What is your job title?
Chief executive of the Advertising Association, the industry association standing up for clients and agencies, guarding our role, rights and responsibilities. The Incorporated Society of British Advertisers, Internet Advertising Bureau, the Direct Marketing Association and the media trade associations are all members of the AA.
What does your job involve?
Reminding people we work in a great industry and that advertising helps people get what they want. Advertising introduces better products and services, drives competition and keeps prices down, and it gives people free or far cheaper media. We must be experts on how it all works: we have gone through a recession, as well as massive change in the way people use advertising. So I am setting up a research foundation, a think-tank that will put insight and authority at the heart of the industry - look out for "Front:Foot".
What's it like working for the AA?
Everyone in the industry is my boss, which is a weighty privilege. Yet outside the industry, people are kicking us, blaming advertising for everything from obesity to drunkenness. We need to keep the argument balanced and our industry on the front foot.
What qualifications and experience do you need?
Footwork like Ronaldo and politics like French aristocrat, politician and diplomat, Talleyrand. I learnt this as a client - at Cadbury - and at big agencies.
How do you spend a typical day?
Listening, thinking, speaking and eating.
What's the best thing about your job?
The trust placed in me by terrific people.
And the worst?
When I get it wrong, or when another lobbyist starts whacking advertising. For example, the British Medical Association is supposed to look after doctors, but suddenly it claims to be an expert on what advertising does, using junk research to grab headlines.
What keeps you awake at night?
The planes.
Who helped you get where you are today?
Harry McCann, who set up creative agency McCann Erickson in 1927 and coined the phrase "truth well-told".
Who do you aspire to be like?
The American showman Phineas Taylor Barnum: the quintessential ringmaster.