Gareth Helm

Gareth has over 30 years marketing experience with businesses all around the world. He’s been accountable for many of the world’s biggest and most favourite brands, including McDonald’s and Innocent drinks, and also developed new brands, by being the marketing leader in early stage businesses like Zoopla and MoneySuperMarket, and food start-ups like Tails and Bear snacks. In 2021 Gareth was recognised as one of the UK’s top 100 most effective marketers by Marketing Week and became a Fellow of the Marketing Academy. Gareth is writing a marketing leadership book due to be published in Autumn 2022.

Gareth has very extensive online and offline marketing skills and is known for building brands and delivering double digit growth. He current works for HomeServe PLC as their Global CMO, where he advises over a dozen C-suites in the USA, UK, Spain, France and Japan. Gareth is also NED for Higgidy Food, a division of Samworth Brothers and a investor/adviser for All Plants, a vegan online subscription business.

Gareth studied Chemistry at Bristol University and a chance meeting lead him to discovering Marketing as a career. This chance meeting lead to his first role in Unilever based in Egypt. From Unilever Gareth moved to Nestle and Mars, where was responsible for portfolios of brands in the UK and Ireland. He then had a series of roles with start ups and early stage businesses, from Innocent Drinks to Bear Snacks and Money SuperMarket to Zoopla. From this he went on to be the Chief Marketing Officer for McDonald’s. The McDonald’s role gave him menu accountability and a marketing budget of over £200m. Gareth lead initiatives to transform the nutritional profile of the menu, digitise marketing and make the business more sustainable.