Guest
Sharon Lloyd Barnes
Commercial Director, Advertising Association
A career in sales and commercial leadership, from founder and trustee roles to a not-for-profit trade body, spent arguing that advertising has to represent the society it sells to.
About
Sharon Lloyd Barnes is Commercial Director at the Advertising Association, the UK industry body founded 100 years ago by ISBA and the IPA to make the case for advertising to government and the public. She works across commercial partnerships, industry collaboration, inclusion, responsibility and advocacy, and helped launch the All In census and action plan, the industry-wide diversity survey that gathered over 18,000 responses in a single day.
Lloyd Barnes came to the Association from what she describes as much more commercial environments, having been a founder, a commercial leader and a trustee, and having spent her career in sales roles. She calls the trade body the least commercial place she has worked, because it is a not-for-profit and the commercial job is funding the activity the Association delivers on behalf of the whole industry. Her value to members, by her account, sits in convening: bringing together a council of trade bodies, broadcasters and tech companies, and a wider Front Foot network of around 100 to 110 agencies, brands, media owners and tech businesses that she calls the turbocharger of the Association's key work streams.
Much of the public-facing work she has helped build sits in inclusion, sustainability and skills. She helped create the All In campaign in 2019 and 2020 after it became clear that the people making and placing well-intentioned ads did not have the relevant lived experience, and after the industry realised it did not know who worked in it at all. The census now runs every two years, with a fourth iteration due next March and an action plan of eight actions adopted by around 160 UK businesses. She also works across Ad Net Zero, launched in 2020 at COP26, and the AdGreen production calculator, a 12 month case study partnership with the Times that began with Currys, the UK advertising growth programme taken to Cannes, South by Southwest and Dubai Expo with the Department for Business and Trade, and a new virtual work experience pilot with Springpod built with a creative agency and with Bauer Media.
Career27 years
- 2019 to now Pleasance Theatre Trust Board Trustee
- 2018 to now Advertising Association Commercial Director
- 1999 to now BeyondAutism Founding Member
- 2011 to 2019 The Drive Partnership Director/Founder
Show earlier roles: Sharon Lloyd Barnes Ltd
- 2006 to 2010 Sharon Lloyd Barnes Ltd Director/Founder
How Sharon thinks3 convictions
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Sales is relationship work
Lloyd Barnes has spent her career in sales roles and is blunt that the discipline carries a terrible reputation. Her argument is that the people who are scared of it or dismissive of it have misread what it is: relationship work that depends on intuition. She names intuition and communication as the two things she would put at the centre of leadership.
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Convening before competing
Every council meeting at the Association opens with a compliance statement making the pre-competitive rules explicit, a discipline Lloyd Barnes says makes the impossible look routine from the outside. She pairs it with single-subject forums where the room spends two hours on one question. It is how she believes a fiercely competitive industry can be brought round a shared goal.
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The global stage is the job
Lloyd Barnes says UK advertising punches well above its weight for the size of the country, with large exports, awards and talent drawn from around the world. The Association's programme in Cannes runs with the Department for Business and Trade, because, she says, government recognises advertising as sitting between professional services and the creative industries. Cannes, South by Southwest and Dubai Expo are all treated as the same job: making the case in public.