The World Buys British
Aisling Conlon is the International Director for UK Advertising at the Advertising Association, the person who is simultaneously half a marketing director and half an events company for the entire UK advertising sector. She has rung the NASDAQ bell at Times Square, launched the Leadership Icon Award, run the UK House at SXSW, and is opening UK advertising into Saudi Arabia through the Athar festival partnership. Her territory is the world.
“UK Advertising exported a record 18 billion in 2023. There is no other country in the world with this job role.”
Aisling Conlon is the International Director for UK Advertising at the Advertising Association (AA), where she leads the UK Advertising Export Group (UKAEG). She is responsible for championing the UK’s creative, media, production, and digital advertising sector internationally, supporting member companies to grow globally through strategic trade missions and showcase events at gatherings including SXSW, Cannes Lions, Advertising Week New York, and the Athar festival in Saudi Arabia.
Aisling moved from Dublin to London to take on the role, having spent five years at the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) as Head of New Business, where she exceeded all corporate membership targets and developed the IPA Accelerator programme for start-up agencies. Before that she spent nearly nine years at IAPI (the Institute of Advertising Practitioners in Ireland), rising from Account Executive to Business Development Manager, growing membership, events, and qualifications revenue, and winning a global Cannes Lions Representatives of the Year award in the association’s inaugural entry year.
Her approach to international trade is built on two things: relationships and energy. She does not treat events as a reporting mechanism. She treats them as a hook that, when designed correctly, unlocks business that would not happen otherwise. Her test for a successful event is not whether the talks were good. It is whether people were still networking after the formal programme ended, whether conversations continued on LinkedIn the following morning, and whether any company in the room opened an office in the city she brought them to.
“Use events as the hook to unlock business. Not as the destination.”
“The first is talent. Then time zone.”
PwC research commissioned for UKAEG identified three structural advantages that UK advertising holds in global markets. The diverse talent pool is not incidental: it is the mechanism by which UK agencies understand what will land in California, Riyadh, or Shanghai without having to fly there. The time zone bridges both Asia-Pacific and the Americas in a single working day. And the price differential between London production and New York or San Francisco production is widening in ways that are starting to show up in client decisions.
“I go to quite a lot of networking events. Quite often they don’t feel like they have energy in them.”
Aisling has a precise theory of event success that she applies to every programme she runs. A successful event is not one with full attendance and good panels. It is one where the energy in the room exceeds what the agenda created. Her tests are simple: are conversations still happening after the formal part ends? Are people connecting on LinkedIn in the room rather than later? Is the event the hottest ticket in the building that week? The British Consulate reception at Advertising Week New York, which turned people away at the door and became the subject of corridor conversations for three days, passed every test.
“Use Advertising Week as the reason to reach out. Be in the room. Let the event do the work.”
The most common mistake Aisling sees UK companies make at international events is treating the event as the work itself. Attendance is not the outcome. The outcome is the conversation that the event made possible, the client that took a meeting because it was easy, the prospect that agreed to visit London because they were shown what it is like in a room. Coffee & TV came to SXSW as part of the UK delegation. A year later they had an Austin office. The event was not the reason they opened it. The conversations the event made possible were.
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