporate Tesco’s clubcard insight into the advertising proposition across the portfolio to improve targeting and personalisation, and to develop more robust post campaign evaluation for suppliers and advertisers to refine future effectiveness.

Prior to dunnhumby Elton spent a couple of years as head of commercial partnerships for BSkyB’s online business and 7 years with ISP portal Tiscali in eCommerce as head of client sales prior to its acquisition by Talk Talk in 2009.

Matt Simpson, Head of Digital, OMD Group

Matt Simpson is Head of Digital for OMD Group in the UK and Chairman of the IPA’s Digital Media Group. His remit at OMD is to drive excellence in digital output across OMD UK and Manning Gottlieb OMD, where he has been responsible for restructuring both companies’ digital teams to create further integration in their respective offerings.

His role at the IPA helps promote professionalism within the UK’s digital marketplace and in the last few years has seen him take an active role in helping the UK establish its first online planning currency via UKOM and establish and run the much referenced bi-yearly media owner survey.
Previously Matt spent ten years at Starcom Mediavest where he served as Head of Digital going on to set up and run P&G’s first UK digital AOR.

Mrs Des Violaris, Director UK Arts & Culture, BP

Mrs Violaris is the Director of UK Arts & Culture at BP p.l.c. She is responsible for managing the company’s UK Arts and Culture Program as well as providing counsel and support to BP’s Global Business in the area of arts & culture.

Mrs Violaris joined Amoco in 1995 and moved to BP’s headquarters in London following the completion of the merger in January 1999.

Des lives in North London; she is married with two daughters and a granddaughter. Her interests include fine arts, ballet and entertaining.

Des has a passion for improving access to the arts.