John Edmund

John Edmund is a career marketer. After taking an MBA at Queen’s University Belfast, he trained with a publicly quoted construction products and services company based in Northern Ireland initially as a market analyst before moving into a corporate sales and marketing planning role. After spells in industrial and local economic development he entered the management consultancy profession eventually leading the UK marketing team for one of the world top 10 accountancy practices of the time and controlling all their consulting operations on the island of Ireland. In 1990 he established his own consultancy business. Working within his professional discipline of marketing, he has had the opportunity to apply his skills to the problems facing large and small businesses in most of the current and formerly ‘core’ industrial sectors of Northern Ireland, including, engineering, food, tourism, textiles and internationally tradable professional services. Within these same sectors, in the cultural sector and in professional organisations he has honed and applied his organisational development skills to tackle problems of efficiency and effectiveness leading to long-term sustainability. His work has been both tactical and strategic and has held the issue of ‘effective leadership’ at its core. As a consultant he has been carrying out marketing 'due-dilignece' appraisals for the public sector and local financial institutions since 1985. He has also undertaken project appraisal assignments for NITB, DETI, DE, DARD, various local authorities and other public sector institutions. He has completed sectoral reviews in both NI and GB and has researched sources and patterns of international investment and the development of structures to support trade development across the Irish Sea and into new export markets. He was one of the first consultants in Northern Ireland to recognise the power of the creative industries to contribute to economic and social development and has been a strong advocate for the development of a clear focus on the creative business at both the national and individual opportunity levels. He has been heavily involved in the promotion and application of creativity and new innovation processes for new product and service development. He has prepared most of the plans on the development of the cultural sector as a tourism opportunity in Northern Ireland. He has carried out economic appraisals and has prepared feasibility studies that have led to significant infrastructural investments with funding from Europe and to the development of new facilities and services that today support industry and the community in meeting their day-to-day demands. He has a detailed knowledge of the contribution of the public sector to Northern Ireland society and the economy and has worked with the major organisations shaping our environmental, social, industrial and commercial future. He has managed and led specialist professional teams delivering high quality thinking across all of the above areas of society and the economy. Over the last two years the focus of his consultancy business has returned to what he enjoys most, helping companies develop new products, win in new markets and grow organisational ability to get bigger and more profitable.