Jed Mole, chief marketing officer, Acxiom

What has been your path to power?

Wanting to know more about the increasingly important role of data, I joined Acxiom, now part of IPG, as a marketer just over twenty-five years ago.  While I started my career as a Royal Navy officer, my eyesight failed to meet the requirements at the time and I changed to business. Starting out with Ernst & Young, I quickly realised that being good at maths is not a guarantee you’ll like accountancy and so after a year I dove into marketing, joining the fast-growing UK challenger telco that was Mercury Communications. I left Mercury in December 1996 to join Acxiom, just as Mercury was changing, with the parts I worked with becoming part Virgin Media, part of Vodafone today.

Moving to Acxiom gave me a chance to move from “client side” to “agency side” as I became account director for our European business with P&G. I worked with other clients, too, most notably Dell, before joining Acxiom’s UK leadership, looking after marketing, sales support and consulting. I focused on marketing as Acxiom acquired, integrated and rebranded Claritas and Consodata before moving back to the client and solutions side across Europe.

I returned to marketing around in 2013, first as European marketing director before joining the global marketing team when Acxiom became part of IPG in October 2018. The exciting opportunity to become CMO for Acxiom came in April 2019, which expanded further in June 2020 when I was invited to integrate Acxiom marketing with the marketing functions of IPG sister companies Kinesso and Matterkind.