Illy is an award-winning, highly entrepreneurial and commercially astute marketing, communications and experience leader with 30+ years’ global experience spanning supermarket retail, corporate, music and entertainment, hospitality, lifestyle and luxury, delivering across the full marketing mix in both B2B and B2C environments.
Illy cut his commercial teeth at ASDA, where he was mentored by Justin King and rose through the trading floor to become a buyer. After a period back in the music industry managing and producing talent, he joined Pernod Ricard and spent 15 years in senior global commercial marketing roles, where he honed a deep understanding of consumer/audience behaviour and helped shape brand strategy and activation across international markets -bringing a strong blend of creativity, innovation and commercial performance. He was allowed to operate as a business within a business and set up one of the first experiential teams for a CAC40 listed company.
At Counterculture, Illy’s leadership is anchored in strategic and business planning, bringing commercial rigour, investor literacy and stakeholder alignment to complex cultural and civic environments. He translates ambition into funding proposition/narratives, multi-year business plans, robust P&Ls, audience strategies, and commercially viable operating models – often where organisations must balance artistic intent, public value, governance requirements and long-term commercial sustainability. He is known for moving at pace, clarifying ambiguity, and aligning competing priorities while remaining focused on deliverability and the endgame.
Areas of focus include:
- Commercial clarity under scrutiny – business planning, P&Ls, scenario thinking, audience assumptions, earned-income strategy, and retail/commercial models.
- Investor / funder-ready narratives – clear value propositions, credible delivery plans, risk-aware recommendations, and decision-grade options appraisal.
- Stakeholder ecosystems and engagement – boards, councils, funders, community voices, operators and creative leadership, aligned behind a single strategic direction.
Recent and relevant Counterculture assignments include:
- Historic England – Illy led the team to create an income generation strategy and the governance framework to deliver this for this complex ALB including a complex stakeholder landscape and moral/ethical conflicts in managing public money and creating additional commercial income.
- Plymouth Guildhall – working with Plymouth City Council to complete an options analysis of potential uses (including music and theatre), alongside fully modelled P&Ls to ensure alignment with other council-run visitor assets. Counterculture has since been re-engaged to undertake further work.
- Aviva Studios (The Factory), Manchester – Strategic Business Plan review, including advising on audience strategy and retail/commercial (including F&B) models and solutions for the new NPO.
- Rochdale Town Hall – research and options analysis for the shape and form of the business and operations, culminating in a full three-year business plan and P&L.
- DLI, Durham – working with Durham City Council leadership and lead architects to define the long-term vision, mission and behaviours to repurpose the venue as a cultural hub and ambitious destination offer. The commission has been extended to create and deliver the new brand, which Illy will lead, alongside supporting the development of the detailed business plan with the wider Counterculture team.
Illy is Vice Chair of The Piece Hall Trust, stewarding governance of the award winning 17th Century Georgian Cloth hall, The Piece Hall, the Grade I listed, multi-use National Heritage destination in Halifax. He is an elected Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and a member of the National Governance Association.