Who we are
Lobster is a specialist consultancy / agency aimed at consumer brands who are listed and sold in the UK’s major multiple supermarkets. We help marketers to transform their organisations’ shopper marketing capability.
Our objective is for your shopper marketing function to deliver and demonstrate a positive and increasing return on investment.
Your Client Services Team
The Lobster team is packed full of enthusiastic, shopper specialists.


Sam Knights: CEO
Sam's role is to lead Shopper Media Group in our mission to transform Shopper Media. That means working closely with retailers and brands, creating campaigns that really connect with shoppers and grow demand for our clients.


Joel Hopwood: CTO
Joel started his career in shopper marketing at dunhummby before setting up the founding agency of The Shopper Media Group – Capture in 2008. In 2017 Joel launched, Lobster his third shopper focused agency to support end-to-end shopper marketing activation with a data first approach.


Leanne Naughton: Business Director
Leanne has been supporting FMCGs including PepsiCo, Unilever, McCain and General Mills with their shopper marketing activations since 2012. Today, Leanne leads Lobster’s Client Services Team and works to ensure Lobster clients are satisfied with the agency’s service and output.


Matthew Ingram: Client Manager
Starting his career at Kantar, Matt joined Lobster in 2019. Matt works across his FMCG accounts to plan, execute and evaluate the performance of shopper media campaigns.


Matthew Richardson: Senior Client Manager
Matt has been with Shopper Media Group since late 2015, initially working on the Very Group account. In 2017 he moved over to join the Lobster team, and is now responsible for the planning, management and evaluation of shopper media across a number of client accounts.


Gabrielle Donnelly: Client Executive
Gabby joined the Lobster team in Summer 2019 on the back of graduating from the University of the West of England, where she studied Business & Marketing. Gabby supports the Lobster client team across a number of client accounts across media planning, management and evaluation.


Michelle Stribley: Client Executive
Michelle joined the team in Summer 2020, after completing an apprenticeship in the Shopper Marketing Team at Unilever. Michelle supports the Lobster Client Team by managing working relationships with her client portfolio, supporting across planning, management and evaluation of shopper media.


Ella Rice: Client Associate
Ella joined the team in the Summer 2020, after working in digital sector following completion of a marketing degree at Pearson Business School, London. Ella supports the Lobster client team in the day to day relationship with clients, supporting across planning, management and evaluation of shopper media.


Toby Lyons: Client Associate
Toby joined the Lobster Team at the start of 2021 after graduating from the University of Manchester studying geography. He works across a breadth of client services, from technology training to media planning and the evaluation of shopper media campaigns.
Our specialist support
Lobster’s Client Services team is supported with a wealth of specialist teams.


Bianca Hall: Insight Director
Bianca joined SMG from IRi in 2016 and now leads SMG’s Insight Team, who to date have performed over 1500+ shopper media evaluations.


Thanos Kounenis: Head of Engineering
Our aim is to design, implement and deliver software solutions for our clients.


Yannis Drosidis: Senior Developer
Yannis joined the SMG team in summer 2019, after having led several software development teams. He is spearheading our efforts to deliver PlanApps, our end to end web platform for planning, managing and measuring marketing activity.


Katie Streeter-Hurle: Group Strategy & Planning Director
Coming from a commercial marketing role at P&G Katie joined SMG in 2011 before moving to lead the Planning team who work to support the design of effective campaigns for our clients.


Fenella Hogg: Conceptual Director
Fenella leads the in-house creative team at SMG and comes from a strong background FMCG creative agencies including Grey, Ogilvy and the WARL Group.


James Cowley: Senior Media Partnership Manager
James manages SMGs centralised Media Trading Team, who work directly with retailer media owners to book £2m+ of shopper media per month.


Emma Dean: Capability & People Development Director
Emma joined as our first graduate shortly after the business started 12 years ago. Having worked on our various client teams, she now leads the team that look after our number one asset - our people. This includes everything from attracting brilliant talent, building expertise, our internal comms and creating culture.


David Bromfield: CFO
David oversee's the day to day running of the Finance Team, ensuring that our agency is a well oiled financial machine. David is constantly engaged with all members of the team providing them with the support & guidance to be able to carry out their role to the highest standard.


Mike England: Planning Director
Coming from a creative agency background, Mike joined SMG in 2017. Having spent time leading the Mothercare and The Very Group partnerships in Threefold, Mike is now responsible for leading the Planning Team ensuring the creation of effective campaigns for all our clients.
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