Experience counts

Kate Allan

From market research to trade marketing and marketing communications, Kate's blue chip business experience at Pernod Ricard UK, TNS plc and Ciao GmbH has ranged from devising shelf layout plans for supermarkets to creating a communications strategy for an international new media company. In 2003 Kate won a Marketing magazine award for an innovative new product development project.

A keen advocate of the internet as a communications tool, Kate co-authored a white paper in 2006 with Manchester Business School on Electronic Word-of-Mouth. She is an author of several novels and works as a book marketing consultant. Kate holds a qualification from the Chartered Institute of Marketing and is a graduate of the University of York.

Ian Cundell

Ian started on your side of the fence, as an analyst in the commercial property industry. He worked through a gigantic boom and a terrible, terrible bust. Then he became a journalist, placing himself at the centre of debates about the future of business, frequently railing against the use of words where actions were needed, ending as a business writer on The Times before choosing to go freelance.

Holder of a Masters degree from The London School of Economics, he was among the first wave of non-academic adopters of email in the UK (one of only three in his firm to have an email address) and argued long and hard for industry to take up new technology intelligently rather than seeing it as a panacea. Ian firmly believes that good writing is the foundation of good communication: if you want to break the rules, first you must learn them.