I’m Jason Hartley
Over 25 years of experience advising leaders of multibillion-euro corporations, founders with blank sheets of paper, and scale-ups embarking on their next growth phase.
From being a failed developer to growing a $5m portfolio of clients from zero as a 27-year-old in the early days of digital marketing to being Chief Strategy Officer of one of the world’s leading brand consultancies, with the small diversion of becoming a multi-award winning chef and restaurateur In-between, it’s been quite a journey. What has never left me is the joy of creation and inspiring others to push their creative boundaries. I have a genuine passion for creativity and the creative process.
A key part of that creative process is understanding the human psyche and the role of popular culture and the zeitgeist in its influence, that’s where the strategist mind kicks in. In a 25+ year career, I’ve spent 18 years working in Continental Europe with many different cultures all with various drivers and influences. I strongly believe you need experience and time to be a great strategist (he says justifying his age) to be able to see the world without you at its centre, only then do you truly start to understand the world around you.
I also believe you need to walk the walk. Alongside my adventures as a restaurateur I recently had a food tech startup (creating Europe's first direct-to-consumer tech platform for artisan farmers) which collided with the pandemic, and now alongside my consulting, I have a wine export/import, distribution & tour business creating the UK's first specialist in Slovenian wine & travel.
I’ve enjoyed some success but always learned more from my failures and share where I can as a coach, consultant, speaker, presenter & content creator.
My passions are great food, wine, and coffee and campaigning for a sustainable, regenerative food system. I travel and hang out with farmers, chefs, and my rescue dog Florence.
A few highlights
2024: Created SL.IT Wines, the UK’s only specialist in Slovenian wine. An import/export business (not simple in post-Brexit Europe) with UK distribution. Also combined with wine & food tours and unique apparel. See more here.
2023: Advised the board of trustees and management team of London’s world-famous Borough Market on their e-commerce and social commerce strategy and the role of the brand in driving scale
2022: Advised Foodles, a EUR 20m funded French startup, in launching their smart food service business in the UK and delivered the planning strategy for the next TV campaign for Hello Fresh, the EUR 6bn per year recipe box provider.
2019-2022: Moved to Slovenia to create Cultisan, a food-tech start-up focused on pan-European retail and logistics for artisan farmers and food makers. Created the brand, the e-commerce platform, the visual design, and the user experience for the mobile platform and led the offshore development team. Created UK and EU logistics and fulfilment solutions. I sourced the suppliers.
2018-2019: The strategic brand advisor to the CMO, CEO, and board of RS Components a £1.2bn UK-based international engineering group.
2017-2018: Executive Strategy Director for the 70-person internal agency of Guernsey-based Specsavers, the £2.1bn optical and health group. I turned down a full-time role as I did not want to move to the Channel Islands permanently.
2016: Led the strategy for agency R/GA on the global pitch for SEAT. Working in London and Barcelona the work was regarded as some of the best strategic work the agency had seen.
2015: Chief Strategy Officer at The Partners, the leading global brand consultancy for WPP, the world's largest communications organisation. WPP culture, and broken promises, weren’t for me so I left.
2014-2015: Voluntary role as Head of the Chef Alliance in England for Slow Food, the Turin-based NGO, and largest food NGO in the world.
2014: Moved from Amsterdam to London and went from being a chef/owner of my restaurant to being a freelance strategy director for We Are Social, the world's leading social media agency.
2012: Opened my first brick-and-mortar restaurant which went on to win TimeOut's Best of Amsterdam in its first 6 months and debut at Number 1 on Amsterdam’s Restaurant Review site amongst many other accolades.
2011: Wrote a TEDx talk on the tipping point of electric cars and mobility and created the brand positioning, identity, and marketing strategy for The New Motion, a Dutch start-up pioneering electric charge networks.
2010-2011: Director of Strategy for the Amsterdam office of Design Bridge, the oldest and most respected global agency in brand and packaging design - I turned down a full-time role to pursue my dream of cooking.
2009-2012: I became a chef and created Amsterdam's first pop-up restaurant which quickly became a phenomenon feeding 150 people in weekly sell-out events.
In 2008: Led a team of 35 people from across the global Omnicom agency network to the winning pitch for Adidas’ EUR 10m global digital portfolio in doing so creating the world’s first global social media agency.
2005-2008: Created Cherish, Amsterdam's first integrated media agency with clients such as Carhartt, UPC and Mattel.
1998-2003: Moved to Amsterdam from London and co-founded the first European office of the world leading dot com consultancy, Razorfish, and personally built a EUR 5m professional services portfolio in 2 years from nothing with clients such as Fortis/Mees Pierson, Nissan, and Vodafone.
1996: Managed my first commercial website development, one of the first in the industry.
A Proven Pioneer
I always get a thrill from being first. First may not be the best financial decision in business, but doing something for the first time has always been a passion of mine: to be an explorer, an adventurer, a brave soul, and to step out of my comfort zone. There is chaos and disruption in being the first that I must confess I also enjoy. It also means I can share my learnings with others following the journey.
I created one of the first commercial websites in the UK in 1996.
I co-founded the first European office of the world’s first global digital agency (Razorfish) in 1998.
I created one of the first integrated customer experiences, for Vodafone, in 2001.
I created Amsterdam’s first integrated communications agency in 2005.
Was a core member of the team that created the world’s first social media agency in 2008 (within Omnicom).
I created the first pop-up restaurant in Amsterdam in 2008 and was the first person to bring the concept of ‘brunch’ to the city and served the city’s first ‘flat white’ coffee in 2009.
I created the branding industry’s first data-driven model justifying investment in brand vs marketing in 2015.
I developed Europe’s first direct-to-consumer platform for artisan farmers and winemakers in 2021.
I created the UK’s first specialist wine importer for Slovenian wine in 2023.
There’s been a lot more along the way of course.