The BrandCamp conference enjoys a gathering of first-class presenters, leaders, and experts. We did not bring superstars, but real professionals that are willing to share their work within the branding process.

Christian Schroeder

Managing Director, Landor Hamburg

Christian Schroeder is General Manager responsible for the overall management of the Landor Hamburg office. As well as day to day operational tasks Christian is responsible for overseeing the development of clients such as Kraft Foods, Numico (for whom he is also Global KCR Leader), Procter & Gamble, FIFA, European Patent Office and Cadbury Schweppes. Before moving to Hamburg Christian was European client leader for Diageo and Numico responsible for the development of brands such as Baileys, Smirnoff, Johnnie Walker, Cow & Gate, Milupa and Aptamil on a global basis. At Landor Christian has managed a wide range of strategic branding issues with high-profile, blue-chip clients globally including energy giant RWE, where he acted as client leader and brand guardian, ensuring long-term integration and implementation of the strategic and creative vision for brands, including the acquired brands Thames Water, American Water Works and Innogy. Other major international clients he has managed include Ford, Daimler Chrysler, Merck, Hydro Agri, Pernod Ricard, Beringer Blass Wine Estates, Tyco and Le Meridien Hotels.

Prior to joining Landor, Christian spent a number of years working across Europe and the United States in business development and integrated brand consulting for clients such as Coca Cola, Deutsche Bank, United Distillers, RJ Reynolds and Bacardi-Martini. Christian has worked on and managed a wide variety of clients ranging from corporate and brand identity programmes through to retail brands from concept to implementation.

Tony Spaeth

Independent Corporate Identity Consultant

Tony Spaeth is an independent corporate identity consultant, who focuses on the use of corporate brands as leadership tools. He specializes in diagnosis of identity needs, clarification of strategic vision, corporate brand platforms and positioning, and employee motivation through creative branding.

Prior to establishing his own practice in 1990, Spaeth was a consulting principal of the branding firm Anspach Grossman Portugal and directed its naming activities. He is a graduate of Princeton (in Architecture) and received his MBA from Harvard, and then learned about identity in the mid 1960s at Lippincott & Margulies.

Tony teams with design firms to help them provide a more comprehensive corporate identity capability. His Web site, www.identityworks.com, is an information resource and teaching tool.

David Davis

Design Partner, Minale Tattersfield London

David is currently Partner in charge of petrol station design and head of 3D at Minale Tattersfield, a branding agency specializing in the energy sector. He holds an Industrial Design degree from Ravensbourne College London, and is a BA Hons Member of the Energy Institute. He has worked with Interior Systems Ltd. London and Addison Design London before joining Minale Tattersfield in 1994.

He was lead creative for some of the most important reimaging programmes in the energy sector (and not only). David contributed to the design of BP's service stations, now considered one of the oil industry's most enduring and respected. With over 40,000 outlets, the Shell redesign was the world's biggest retail reimaging project, with responsibilities ranged from creating the design proposal that won the initial design competition up to managing the pilot site programme launched in Brazil, Chile, Canada, UK, Holland, Finland, Portugal, Turkey, Thailand, Australia and Japan. David designed the new retail images for Repsol (Spain), Eppco (UAE), Nissan (all European car dealerships), ThaiOil (Thailand), Petronas (Malaysia), Italiana Petroli (Italy), Petrobras (Brasil), Lukoil (Russia), Reliance (India), Yukos (Russia), Kuwait National Petroleum Company, Elin (Greece) and many others.

Alina Wheeler

Brand Identity Champion, Philadelphia

Alina is author of Designing Brand Identity, an essential reference guide that illuminates branding fundamentals, explains a disciplined and collaborative process, and showcases best practices. Her goal is to establish a common process and a shared vocabulary for the entire branding team.

Shahar Silbershatz

Managing Director, Karakter London

As Managing Director, Shahar handles the business operations of Karakter, and is project principal and brand strategist on its branding programmes.

Since co-founding Karakter in 2003, Shahar has directed branding programmes for Hydro, the Norwegian Fortune-500 oil and aluminium conglomerate; Magic4, the UK mobile messaging software provider; Sappi, the Belgian fine paper manufacturer; NICE Systems, global specialists in interaction software; Czech Airlines, the national flag-carrier of the Czech Republic; JNBS, Jamaica’s largest building society; Romtelecom, Romania’s semi-privatised fixed line operator; Anglo Irish Bank, and oilfield reservoir specialist Roxar.

Before setting up Karakter, Shahar was a Senior Consultant at the London office of international brand consultants Siegel & Gale, where he was involved in developing brand strategies for clients in diverse industries and sectors, from banking, telecommunications and consumer food, to non-profit and government organizations, in both Europe and the Middle East. His clients included Eurotel, the largest Czech cellular operator; Danone, the leading worldwide consumer food company; and El Al, the national airline carrier of Israel.

Prior to joining Siegel & Gale, Shahar worked in the New York office of Mitchell Madison Group, a strategy consulting firm founded in 1994, which later became part of marchFIRST. During his time there, Shahar worked with clients including Bear Stearns, Reuters and Cushman & Wakefield on developing and enhancing their global business strategies.

Shahar grew up in Tel Aviv and has several years’ experience of working there. He received his law degree (LL.B.) from Tel Aviv University, and an MBA degree with Honours from Columbia Business School, New York.

Tom Vanderbauwhede

Managing Director, Lemento Antwerp, Belgium

Born in 1972, Tom graduated Ghent University with a Masters Degree in Applied Economics, followed by a Masters Degree in Business Administration (Vlerick School for Management - Ghent) in 1999. In 2000, he founded Lemento, a consultancy specializing in corporate branding and identity, where he is currently Managing Director.

His experience includes work for Allard Europe, the Belgian Travel Network, Cosmos, Leading Edge, the Antwerp Police and others, as a design consultant. Lemento is a member of the Reputation Institute.

Marius Ursache

Chief Creative Officer, Grapefruit, Romania

Marius started out as a freelance cartoonist, and now has more than 12 years practical experience in design, graphic arts and branding with companies from Romania, UK and USA. He holds a degree in Medicine, has studied graphic design at Sessions.edu Design School in New York, and is currently studying Communication and Public Relations as a post-graduate degree, with a thesis on rebranding.

In 1999 he founded Grapefruit, currently one of the top Romanian branding consultancies, and has worked as Chief Creative Officer ever since. His branding interests revolve around rebranding, nation and place branding and he has written articles and spoken at conferences on these subjects. He writes a monthly column on the history of famous brands and is very passionate about typography and identity design. Marius is also the initiator and consultant in the first city branding project in Romania, for his home city, Iaşi, launched in October 2005 and is scheduled to run over a period of at least five years.

Konstantinos Tsakonas

Research Associate, MIT, United States

Konstantinos Tsakonas is an architectural design reseacher and strategy consultant in the real estate industry. His research at MIT focuses on the design of evaluation methods that study the impact of architectural design of working environments on organizational communication, identity and productivity. He also offers design development and investment advisory services to institutional real estate investors.

Ştefan Liuţe

Strategy Director, Grapefruit, Romania

Ştefan is co-founder and Strategy Director of Grapefruit. With a post-graduate degree in Communication and Public Relations, and a sustained interest in strategic thinking and brand naming, Ştefan has recently helped rebrand one of Romania's largest pharmaceutical companies and is now involved in similar projects in the banking, FMCG and IT&C industries. He has translated into Romanian two essential branding books, The Wolff-Olins New Guide to Identity and Wally Olins’s On Brand. He is a speaker at domestic and international branding events and regularly writes for business and trade journals at home and abroad. Since 2001, Ştefan is the editor of The Weekly Wire, a weekly news digest about branding and corporate identity.

Dan Reynolds

Editor/Designer, Linotype GmbH

Born an American, Dan Reynolds is a graphic designer and typographer living in Germany. Before joining Linotype GmbH, he worked with information architects, corporate publication units, and advertising agencies in Rhode Island, Chicago, and Washington, DC. He holds a degree in Graphic Design and Art History from the Rhode Island School of Design in the United States, and current splits his time between writing about typefaces and designing them. Dan is a member of the ATypI.

Arash Shahidi

International Sales Manager, Linotype GmbH

Arash Shahidi was born in Iran and raised in Germany. While studying Marketing and Communication in Frankfurt, he worked on the rebranding of the Frankfurt Messe, a worldwide leader in exhibition and trade fair organization. Afterwards, he spent several years in the corporate sales department of a major software development company. In 2005 he joined Linotype GmbH as the International Sales Manager for Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

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