Leadership Team : Chris Middleton

Chris has spent over 30 years working in marketing first in consumer insights and retail strategy, moving through corporate strategy and business planning and most recently in the trends and futuring space.

Across his career, Chris has taken his deep consumer understanding and foresights about the future and leveraged them into marketing strategies, corporate strategies and business plans.

Chris has worked both on the client side for major retailer companies – Boots The Chemist, Habitat and Sephora – and agency side for strategy, design and research agencies.

In 1993, Chris joined beauty chain Sephora in Paris and subsequently worked for nearly 20 years in France. He is completely bi-lingual.

For 8 years Chris was a Director, Managing Director and Group Board Director of the Sociovision Group. This socio-cultural research institute is famous for its deep sociological understanding of consumers and for its inter-cultural insights. Chris was specialist in building the bridges between insight and strategy and from researcher to consultant. Clients at the time included Virgin Atlantic, Nokia, Boots, Ford and Lacoste.

In 2007, Chris founded his own specialist agency, Futures Coaching that aims to build the best assumption base about the future that exists inside an industry and help his clients understand the opportunities and threats of tomorrow’s world. Chris has worked on tens of futures projects of this nature. For example, “The Future of Healthcare’ (Merck); ‘The Future of Giving’ (Cancer Research UK); ‘ The Future of Medical Research Charities’ (AMRC).

Chris continues to work in the branding and strategy and freelances for several agencies as their specialist planner/strategist. For design company MWorldwide, Chris has brought his strategic mind to bear on concept development for companies such as: Lloyds Banking Group, Picard, Wrigley and Coca Cola. Chris has been an associate of Shaping Tomorrow for many years.