Minimart Appoints Brent Gosling as Strategy Partner

Minimart has announced the appointment of Brent Gosling as the agency’s first Strategy Partner, a move that will further bolster the senior team of the independent advertising agency. With over 25 years of experience working with some of the world’s leading brands, Brent will play a key role in defining the strategic offering, with a focus on the company’s ‘fierce thinking’ approach.

Graduating from Oxford University, Brent initially carved out a career in marketing with Jaguar Cars and as a Management Consultant for Deloitte before discovering his true passion for advertising itself. 

The foundations of his planning career were laid at Ogilvy in the early '90s. There he won the first APG Awards’ Gold and Grand Prix and an IPA Effectiveness Silver award for Radion.  In 1996, as a campaign Face to Watch, he moved into the role of copywriter, channelling this creativity for two years at Ogilvy and then Cowan Kemsley Taylor, before heading back to planning with HHCL where he assumed the role of strategic lead for brands including Guinness and the AA (the 4th Emergency Service).

In 2001 he set out on his own, running Gosling Research for six years and then set out even further afield as the C.S.O. of one of India’s largest agencies: Lowe Lintas.  For three years, based in Mumbai, Brent oversaw a fascinating plethora of local, regional and global businesses.

In 2011, Brent returned to UK shores and, building on the iconic global ‘Dirt Is Good’ campaign he had planned across Asia/AMET, he led the planning which won the business back from BBH in Europe and LATAM to reunite the campaign under Lowe.  Brent led the global planning on Cadillac at Lowe too, and from there it was PepsiCo at AMV.

With a wealth of big brand experience at leading agencies behind him, Brent was eager to embrace a new challenge with a role that will propel him to the forefront and establish him as a key player within the senior team of a fast-thinking agency.

This month he joins Minimart as Strategy Partner, joining Founders Ed Chilcott and Tim Clyde to drive the agency’s growth in a new stage of development.  With strategy at the heart of the agency’s offering Minimart is putting a dynamic focus behind its ‘fierce thinking’ principles.

Expanding on the appeal of Minimart, Brent notes: "Brands today need agile partners.  The days when agencies would trade-off between time, cost and quality of thinking are long past.  Now an agency needs to thrive on change and evolve fast to make the best of channel and tech innovation. Minimart is agile by nature.  Fierce thinking and nimble production are in its DNA, so it makes radically creative solutions happen in consistently fresh ways.  In this environment rigorous strategy is critical, and that’s why I’m hugely excited to be joining Minimart at this stage in its evolution.  It’s exactly the place to leverage the fast but firm strategic thinking that modern communications need. And to find such fierce thinking at the heart of such a friendly place is an irresistible combination.”