Amy MacWilliam

I was invited to join the MSS board at the end of 2023. Each board member has a two-year term and is tasked with supporting their vision of promoting the value of marketing from classroom to boardroom.

During my final few months at Edrington, I ‘stepped up’ and expand my remit by adding The Famous Grouse: The UK’s #1 whisky. My primary responsibility was leading the marketing and commercial workstreams of the brands’ divestiture.

In this global role, I was charged with leading ‘breakthrough growth’ for Edrington’s start-up brand: Naked Malt. I was also responsible for consumer, category, and customer insight for the wider business unit, which also covered the EMEIA region and The Famous Grouse brand globally.

I was promoted to lead the marketing team for this newly created sub-region, which included the 38 European markets where Edrington operated through a third-party distributor. This role sat on the regional leadership team.

Reporting to the Regional Managing Director, this newly created leadership role within the commercial team aimed to inspire our network of local brand and commercial colleagues to function as one team.

During this secondment, I led a team of 3 to deliver the local strategy, marketing & commercial plans for the UK, primarily focused on The Famous Grouse: The UK’s #1 whisky.

This exciting role involved setting the global strategy & brand positioning for Cutty Sark.

In this unique role, I had responsibility for 2 key areas of the business: i) Innovation: Leading the ideation process & establishing a new super-premium rum brand; 2) Brugal: As part of the Global brand team for the Caribbean’s #1 rum, I was responsible for NPD, global digital strategy & supporting the European markets in growing their Brugal business.

Leading a team of 8, I had profit responsibility for retailer loyalty programmes, multi-brand CRM & eCommerce/digital media innovation. The role reported to the Northern Europe Brand Director.

In this consumer-facing role, I led the local strategy & communication plans for P&G’s Olympic sponsorship & the Fabric Care business: Ariel, Bold, Daz, Fairy & Lenor. The role involved managing 6 agencies to deliver 20 campaigns from brief to execution. I managed a sizeable budget, developed a detailed knowledge of the UK/Irish media landscape & gained extensive experience planning & developing TV, print, paid-earned-owned digital media, outdoor, PR, experiential, instore & eCommerce assets, & pack artwork.

This role gave me the unique opportunity to own the end-to-end marketing of a large brand early in my career.