Mr. Les Binet European Director, DDB Matrix, UK

Having read physics at Oxford, Les took an MPhil in artificial intelligence at Edinburgh University. In 1987, he joined the account planning department at BMP (now DDB London), where he turned his modeling skills to the problem of measuring the effects of advertising. He currently heads DDB Matrix, DDB’s in-house... read moreeconometrics consultancy. Over the years, Les has worked for a wide range of clients, including Unilever, Heinz, Nestlé, Volkswagen, Johnson & Johnson, Kraft, Sony, AXA, and Anheuser Busch. He has also played an important part in establishing DDB’s reputation for effectiveness, having won more IPA Advertising Effectiveness Awards than anyone else in the history of the competition. Since 2001, he has served on the IPA’s Value of Advertising Committee, helping to promote effectiveness and evaluation in the wider marketing community. In 2004 he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the IPA, in recognition of his services to the advertising industry, and in 2005 he was Convener of Judges for the IPA Awards. In 2007, Les Binet and Peter Field published Marketing in the Era of Accountability, a major study of the factors that influence marketing effectiveness. This research is based on the IPA dataBANK, a database of effectiveness case histories, which Les and Peter helped to design and build for the IPA.